Notices of Memoirs. 311 



animals. This led to a closer examination of the bed, when it was 

 found that mixed with the shells was a large quantity of burned 

 wood, with bits of burned horn and bone, while many of the shells 

 themselves had evidently been subjected to a strong heat. These 

 facts left no doubt that the bed was in many respects similar to the 

 famous Danish " Kjokken Moddings." During the progress of the 

 engineering operations, which have completely removed the shells, 

 a tolerably careful search was made for other traces of humanity, and 

 no implements that could safely be accepted as such were discovered, 

 although some bits of broken bone, the tyne of a deer horn, and, 

 most important of all, part of a long bone of some animal un- 

 mistakably split artificially, probably either with the object of 

 extracting the marrow or of fashioning an implement, rewarded the 

 search. 



As the " Midden " thinned out in any direction it was found to be 

 interbedded with the gravel of the old beach, and in one part was 

 overlain by a stratum of sand and gravel of some thickness, in 

 which could be found traces of burned wood and shells similar to 

 those of the "Midden" below, just as we would expect to find it if 

 the heap had been formed close to high- water mark where it could 

 be reached by the waves of an unusually high tide, which would 

 throw the gravel over the shells, and partly interstratify them. 



These facts would seem to prove that not only was the shell 

 mound a haunt of early man before the ten or twelve feet of earth, etc., 

 was laid down upon it, but that the rude people who found in the 

 shells of the sea-shore their most convenient food-supply, lived 

 when the 25-feet beach was at the sea-level, and consequently when 

 the geography of the country was different from what it is to-day. 



I am obliged to Prof. H. Alleyne Nicholson for kindly identifying 

 some of the fragments of shells sent to him as being those of 

 Mytilus edulis, Purpura lapillus, Tellina balthica and Littorina 

 littorea, all recent species, and the bit of deer horn as being "almost 

 certainly " one of the tynes of the antler of the red deer. 



IsTOTIOES OIF ILdllEnyilOIiaS. 



I. — M. Th. Fuchs on the Origin of False-bedding. 



In the " Eeport of the Imperial Geological Institute of Vienna," 

 September 30, 1877, M. Th. Fuchs points out that when by great 

 storms, or high tides forced up against the land by strong winds, the 

 sea is massed up along the coast (as it is sometimes to the height of 

 10, 20, and even 30 feet), the coarser detritus, as shingle, blocks, and 

 boulders, is suddenly swept down to a lower level, even over the 

 mud-zone, by the deep and strong counter-current of the displaced 

 water finding its level again ; thus giving rise to false-bedding on a 

 large scale and apparent local unconformity. — T. E. J. 



II. — East-African Ammonites. 

 (Report Imper. Geol. Instit. Vienna, Sept. 30, 1877.) 

 A series of Jurassic Ammonites from the East Coast of Africa, col- 



