2G 



found for many years past in the brick-earth at the village of Fish- 

 erton Anger, at the distance of about 4 of a mile from Salisbury 

 Cathedral. Several pits sunk in this brick-earth show that it varies 

 in thickness in different places from about 10 to 20 feet. It bears 

 every mark of a tranquil sedimentary deposit from water ; but the 

 laminae are sometimes divided by thin layers of fine sand, or occa- 

 sionally, but rarely, by a layer of small flint pebbles. There are no 

 marine remains ; but land-shells are said to occur sometimes in this 

 deposit. The brick-earth rests upon a bed of chalk flints, the 

 greater part of which are not water-worn: and beneath these is 

 chalk, which is loose and rubbly in the upper part. 



This brick-earth is not connected with the alluvial soil of the pre- 

 sent valley, but appears to have been deposited when the valley was 

 at a higher level ; for it forms a low terrace, along the side of the 

 river Wily, between Salisbury and Wilton, rising 30 or 40 feet above 

 the present water-meadows. It is necessary at least to suppose that 

 when these beds were accumulated, the water rose much higher than 

 it now does. 



The bones are in a very decomposed state, but have no appear- 

 ance of having been rolled ; they are found in the lower part of the 

 brick-earth, and not in the subjacent flint gravel. And in one spot 

 there is reason to believe that the remains of an entire skeleton of 

 an elephant might have been procured. 



A paper was read, entitled " Remarks on some of the strata be- 

 tween the chalk and the Kimmeridge clay, in the south-east of En- 

 gland :" — in a letter to Charles Lyell, Esq., from Wm. Henry Fitton, 

 M.D. P.G.S. &c. — The objects of the author were ; first, to ascertain 

 in the interior, the existence of that remarkable group of strata, 

 which on the coast has been found to include the remains of orga- 

 nized bodies supposed to belong to freshwater ; and secondly, to trace 

 along the western boundary of the chalk the strata which imme- 

 diately succeed it. For the latter purpose, he gives a series of sections 

 at right angles to the outcrop of the chalk, on the boundary of that 

 formation passing from the coast of Dorsetshire, round the Black- 

 down hills in Devonshire, and thence by the vales of Wardour, 

 Warminster and Pewsey, through Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, 

 Bedfordshire, &c. to Hunstanton Cliff on the coast of Norfolk, where 

 the course of the chalk range is interrupted by the sea. These sec- 

 tions prove that the order of the strata is throughout the same as in 

 the Isle of Wight, and in Kent, Surrey and Sussex ; — and the paper 

 describes the principal variations in the proportions and characters 

 of the beds, at the site of the several sections. 



In proceeding westward from the Isle of Wight, the beds which 

 intervene between the chalk and the Purbeck limestone appear to 

 run together ; and cannot well be distinguished further west than 

 Lulworth Cove. Beyond that point no trace has yet been detected of 

 any of the freshwater beds beneath the lower green-sand ; nor is the 

 separation of the upper from the lower of these sands by a stratum 

 of clay (Gault) any longer discernible. Some fossils, however, of 

 the gault occur in the sands on the coast near Lyme Regis, and at 

 the well-known quarries of Blackdown ; and the presence of the 



