1871.] HrCES MENETIAN GROUP. 41 



At Southampton they occur 150 feet above the river Itch en and the 

 sea and considerably inland, at Bournemouth on a sea-cliff 120 

 feet in height, and at the Foreland (at the eastern extremity of the 

 Isle of Wight) on a cliff 82 feet above the sea and far remote from 

 any river. If, therefore, these deposits were effected by fluviatile 

 agency, it was evident that all traces of the rivers were afterwards 

 effaced by some great geological changes ; or, in the alternative, some 

 great geological change, not fluviatile, must have caused the deposit. 

 Upon the whole, he was disposed to conclude, with the French 

 geologists as well as with many eminent Engish authors, that the 

 accumulation of all these superficial drifts was, as the late Sir 

 Roderick Murchison had said, sudden and tumultuous, not of long 

 continuance ; and thus it was such as would result from some kind 

 of diluvial action, rather than from the ordinary long- continued 

 action of water. 



Mr. JuDD pointed out, in contravention of Mr. Jeffreys's views, 

 that in the Fen-district, over large tracts of gravel of undoubtedly 

 marine origin, there are many pits without a trace of marine 

 shells. 



Mr. Presxwich, while willing to concede that the implement- 

 bearing gravel beds had been deposited under more tumultuous ac- 

 tion than that due to rivers of the present day, was still forced to 

 attribute the excavation of the existing valleys and the formation 

 of terraces along their slopes to river-action. He showed that Mr. 

 Flower's argument as to the present level of the source of the river 

 was of no weight, as the country in which it had its source was 

 formerly, as now, at a much higher level than the gravel at Down- 

 ton. As to the absence of marine shells at Cams Wood, he cited a 

 raised beach in Cornwall which, in company with Mr. Jeffreys, he 

 had examined for a mile without finding a trace of a shell, though 

 for the next half mile they abounded. There was the same differ- 

 ence between the raised beaches at Brighton and at Chichester. He 

 was obliged to Mr. Codrington for his correction as to the level at 

 Cams Wood, though the pit was at a higher elevation than the one to 

 which Mr. Codrington had alluded. 



2. On some imdescribed Fossils from the Menevian Group of Wales. 

 By Henry Hicks, Esq., F.G.S. 



[Abstract * .] 



IjST this communication the author gave descriptions of all the fossils 

 hitherto undescribed from the Menevian rocks of Wales. The addi- 

 tions made to the fauna of the Lower Cambrian rocks (Longmynd 

 and Menevian groups) by the author's researches in Wales during 

 the last few years now number about fifty species, belonging to 

 twenty-two genera, as follows :■ — ■ 



* The publication of this paper is deferred. 



