ANNIVERSARY ADDRKSS OF THE PRESIDENT. Iv 



Terrain Danien, and the baculite limestone of the Cotentin, is not to 

 be understood as embracing the beds which we are accustomed to 

 call " Upper Chalk" in England, and which are especially developed 

 in Norfolk and the east of Kent. The equivalents of the latter, of 

 which the Cardiastei' granulosus may be mentioned as a characteristic, 

 widely diffused, and guiding fossil, may be seen at Cipley and near 

 Maestricht underlying the yellow chalk with Hemipneustes radiatus, 

 i. e., the " Craie superieure " of Hebert. I have never seen in 

 England any beds which could satisfactorily be assigned to the last- 

 mentioned series, but think it extremely probable that the chalk of 

 Antrim in Ireland, which assuredly should be regarded in its greater 

 part as equivalent to our English Upper or Norwich chalk, will be 

 found to include equivalents of the Maestricht or yellow chalk of the 

 continent. I make this suggestion in consequence of having carefully 

 examined the fine collection of Irish fossils brought together and 

 first described by Colonel Portlock, and the still more extensive 

 suite in the Belfast Museum collected by Mr. MacAdam, for the 

 publication of whose long-continued labours among the formations 

 of the North-west of Ireland, all geologists acquainted with that able 

 observer's perseverance and careful inquiries, now continued over many 

 years, impatiently await. 



Mr. Prestwich has communicated to the Geological Society of 

 France his views respecting the position of the tertiary sands and 

 lacustrine limestone of liilly ( Marne) . The true place of these beds 

 in the series of lower sands of the Paris basin had not been deter- 

 mined with certainty. Much general interest attaches to the ques- 

 tion, since, if, as has been maintained by some eminent French geo- 

 logists, the freshwater limestone of Rilly is more ancient than any 

 known tertiary deposit (providing the reference of the Calcaire piso- 

 litique to the Cretaceous group, as proposed by M. Hebert, be 

 accepted), then we have clear proof of the entering in of the Tertiary 

 epoch in the area under dispute with terrestrial and fluviatile or lacus - 

 trine conditions ; the Rilly limestone in this case having been deposited 

 in lakes upon the emerged Cretaceous surface. Mr. Prestwich main- 

 tains, however, the independence of the sands and the limestones, 

 and the superposition of the latter on the former. He, for the first 

 time, records the presence of fossils in these sands, apparently much 

 in the same condition as they appear in the similar, though not 

 homologous Headon sands in the Isle of Wight. As in the latter 

 case, they are marine. He holds these sands to belong to the same 

 deposits with those of Chalons-sur-Vesle and Chenay, both marine 

 sands below the lignites. He concludes that the Rilly limestone was 

 preceded by a marine deposit of tertiary age, and was not the most 

 ancient of the tertiaries. On many and good grounds, he maintains 

 that it was a local travertine formed in a small lake, swamp, or 

 marsh ; a view supported by the fact that out of forty-five species of 

 Rilly shells, no fewer than thirty are of terrestrial habits, whilst most 

 of those that are aquatic are pulnioniferous types. The presence ot 

 Aviculce in these beds would seem to indicate the neighbourhood of 

 salt water. 



