178 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Nov. 30, 



same fonnation as the beds last mentioned, to which they have a 

 general resemblance. At the time the railroad was formed, a large 

 quarry was opened on Alfred's Hill, which has been since ploughed 

 over ; but there is a sand-pit remaining near the railroad, with about 

 1 5 feet of fine ash-coloured and yellow sand, horizontally stratified, 

 containing a few fragments of small Oysters and Exogyrse, too im- 

 perfect to be identified ; in the upper part are some thin beds of 

 cherty sandstone, which are now very little exposed, but for which 

 the quarry was formerly worked. 



The same deposit probably extends to the farm called "The 

 Sands"; and it must come in contact with the Sponge-gravel of 

 Fernham ; but the junction of the two deposits is concealed by allu- 

 vial soil and vegetation. 



The dark brown sands and ironstones of the Furze Hill and 

 Cole's Pits belong unquestionably to the Lower green sand. In 

 mineral character they agree exactly with the well-determined Lower 

 green sand ofLockswell Heath, and of the neighbourhood of Devizes, 

 and the organic remains enumerated by Mr. Austen from this loca- 

 lity (I. c. p. 4/6 and 477), are all Lower green sand shells, without the 

 admixture of a single species which can raise a doubt upon the sub- 

 ject*. This mass has no resemblance whatever to either of the other 

 deposits described in this paper, and as far as I am aware, it has 

 hardly a single species in common with the adjoining spongiferous 

 deposit of Little Coxwell, and its organic remains are merely hollow 

 impressions and casts, quite difterent from the well-preserved fossils 

 of Little Coxwell. 



I now come to my principal object, the deposit of fossiliferous sand 

 and gravel abounding in Sponges, Terebratulse, &c. of Little Coxwell. 

 In Mr. Austen's section, I. c. p. 463, these beds are represented as 

 continuous with the iron-sands of the Furze Hills. This view of their 

 relation is not admissible ; the two deposits rest on the Kimmeridge 

 clay, and form adjoining hills, distinguished by only a slight depres- 

 sion ; but between the southern point at which the Sponge-gravels 

 are seen in the Little Coxwell pit, and the northernmost spot where 

 the ironstone and sands are visible in a small pit by the road-side 

 above the Ringtail Farm, there is an interval of about a quarter of a 

 mile in which the strata are entirely concealed, and in the middle of 

 this interval is the depression separating the two hills. Both de- 

 posits dip northward: the Sponge-gravel between 10° and 15°, and 

 the Lower green sand at a very slight angle. They must be regarded 

 as two deposits on the same level, abutting against one another, where, 

 the actual junction being concealed, we cannot see which rests upon 

 the flank of the other, and must therefore resort to internal evidence 

 for their relative ages. 



Immediately to the south of the Furze Hills another small patch 



* Mr. Austen names the following species : — 



Area, undetermined. Venus parva, Sow. 



Cardiuin sn])liillannni,'Zry?w. fenestrata, Forbca. 



Nuciila scapha, d'Orh. Pecten atavus, Eoem. 



Opis Keoconiiensis, Leyw. Emarginula Neocomien&is, r?"0/7y. 



