1852.] NEALE ON PORTLAND DRIFT. 109 



And now, ere another Anniversary has arrived, the casual researches 

 of two gentlemen in the Old Red Sandstone of a remote part of Scot- 

 land have brought to light memorials of the past which establish the 

 existence, during the Devonian epoch, of several orders of a higher 

 class of Vertebrata than had previously been discovered ; and this 

 evidence is so complete and incontrovertible, and affords such an un- 

 expected and striking confirmation of the truth and sagacity of the 

 salutary caution enunciated by our late President, that his warning 

 assumes the character of a prediction, the fulfilment of which may 

 possibly be not very distant. 



It only remains for me to express my warmest thanks to my friend 

 Capt. L. Brickenden, and to Mr. Patrick Duff, for enabling me to 

 have the pleasure and privilege of communicating to the Geological 

 Society an account of one of the most interesting and important 

 discoveries in British Palaeontology which it has ever been my good 

 fortune to record. 



Chester Square, November, 1851. 



2. Notice ©/"Fossil Bones at Portland. By Mr. A. Neale. 



[From a Letter to the Sec. G.S.] 



In making a road for the conveyance of stone for the construction of 

 the Breakwater at Portland, a cutting has been opened to the depth 

 of about 30 feet from the surface of the island, which is here about 

 400 feet above the sea-level. The rock (here covered by a super- 

 ficial deposit, which is red below and darker at the top) is extensively 

 fissured in every direction, the cracks being from 1 to 6 inches wide, 

 and occupied by a deposit differing from the superincumbent soils. 

 The rock also is here traversed by a cleft, 10 feet wide, running in a 

 S.W. and N.E. direction, and containing large round black blocks of 

 stone, fragments of bone, and teeth *, imbedded in a black sand. 



3. On the Sub-escarpments of the Ridgway Range, and their 

 Contemporaneous Deposits in the Isle q/ Portland, By 

 Charles Henry Weston, Esq., Barrister-at-Law, B.A. Cantab., 

 F.G.S. 



[The reading of this Paper in full was deferred until the next Evening Meeting.] 



* A molar tooth of a Horse from this deposit was forwarded with the letter. 



