282 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [May 19, 



same species of shells which I had seen in the yellow crag, but mixed 

 with some others peculiar to it. The Fectunculus variabilis^ Sow., 

 is by far the most abundant shell. 



On the glacis, at a higher level, greyish sand with green grains 

 appears, which M. de Wael calls " crag gris or moyen," and which 

 he regards as of intermediate age between the "yellow" and "black'* 

 crags already alluded to. 



About three miles south of iVntwerp, between the villages of Ber- 

 chem and Vieux Dieu, I came accidentally upon a new excavation in 

 a garden which exhibited the crag under a different aspect. At the 

 top were mottled, red, and whitish sands, 12 feet thick, the lowest 

 layers containing many small quartz-pebbles, under which was an 

 argillaceous sand with numerous ball-like concretions of clay-stone 

 in which were casts of large Bivalves, chiefly of Pectunculiis (P. va- 

 riabilis ?), and others apparently referable to a large Mactra and to 

 a Venus, each of which had served as the nucleus of a nodule. The 

 vertebrae of Fish and teeth of Sharks were numerous. Among the 

 latter one large tooth belongs to Oxyrhina trigonodon, Agassiz, which 

 I also obtained from the clay of Rupelmonde. A second species 

 comes nearest to Carcharodon Escheri, Agassiz, and may perhaps be 

 identical, although less oblique than the specimen figured by Agas- 

 siz, who procured his fossil from the Molasse of Switzerland. I 

 found mixed with these many unrolled bones of Whales of a different 

 species from that which I had seen in the yellow crag at Antwerp. 

 Prof. Owen was able from my specimens to refer these bones to the 

 caudal and cervical vertebrae of some species of Cuvier's extinct genus 

 Ziphius. The caudal vertebra is 3|- inches in its larger diameter. I 

 was told of many other places where cetacean relics occur near Ant- 

 werp; and M. VanBeneden, in his memoir on the subject, states that 

 it is scarcely possible to penetrate a few feet beneath the soil at the 

 villages of Wommelghem and Deurne without encountering cetacean 

 remains which have formed parts of entire skeletons buried on the 

 spot. Some of these fossils, dug up at Antwerp within the walls of 

 the city, were figured by Cuvier, and referred to his genus Ziphius"^. 

 At Niel, near Antwerp, M. Van Beneden met with an ear-bone, which 

 he ascribes to the genus Rorqual or Balcenoptera-^ . 



We may therefore regard such cetaceans as truly characteristic of 

 the Antwerp Crag ; a fact strongly confirmatory of the opinion enter- 

 tained by Mr. Searles Wood and Mr. Charles worth, and advocated 

 by myself in 1851 ^, that the cetacean relics met with in the Crag 

 of Suffolk, much worn and rolled, have not been derived from the 

 London clay, as some had contended, but were more probably washed 

 out of denuded beds of crag ; it being clear that strata in Belgium of 

 the same age as the Suffolk Crag were accumulated in a sea inhabited 

 by numerous Whales belonging to several genera. 



The Crag of the neighbourhood of Antwerp, like that of Suffolk, 

 is very variable in composition, and often entirely devoid of fossils. 



* Cuv. Oss. Foss. pi. 27. figs. 7 & 8. 



f Bullet. Acad. Roy. de Belgique, 1846, vol. xiii. pt. 1. p. 257. 



X Manual of Geology, 3rd edit, p. 166. 



