354 ME. p. "W. HAKMER ON THE LEKHAM BEDS [Aug. 1 898, 



fartlier into the ^orth Sea than does that of similar English 

 Channel currents from the westward at the present day. 



17. That the Red Crag, with which I hope to deal more fully 

 in another paper, was the marginal accumulation of a sea 

 gradually retreating northward and eastward. 



18. That, in opposition to the views of Prestwich, who regarded 



it, with the exception of the Chillesford Beds and ' the 

 unfossiliferous sands of the Crags,' as throughout of the 

 same age, the Red Crag formation includes a continuous 

 sequence of deposits, arranged, however, horizontally, and not 

 vertically, the different beds being found to contain a 

 gradually diminishing proportion of southern, and a gradually 

 increasing number of northern species of mollusca, as we 

 trace them in a northerly and easterly direction. 



DlSCUSSIOK". 



Mr. Clemei^t Reid congratulated the Fellows on having before 

 them the valuable series of borings made, purely for scientific 

 purposes, by Mr. Harmer. He was unable to agree with the 

 Author that there was at present any sufficient evidence for 

 separating the Lenham Reds from the Coralline Crag, as forming an 

 older zone. The slight differences in percentage of the recent and 

 southern mollusca were due in the first place, he thought, to the 

 unavoidable study of the larger species alone in the ironstone-moulds 

 of Lenham ; the smaller mollusca generally give a higher percentage 

 of persistent forms. In the second place, at Lenham, owing to the 

 geographical position, the sea was warmer ; and the deposits also 

 resembling those of Italy rather than those of East Anglia, there 

 was necessarily a greater resemblance to the Mediterranean Pliocene 

 fauna. If such very slight differences were sufficient to mark a 

 time-interval between the Lenham Beds and the Coralline Crag, he 

 could not understand why the Author should correlate the Lenham 

 Beds with the * boxstones,' the small fauna of these containing a 

 far stronger southern and extinct element than was found at 

 Lenham. 



Mr. H. "W. BuEEOWs considered that, until a critical examination 

 had been made of the somewhat scanty and unsatisfactory molluscan 

 fauna of the Lenham Beds, no satisfactory results could be obtained 

 by comparing slight percentage-differences of the species with those 

 of other deposits for purposes of correlation. The speaker was not 

 convinced by the arguments of the Author in regard to the oneness 

 of the Coralline Crag. Admitting that the evidence for a zonal 

 distribution is not yet complete— neither mollusca nor polyzoa having 

 been studied from that aspect — yet the foraminifera in some im- 

 portant respects confirm the zonal arrangement. This subject had 

 already been dealt with by Mr. Holland and the speaker in the 

 Monograph of the Crag Foraminifera, and, when the general facies 

 of each zone is considered, a marked resemblance is found to exist 



