578 Reports and Proceedings — 



Stones, ' Coprolite.' " He thought that remarkable deposit to which, 

 in 1835, lie gave the name " Ked " Crag, and which forms one of 

 the well-known group of Tertiary formations that are spread over a 

 limited area in the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, would 

 possibly have, at no very distant day, to be expunged from an 

 enumeration of the strata that now make up the list of the British 

 Fossiliferous Eocks. The destruction of this deposit is being 

 brought about, partly by the encroachment of the sea, as at Harwich, 

 where the Crag, which in Dale's time (1730) capped the London 

 Clay cliffs, and furnished that author with the shells, the engravings 

 of which constitute the earliest published figures of Crag Fossils, 

 but of which Crag not a vestige is now to be seen ; and partly by 

 the artificial breaking up of the Crag to get at the layer of 

 Phosphatic Nodules which lies at its base, and the commercial 

 value of which to agriculturalists, under the misnomer " coprolite," 

 forms the famous discovery of the late Professor Henslow. Hence 

 it is allowable to speculate on the high value which collections of 

 Red Crag fossils will bear when this stratum becomes a thing of the 

 past, known to coming generations of geologists only from what 

 they may read in books, or gather from the examination of such 

 Crag specimens as are preserved in Geological Museums. When 

 ^Qi Coprolite workings are closed, no such collections of Eed Crag 

 fossils can ever be made as are made now. All the most productive 

 fossiliferous portions of the Red Crag will then have been mixed up 

 with the overlying sand, gravel, and vegetable soil, which, shovelled 

 up by the coprolite miners with the Crag, in one common mass, are 

 thrown back into the diggings, as field by field is trenched over, and 

 the black treasure taken out. 



Mr. Charlesworth referred to the abundant evidence of a Mam- 

 malian Fauna in the Suffolk Red Crag, having been furnished 

 through the coprolite workings, and stated that this addition to our 

 knowledge of Red Crag Palteontology is sometimes advanced as an 

 objection to the designatioi; '' Mammaliferous " for the Crag in 

 Norfolk, with its extension to Southwold and Thorpe, in Suffolk. 

 But those who advance this objection lose sight of the fact that this 

 Norfolk Crag has produced its abundance of Mammal teeth and 

 bones without the trenching and sifting process which, since 1840, 

 has enlightened geologists with respect to the occurrence of Mammal 

 teeth and bones in the Suffolk Red Crag, and that were the Norfolk 

 Crag subjected to the " sifting " process, its Mammal remains would 

 so greatly exceed those of the Suffolk Red Crag, as fully to justify 

 the applicability of his name " Mammaliferous," without mooting 

 considerations arising out of the law of priority, so strongly insisted 

 upon by the highest authorities in Natural History Science. 



In regard to the origin of these phosphatic nodules ; — the so-called 

 Crag coprolites. The idea of the nature of these nodules being 

 coprolitic originated with Professor Henslow — a mistake, but one, 

 perhaps, of the happiest mistakes ever made by a man of science ; 

 for had not Professor Henslow believed these stones to be coprolites 

 (fossil dung), he would never, in all probability, have had them 



