Mr. Cumberland on the Strata at Whorlbury Camp. 2\1 



In the marly part of this stratum a fossil is found resembling a 

 cane or jointed bamboo. It is rarely obtained more than five inches 

 long, generally curved, but sometimes straight, and of all degrees of 

 thickness from a quarter of an inch to five inches. These fossils lie 

 in great disorder, and are apt to separate at their joints on extracting 

 them from their matrix ; and many appear to have had their joints 

 separated as they lay in the sandstone, the ends of the joints being 

 covered with a thin coat of quartz. Many of these fossils have 

 their hollows between the joints filled with hard sandstone, but the 

 greater part have their centres quite filled with the hardest white 

 quartz ; and where there are cavities, which rarely happens, they 

 are sometimes found to contain crystals of calcareous spar. 



When I first discovered these fossils, ten years ago, I found them 

 upon the beach just under the sandstone rock, and took them for 

 corallines ; but having since found them abundantly in situ, and 

 examined a number of them more minutely than before, I am in- 

 duced to regard them as juncous bodies. I know not at least how 

 to class them as corals, since they have not the smallest trace of any 

 passage from one joint to another. Should they be ranked however 

 among the coralline bodies, they must be allowed to be of a very 

 singular nature. 



Below the beds containing these fossils a grey limestone is found, 

 in which no traces of marine bodies appear. * On the top of this 

 limestone is a thin bed of very yellow marl, and then a thin bed of 

 purple and blue marly earth. Then appears the red sandstone con- 

 taining the cane fossils, six feet thick. Above it is another bed nf 



* Upon the summit of the hill at Uphill (which forms the point of the bay of Westou 

 opposite to Whorlbury) the canes are found in a coarse grey limestone, and may be 

 observed on the same spot in the stones of a ruined mill accompanied by small shells of 

 the winged anomia. 



