112 MESSRS. JUKES-BROWI^E AND SCANES OJST THE [Feb. IQOI, 



The stones are called popples by the workmen, and the bed is 

 known as the popple-bed. Their external surface is rather 

 rough, but rounded and apparently waterworn, and to it are 

 attached many small Serpulce, bryozoa, and other adherent 

 organisms. When one is broken, it is seen that the external 

 brown coating is thin, and is ferruginous though probably phos- 

 phatic as well ; beneath it for a short distance the stone is rotted 

 and stained yellowish-brown, but the rest of the popple consists of 

 a very hard and compact calcareous sandstone, being really a fine- 

 grained sand cemented by crystalline calcite. It contains minute 

 scattered grains of glauconite, but these are only visible with a 

 lens, whereas those in the surrounding rock are plainly visible to 

 the eye and some are rather large. 



Further, one of the stones that we extracted was penetrated by 

 the boring of some lithodomous mollusc. The cylindrical hole was 

 more than 1 inch deep, and was filled with the enclosing rock- 

 material, which exhibits a marked contrast to that of the pebble. 

 There can be no doubt that the stones have been washed out of some 

 previously-formed deposit, and had been calcified and indurated 

 before their inclusion in this bed. Many of the fossils in this bed, 

 even the gasteropoda, retain their shells. (See List, pp. 114-19.) 



Early in 1899, part of a fossil tree was found in this bed lying 

 almost horizontally. According to the workmen, it was nearly 

 20 feet long, and the thickest end was about 15 inches in diameter; 

 while the crushed top-branches covered an area of about 9 feet. 

 It lay in a direction from north -north- east to south-south-west. 

 Mr. A. C. Seward, F.R.S., has examined a fragment, and finds it to 

 be coniferous wood. 



(6) The base of Bed 5 rests upon an irregular surface of the 

 underlying bed, but the latter does not difier very greatly in mineral 

 coroposition. It exhibits, however, a maximum of sandwitha 

 minimum of chalky matrix, and so little chalky material occurs 

 between the grains that what there is may possibly have been carried 

 down mechanically from above. In this bed large grains of quartz 

 are more abundant, and many of the glauconite-grains are also of 

 considerable size. 



Lumps or concretions of hard siliceous stone are scattered 

 through this bed at irregular intervals. They vary in length from 

 3 to 18 inches and in diameter from 3 to 9 inches, but rarely 

 exceed 5 inches across. They consist of fine sand cemented by 

 crystalline calcite, and are similar to the central parts of the stones 

 in the popple-bed, except that they have a lighter colour and a 

 fresher appearance. Although these concretions appear to be in 

 situ, they are not calcified portions of the surrounding sand, being 

 of much finer grain and containing but little glauconite. 



Fossils are so rare in this bed that we have not succeeded in 

 finding any. 



Bed 7 consists of fine-grained sand, with layers of calcareous 

 sandstone and lenticular lumps of chert. The sand is principally 



II 



