TJPPEK EOCENE (bARTON AND UPPEK BAG SHOT FORMATIONS). 587 



and is the " foxy " band of Fisher, underlying and defining the zone 

 oi Nummulites elegans^. 



The Loaver Barton, or Highcliff Beds. 



The Nummiilite-band forming the base of the Barton Series is 

 only 8 inches thick, and green sandy clay, identical with that of the 

 Bracklesham Series beneath, continues upward, with fewer casts of 

 fossils, for another 10 feet, when it passes insensibly into a fine and 

 stiff, very plastic, drab clay, mottled darker and paler, and with a 

 peculiar pinkish band, as if burnt, about 4 feet from the top. The 

 Goniocypoda Ediuardsi^ H. Woodw., described as a true Shore-crab, 

 and said to be from ''the Bed Marl of the Plastic Clay ofHighcliff," 

 must have been from this band t- Casts of an Echinoderm, whole 

 and broken up, abound, together with otolites, spines, teeth, and other 

 fish-remains. Ledas and Corbulas are very commonly drifted with 

 quantities of broken shell-matter ; and the Mollusca generally seem, 

 like the casts below, to be of species common to both the Barton 

 and Bracklesham Scries. Among the more frequent are Turritella, 

 Voluta athleta, Cancellcwia, Cassidaria amhigua, Rostellaria ampla, 

 Trochita, Cardita. The most distinctly Barton form is, perhaps, 

 Pleurotoma rostrata. About 20 feet above the Nummulite-band the 

 bed gradually becomes of a paler drab, rather plentifully mixed 

 with patches or drifts of sand, the latter causing it to founder and 

 form the conspicuous lower terrace at Highcliff. This latter con- 

 dition of the bed is 13 feet thick. 



The Highcliff Beds end in the Highcliff sands, a fairly well- 

 marked division, consisting of a glaucouitic clayey sand, interrupted by 

 lines and pockets of very compact fine sand, composed of fine-grained 

 and angular quartz, crowded with small and beautifully preserved 

 shells. The sands are intermittent, often reduced to a mere trace, 

 but swelling again and again into pockets, which never exceed 2 feet 

 in thickness. The variety of the species in them is large, particularly 

 among the genera Bulla, Odostomia, Rissoa, Turhonilla, Baycmia, 

 Bulima, Pyramidella, &c. The green grains soon disappear, leaving 

 the clay palish drab, but the pockets of sand continue scattered 

 through it for a thickness of 10 feet, with this important difference 

 to the collector, however, that the higher ones are merely filled with 

 Corhula and, occasionally, Ditritpa, mixed with the comminuted 

 remains of larger shells, some of which also appear in the clay itself 



* " I find a bed containing Nummulina Prestwichiana [elegans] at High Cliff, 

 analogous to that at Alum Bay. I believe it has hitherto been overlooked, but it 

 may easily be recognized by the following indication : — There will be observed, 

 extending along all the central portion of High Cliff, not far overhead, as you 

 walk upon the beach, a narrow band of hard marly clay, not quite a foot thick, 

 weathering of a reddish foxy tint, and projecting slightly beyond the general 

 face of the cliff. Immediately above this, in marked contrast of colour, is a 

 narrow green band of coarse sandy clay, about 8 inches thick; This is the 

 Nummulina Prestwichiana [elegans] bed. It is much thinner than at Alum Bay, 

 and the Nummulites are less profusely scattered in it. At this place they are 

 pyritized." — Fisher, I c. p. 87. 



t Geol. Mag. vol. iv. p. 529, pi. xxi. fig. 1 (1867). 



