914 C. MOORE ON THE PALEONTOLOGY 



53. Notes on the Paleontology and some of the Physical Condi- 

 tions of the Meux-Well Deposits. By Charles Moore, Esq., 

 E.G.S. (Head June 19, 1878.) 



The various deep borings which have been put down at Crossness, 

 Harwich, Kentish Town, and more recently at Meux's Brewery, in 

 the Tottenham Court Road, have amply established the correctness 

 of Mr. God win- Austen's deductions that a ridge of Palaeozoic rocks 

 passes under the Jurassic and Cretaceous beds of the south-east of 

 England, the probability, if not the certainty, being that the rocks 

 of which that ridge is formed are a continuation of those which skirt 

 the South-Wales coal-basin, and which, in passing through Somer- 

 setshire, are continued in theMendip range until lost under Secondary 

 deposits near Erome. 



In the above districts I have previously pointed out that the re- 

 presentatives of some of the Secondary beds are found associated 

 with the older rocks, under very peculiar conditions, through a line 

 of country from east to west of about sixty miles. At one spot thin 

 deposits or pockets of Inferior Oolite may be seen lying unconformably 

 upon the highly inclined but planed down edges of the Carboniferous 

 Limestone ; at another, conglomerates of Liassic or Rhaetic age of a 

 few feet in thickness, some of them exhibiting shore-conditions, may 

 be found filling depressions in the limestone or passing down its 

 vein-fissures ; and however thin these deposits may be, they can be 

 recognized as distinct, and as representing on the sides or otherwise 

 of the southern portion of the Palaeozoic anticlinal the presence in 

 the district of Rhaetic, Liassic, and Oolitic formations. 



Perhaps the most interesting evidence of these peculiar physical 

 conditions is seen where the Carboniferous Limestone for the last 

 time presents itself on the east of the Mendips, before passing under 

 the thick deposits of Oxford and Kimmeridge Clays and the Cretaceous 

 beds of the Wiltshire Downs not far beyond. Within a few square 

 yards in a roadside quarry at Marston, near Erome, are exhibited 

 stratified beds of Inferior Oolite, a dense variegated conglomerate 

 of Liassic age with many organisms, and a thin band of Rhaetic 

 clay, all resting on Carboniferous Limestone which shows itself in the 

 bottom of the quarry ; whilst passing from the Lias down through 

 the limestone is a mineral vein, some feet in thickness, filled with 

 calc spar ; and close at hand in the same quarry are evidences of 

 two caverns, possibly containing Mammalia of the Cave period. 



Seeing that the above conditions are frequently present, especially 

 on the southern boundary of the Palaeozoic ridge, and believing 

 that after its disappearance at Marston road it passes under the 

 south-eastern districts of England, there seemed to me no reason 

 why, in connexion with some of the deep borings, there might not be 

 some evidence, or a trace at least, of similar unconformable condi- 

 tions of deposit, though altered possibly by physical changes that 



