412 Geological Society : — 



GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 

 [Continued from p. 333.] 

 February 26, 1S62. — Prof. Ramsay, President, in the Chair. 

 The following- communications were read : — 



1. " On the Drift containing Arctic Shells in the neighbourhood 

 of Wolverhampton." By the Rev. W. Lister, F.G.S. 



In the parish of Bushbury, at the junction of the London and North- 

 Westem, the West-Midland, and the Stour- Valley Railways, is a 

 gravel, with clay, sand, and pebbles, rolled Liassic fossils, flints, 

 pieces of coal and of wood, and more or less fragmentary shells of 

 the following species (as determined by J. G. Jeffreys, Esq., F.R.S., 

 F.G.S.) : — Astarte arctica, Cardium echinatum, C. edule, Cyprina Is- 

 landica, Modiola modiolus, Tapes virginea, Tellina solidula, Venus 

 strialula, Litorina squalida, Nassa reticulata, Purpura lapillus, and 

 Turritella communis. The Astarte and the Litorina are not now 

 found living in our seas. Similar fossil shells have been also 

 found by the author at Oxley Manor, half-a-mile to the N.W. ; by 

 Mr. G. E. Roberts at Acleton, eight miles to the S.W. ; and by 

 Mr. Beckett elsewhere. Liassic fossils have also been found in the 

 gravel at Compton Holloway and at Wightwick (both in the parish 

 of Tettenhall), and at Wolverhampton. 



2. "Ona Split Boulder in Little Cumbra, Western Isles/' By 

 James Smith, Esq., F.R.S., F.G.S. 



The Islands of Great and Little Cumbra have (like the west coast 

 of Scotland) a cliff and terrace, indicating an elevation of about 40 

 feet above the present level of the sea, and the removal of at least 

 100 feet of rock (sandstone and trap), the sea at its present level 

 having worn away the rock to the extent of only a small fraction 

 of an inch. The terrace on the Little Cumbra has been moreover 

 ground down and scratched by ice-action, the striae passing unob- 

 literated under the present sea; and on the ten-ace lies a split 

 boulder, such as are known to fall from glaciers, and which the 

 author thinks must also in this case have fallen from an escarpment 

 of ice. 



3. " On the Ice- worn Rocks of Scotland." By T. F. Jamieson, 

 F.G.S. 



The author, first referring to the eroded surface of the rocks be- 

 neath the Drift-bed in Scotland, proceeded to show that the action 

 of ice, and not that of torrents, could produce such markings, as he 

 had observed in the bed of a mountain-stream in Argyllshire, down 

 which had poured the torrent caused by the bursting of the reser- 

 voirs of the Crinan Canal. He then advanced reasons for consider- 

 ing that the erosion of the rocks in Scotland was due chiefly to land- 

 ice and not to water-borne ice, bringing forward remarkable in- 

 stances of ice-action on the glens and on the hill-sides at Loch 

 Treig and Glen Spean, where moraines, blocs perches, strise, roches 

 moutonnees, and boulders lifted above the parent rocks indicate a 

 northern direction for the great ice-stream from Loch Treig to the 



