718 ME. F. W. HAJtMER ON THE CRAG OF ESSEX. [Nov. I9OO, 



modiolus, and Astarte compressa are found at Oakley, though not 

 frequently. On the other hand, the southern forms Cardita corbis 

 and Woodia digitaria are somewhat less common at Oakley than 

 at Beaumont. 



A noteworthy feature of the Oakley fauna is, the occurrence in it, 

 though not abundantly, of Neptunea antiqua (dextral). Of the cari- 

 nated and peculiarly northern forms of this shell I have found there 

 more than a score of examples, 1 principally youug, and one of an 

 exceedingly short- spired variety, brevispira. 2 These earliest recorded 

 specimens of JS J . antiqua are generally short-spired, and show no 

 signs of approaching the normal Red Crag type of JV. contraria with 

 which they co-existed, as they ought to do if the one were merely a 

 variety of the other. 



The presence at Oakley of Trochus tricariniferus, Pecten Gerardii, 

 Lima plicatula (a single specimen only of each), and other species 

 hitherto known from the Coralline Crag alone, is interesting, as is 

 that of several new species of Nassa and Cardita, and of Oancellaria 

 mitreeformis var. costulata, the latter closely resembling a shell from 

 the Italian Pliocene. Specimens of Turritella marginalis and 

 T. vermicularis (fragmentary), also Italian Pliocene shells, have 

 been found, as well as Natica helicina, a Miocene species confined, 

 according to Wood, to Walton and Bentley. 



The Little Oakley outlier probably extends over the highest part 

 of that parish, and thence, though not continuously, along the ridge 

 which runs towards Dovercourt Cliff, as shown on the map (fig. 1, 

 p. 710). I was informed by an old man, resident there at the 

 time, that coprolites were formerly dug at the spots marked 6 & 7. 

 I noticed Crag in hedges near South Hall, at 8 & 9, and in a pit 

 \ mile from Dovercourt at 10 : too comminuted at the last-named, 

 however, to yield any good results, but I ascertained by boring that 

 the deposit is 10 feet thick, resting upon the London Clay. I found 

 Crag also by boring at several spots between No. 10 and the cliff; in 

 the garden adjoining the Hotel, however, and as far as can be seen 

 along the cliff, the London Clay comes to the surface. 



The small outlier formerly exposed at Harwich, near the spot 

 marked 11 on the map (fig. 1, p. 710), now quite destroyed, seems, 

 so far as the evidence goes, to have belonged to the Waltonian 

 division. The figures drawn by Dale, the Father of Crag geologists, 3 

 are not all satisfactory, but the following species may be identified 

 from them with more or less certainty : — 



1 M. Van den Broeck mentions a similar shell under the name of Chrysodomus 

 despecta var. carinata, Sars, Bull. Soc. Beige Geol. vol. vi (1892) Mem. p. 131 

 {Neptunea antiqua var. tricarinata, Nyst, ' Conchyl. Terr. Tert. Belg.' Ann. Mus. 

 Boy. Hist. Nat. vol. iii, pt. i, 1881), as characteristic of the Poederlian, an 

 upper zone of the Sealdisian. 



2 Figured in Proc. Internat. Congr. Zool. Cambridge (1898) pi. iii, fig. 8. 



3 ' Hist. & Antiq. Harwich & Dovercourt ' London, 1730. 



