PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 



381 



great petralogical series. The former wide extension of the Upper Old Red 

 Sandstone throughout the south-east of Scotland was shown by the height at 

 which it occurs among the Lammermuirs. These hills must unquestionably 

 have been covered by it ; and hence the denudation of the south of Scotland 

 will eventually be shown to be one of the greatest which this country has under- 

 gone. The author concluded by sketching the physical geography of South 

 Scotland during the Upper Old Red Sandstone period, in so far as it \^as in- 

 dicated by the facts presented in this paper. He showed that the rate of sub- 

 sidence was probably much greater in the eastern than in the western districts, 

 inasmuch as the whole of the vast series of Upper Old Red and Lower Car- 

 boniferous sandstones had accumulated in the Lotliians and Berwickshire 

 before the base of the Lesmahagow hills began to be washed by the waves of 

 the encroaching sea. 



February 1, 1860. 



1. " On some Cretaceous Rocks in Jamaica." By Lucas Barrett, Esq., 

 F.G.S., Director of the Geological Survey in Jamaica. 



On the north side of Plantain-Garden river, three miles west of Bath, shale 

 and limestone overlie conglomerate. The limestone contains Inoceramus, Hip- 

 purltes, and Nerinaa, Higher up the river similar fossiliferous limestone occurs 

 in vertical bands, succeeded by conglomerates, which separate it from massive 

 porphyries. 



On the medial ridge of mountains, also, at an elevation of two thousand five 

 hundred feet above the sea, Hippurite-limestone, with black flints containing 

 Ventriculites, rests on porphyry and hornblende-rock. These igneous rocks are 

 interstratified with shales and conglomerates. 



2. " On the Occurrence of a mass of Coal in the Chalk of Kent." By R. 

 Godwin-Austen, Esq., E.G.S. _ 



This piece of coal was met with in cutting the tunnel on the Chatham and 

 Dover Railway, between Lydden Hill and Shepherdswell. It weighed about 

 four hundred weight, and was four feet square, with a thickness of four inches 

 at one part, increasing to ten inches at another. It was embedded in the chalk, 

 where tlie latter was free from faults. The coal is friable, highly bituminous, 

 and burns^readily, with a peculiar smell, like that of retino-asphalt. It resem- 

 bles some of the Wealden or Jurassic coals, and is unlike the true coal of the 

 coal-measures. Mr. Godwin- Austin stated his belief tliat this was a block of 

 lignite or coal of the preceding Jurassic period lifted off by ice during the Cre- 

 taceous period, and drifted away like the granitic boulder found in the Chalk 

 at Croydon. 



3. " On some Fossils from the Grey Chalk near Guildford." By R. Godwin- 

 Austen, Esq., F.G.S. 



In the east of the body-chamber of a large Nautilus elegans, from the Grey 

 Chalk of the Surrey Hills, near Guildford, the author found numerous speci- 

 mens of Aphorrais Parkinsoni, with fragments of Turrilites tuberculatus, Am- 

 monites Coupei, A. varicms, and hioceramus concentricus. The author believes 

 that the specimens referred to were accumulated in the shell of the Nautilus, 

 possibly by the animal having taken them as a meal shortly before death, at a dif- 

 ferent zone of sea-depth to that in which the Nautilus and its contents sank 

 and became fossilized. Mr. Godwen-Austea referred to these specimens as 

 bemg indicative of the contemporary formation of different deposits with their 

 peculiar fossils, at different sea-zones ; of the transport of the inhabitants of 

 one zone to the deposits of another; and as a possible explanation of the 

 abundance of small angular fragments of mollusks, echinoderms, and crus- 

 taceans, in the midst of the very finest Cretaceous sediment. 



