NOTES AND QUERIES. 



35 



toral ridge on the humerus indicated a bird which possessed the power to 

 beat its wings down forcibly, and that the shape of the furculum also in- 

 dicated a bird of flight. The black rail had no furculum. Mr. Gould ad- 

 hered to his previous opinion. 



Manchestbb Philosophical Society. — Dec. 2nd. — E. W. Binney, 

 F.E.S., the President, said that in a paper published in vol. x. (second 

 series) of the Society's Memoirs, " On the Drift Deposits found near 

 Blackpool," he had stated, in a note at page 122, that since the paper was 

 written, Mr. J. F. Bateman, C.E., F.G.S., had informed him that in 

 making the Hollingworth reservoir, near Mottram-in-Longdendale, he had 

 met with the common cockspur shell (Turritella terebra) in considerable 

 abundance. During the past summer he had visited the locality alluded 

 to by Mr. Bateman, in company with Mr. Prestwich, F.K.S. After going 

 up to the uppermost part of the reservoir, which is one of those belonging 

 to the corporation of the City of Manchester, to the point where the goit 

 convoys the water on the east side of the valley, we saw a deposit of brown 

 sandy clay, or till, which had been cut through to the depth of between 

 three and four feet for the purpose of forming the goit. This deposit con- 

 tained small granite and greenstone pebbles, some rounded, and others 

 angular. In it he found a considerable number of shells, some quite 

 entire and others in fragments. He procured and showed to the meeting 

 specimens of Turritella terebra, Fusus Jiamfius, Purpura lapilJus, two 

 specimens of Tellina, and Cardium edule. The city engineer, Mr. J. G. 

 Lynde, F.G.S., had given him the exact height of the spot where the 

 fossils were found at as 568 feet above the level of the Irish Sea. 



Shells, identical with recent sea-shells, have been found at much greater 

 elevations on the mountains of North Wales, but very few so far inland ; 

 for the locality where the specimens were met with is full fifty miles in a 

 straight line from the Irish Sea, and a greater distance if the watercourses 

 of the Etherow and Mersey are followed. Mr. John Taylor has found 

 recent marine shells in the sands at Bredbury and Hyde, which he has 

 described in the Transactions of the Manchester Geological Society; and 

 Mr. Prestwich informed him that he has found similar fossils on the 

 Buxton Koad, about three miles from Macclesfield, but the specimens 

 herein described are the first that have been noticed in the deep valleys 

 running up into the sides of the Pennine chain. 



He further stated that he had found a large mass of greenstone, evi- 

 dent ly a travelled roek of the Drift period, at the extreme end of one of 

 the tributary valleys of the Tame, in Saddleworth, as high up as New 

 Year's Bridge, near Denshaw Yale. All these facts proved the former 

 presence of the sea (in some cases containing inhabitants similar to those 

 found on our present coasts) high up on the sides of the Cheshire, York- 

 shire, and Derbyshire hills at a recent period, geologically speaking, and 

 show that many of our dee]) valleys have not been formed by the streams 

 of water now traversing them, but are chiefly clue to the more powerful 

 action of the waters of the ocean, most probably assisted by ice. 



NOTES AND QUE1UKS. 



Obituary. — On the l!)tli of December, one of the oldest and the most 

 famous anatomists and ethnologists of Fnglaud departed this life. We 

 allude to the venerable Dr, Robert Knox, lion. F.E.S., the friend of Cuvier 



