260 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



of Professors Tennant and Morris, they inspected minutely the various 

 plants that have an interest for geologists ; particularly the magnificent col- 

 lection of ferns, in connection with the fossil ferns of the coal-measures. 

 The plants that characterize the Oolitic and Tertiary beds were also illus- 

 trated with reference to modern groups. On the 24th ult. the Association 

 made an excursion to Heme Bay and Eeeulver, where the most competent 

 of the members delivered field lectures on some of the Secondary and 

 Tertiary formations exposed on the coast between those places. 



Cotteswold Natukalists' Field Cltjb. — A most interesting and nu- 

 merously attended meeting of this Club took place on 27th May, at Bown- 

 hill, Woodchester, where, by the permission of William Leigh, Esq., the 

 proprietor of the estate, a tumulus was opened, under the superintendence 

 of Mr. E. Witchell and Dr. Payne, of Stroud. On leaving the barrow, Mr. 

 Samuel S. Marling, of Stanley Park, invited the Club to luncheon. From 

 this point the President and Secretary proceeded, under the guidance of 

 Mr. Witchell, to a neighbouring brick-kiln, to examine the fullers'-earth ; 

 thence to Penwood Quarry, where the bastard freestone is laid open to a 

 depth of twenty-five feet, upon which rests the lower trigonia bed with its 

 characteristic fossils ; and onwards to a freshwater formation, exposed 

 during the excavation of a reservoir on the side of the hill, at a consider- 

 able elevation above the town. From the organic contents it was presumed 

 to represent the bottom of a small hill-lake, of which the margin towards 

 the vale has long been swept away. The shells found in it comprise the 

 same species which are constantly found in the tufaceous accumulations of 

 the district, and which still inhabit it — Cyclostoma elegans, Helix rotun- 

 data, H. umbilicata, Pupa umbilicata, Zua lubrica, Azeca tridens, and 

 Cavycliium minimum, as land-shells ; Yalvatd piscinalis, Jjymnceus trun- 

 catulus, and two or three species of Pisidium, as water-shelis. The Rev. 

 S. Lysons, availing himself of the presence of Dr. Thurnham, and Mr. 

 Cunnington, of Devizes, Mr. D. Nash, and other ethnologists from Chel- 

 tenham, submitted for examination four skulls exhumed by him from the 

 tumulus recently opened at Eodmarton. After dinner at the George Hotel, 

 several gentlemen took part in a long and animated discussion on the 

 events of the day, and upon the views expressed in a paper, by Captain Bell, 

 " on the rough unhewn Stones of Cromlechs, Circles, and Chambered Tu- 

 muli," in which he inclined to the opinion that no tools were used upon 

 them from superstitious motives, or reverential feelings due to the wide 

 diffusion of the divine command repeatedly referred to in the Scriptures, 

 where altars are especially mentioned as of unhewn stone.* He argued that 

 the tool-marks were not absent from want of skill on the part of the mound- 

 formers, as a knowledge of the powers of the lever, and the construction 

 of sledges upon which ponderous masses were probably removed, implied 

 familiarity with tools of various descriptions. Mr. D. ^N"ash doubted whe- 

 ther iron had not been used, and believed that the stones uncovered to- 

 day, if not hewn, had been shaped to fit them for the purpose to which they 

 were applied. He did not assign to the barrows of this district the high 

 antiquity attributed to them by many antiquaries, and thought that our 

 knowledge of the race by whom they were constructed had become more 

 confused, instead of more clear, by recent discoveries. He thought that 

 the majority of them were of a period subsequent to that of the Boinan 

 dominion in Britain, and that they were the work of a people which had 

 derived the civilization to which it had attained from the Eomans, and 

 were therefore of Romano-British origin. 



* I have long thought it possible that some of these unhewn stone monuments may 

 be relics of perhaps even the flint-implement men, or, at auy rate, a very early race ; 

 and have more than once published the idea. — En. Gkol. 



