80 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



ZeJcellii, n. s. ; Haleotis ? antiqiia, n. s. ; Emarginula Kappi, n. s. ; Ac- 

 ieon cinctus, n. s. ; Acteonella, sp. 



All these, it will be seem, are new, except about a dozen described or 

 quoted by Goldfuss, Hoeningbaus, Bosquet, and De E-yckholt. 



This fauna M. Binkhorst considers as belonging to the zone between 

 high and low water in a littoral region of a subtropical ocean. Many of the 

 genera which compose it are common to hot and to temperate seas, such 

 as the Buccinum, Turho, Emarginula, Scalaria, etc. ; but others, such as 

 the Valuta, Pi/rula, Cancellaria, Solarium, Vermetus, Turhivella, etc., 

 only inhabit the hot seas. The facies of the fauna indicates also, he thinks, 

 the proximity of reefs of corals, great quantities of the debris of anthozoa- 

 rians so fill many of the beds as almost to form them. It is probably to 

 the high temperatiire of this epoch, he considers, that we o^^ e the great 

 species Valuta deperdita, CeritJiium maximum, and those brilliant colours 

 which many of the bivalves that he has found, have even in their ancient 

 burial-place. 



"Judging," he adds, "from the great number of fragment of casts and 

 moulds belonging to species of which the determination and the description 

 await the discovery of more perfect examples, those that we have de- 

 scribed represent only a small portion of the moUusks of this class which 

 were the contemporaries of the 3fosasaurus." 



He has also described a cephalopod, characteristic of the "marnes sans 

 silex de Vaels," a score of species of cephalopods from the Upper Chalk, 

 some of which are new, and among others many of the genus Ammonites-, 

 probably the last representatives of that important and nun)erous family, 

 and one species of the AcayithoteutJiis, D'Orb., which with the AcantJioteu- 

 this prisca of Solenhofen are the only fossil species known to M. Bink- 

 horst as described up to this time, and this the only one of the cretaceous 

 rocks. In England however an Acanthoteuthis [A. antiquus) is recorded 

 from the Oxfordian beds of Christian Malford and from Trowbridge in 

 Wiltshire. 



It is not a little singular however to find these remains of Gasteropoda 

 occurring in the hard beds of the Limbourg district, in the form of casts 

 and moulds, exactly as the remains of Gasteropoda do in those hard beds 

 of the Engbsh white chalk to ^^ hich Mr. Whitaker has lately given the 

 name of Chalk-rock. 



The great number of new species figured by M. Binkhorst should be an 

 encouragement to the many British collectors of cretaceous fossils, to search 

 well these hard beds for the Gasteropoda, of which in the form of casts they 

 do, as we know personally b}^ experience, contain great quantities. 



In the beds of this hard chalk at Dover or Maidstoiie, a cubic foot of 

 rock cannot be broken up without some casts of \\\y.\[ apjiears to be an 

 exquisitely sculptiu-cd Trochus being found. Pontalia also are common, 

 and small (young ?) Ammonites. We hope soon therefore to see M. Binck- 

 horst's species matched by English cxanii)les, and some new forms added 

 to them from our own famous chalk localities. 



