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PEOCEEDIXaS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 



Geologists' AssociATioisr. — May hth, 1862. — " On Bone-beds — their 

 occurrence in Sedimentary Deposits, and probable Origin." By George E. 

 Eoberts, Esq. Tlie author described those zones of osseous and coprolitic 

 matter which occur in parallel positions nearly throughout the range of 

 sedimentary strata. Commencing with the most recently deposited bone- 

 beds, he described in descending stratigraphical order those of the Eocene, 

 Wealden, Oolitic, Liassic, Ehsetic, Carboniferous, and Silurian ages ; point- 

 ing out the peculiarities in the position of each, and its range through 

 the British area, and its relative correspondeiits in Europe and elsewhere. 



The author's conclusions were that these deposits presented the 

 simple and normal life-forms of the period, unaugmented, as a rule, 

 by any drift of dead fishes and Crustacea from other localities or by any 

 cataclysraal change or local epidemic destroying life in the seas. Bone-beds 

 he regarded as representing more nearly than other deposits the actual 

 population of the areas in which they occur at that period of their past 

 history, and he urged that special search should be made for life-rclics in or 

 near to such zones ; for a rock, he considered, was generally not only more 

 fossiliferous and richer in the ordinary organisms of the period in the strati- 

 graphical vicinity of a bone-bed, but also contained intermediate forms 

 linking together past species with those which succeeded, a consequence 

 of change in the water from salt to fresh, or vice versa, at the time 

 of their deposition. 



The probability was that all bone-beds were deposited in shallow water, 

 swept by light currents, under geographical conditions favouring the 

 multiplication of fish and Crustacea in Archipelagic areas, which are ever 

 seen to be crowded with marine life, and are the great feeding grounds 

 of fishes. Of this we have a modern example on the cod-banks of 

 Newfoundland. 



2. "On a Superficial Deposit near the Blackfriars Hoad." By C. 

 Evans, Esq. In this deposit, some mammalian bones and land and fresh- 

 water shells of recent species have been found. The deposit consists of 

 peat and woody clays, resting on a bed of gravel, and was exposed in the 

 excavations for the Charing Cross Railway. 



Manchestee Field-Natuealists' Society. — We have received the 

 annual Report of this Society, which announces its continued prosperity 

 both as to funds and members, and the general and deserved success of 

 the excursions and soirees. We shall not soon forget the brilliant display 

 of excellent diagrams and the large and instructive collections made by 

 this Society in the Free Trade Hall on the occasion of the British Asso- 

 ciation Meeting, and we should freely spare a page or two of our much- 

 demanded space to notice their labours if they had given us the oppor- 

 tunity of doing so. All the geology however they appear to have done 

 was the picking up some Carboniferous calamite stems when the Todmor- 

 den Botanists fraternized with the Manchester Naturalists at Whiteley 

 Dean. "So little," says the report, "of Nature's archaeology can be 

 read upon the surface near Manchester — scarcely any, indeed, except in 

 the fossil herbariums of the coal-pits — that to find such relics in our path 

 was peculiarly interesting." However, if the naturalists do not do much 



feology, the Manchester geologists do — and well too, as the papers of 

 ►inney, Hall, Dickinson, Darbishire and others testify. 



