211 



XI.— Notices. ° 



Pondiceheey Fossils.-— The specimens taken home by Mr. Kaye 

 from Varadoor, Verdachellum, &c. were exhibited to the Geological society 

 during the course of last summer and pronounced " to be a splendid col- 

 lection. Prof. Forbes called it an enormous addition to the Fauna , of the 

 most beautiful forms and of the most interesting period. When they 

 were first seen they were supposed to be upper cretaceous and even to 

 contain a mixture of tertiary forms and as it was just at that time a sub- 

 ject of much discussion whether there was any passage between the chalk 

 and tertiary rocks, the Pondicherry beds were by many supposed to form 

 the link. Subsequently however they were discovered to belong to the 

 lower green sand and Neocomien. The neocomien beds are known certainly 

 to exist only in the south of France, and there are none of the fossils in 

 England, but Professor Forbes has compared mine with the beautiful en- 

 gravings of the French geologists and has identified several of the ammo- 

 nites and some of the singular forms, which for want of a better name we 

 used to call hamites, with these French fossils : they are the lowest bed 

 of the green sand, or between the green sand and the Oolite and the 

 Indian fossils became doubly interesting from the fact that just as I 

 brought them before the meeting, the existence of these neocomien beds 

 in England was a subject of keen debate." Extract of a letter dated 

 October 1843. 



In a notice of the sitting of the Geological Society on the 31 January, 

 it is stated that the Pondicherry fossils are nearly all new forms whence 

 the bed is considered to belong to the lowest part of the lower g<reen sand, 

 whilst from the occurrence of many well known green sand specimens in 

 the Verdachellum and Trichinopoly deposits they have been referred to 

 the upper green sand. In this report (by the curator) 156 new species of 

 mollusca are described and named. Athenceum. 



A Subsequent letter dated in March last states : 



" Our fossils have lately attracted still more attention than before. At 

 the anniversary meeting this year they were almost the only things on 

 the table and formed one of the main topics of the President's speech,, 

 A long report on them was also read by Professor Forbes the curator of the 

 museum, and there seems now to be little doubt left that the Trichinopo- 

 ly and Verdachellum beds are of nearly the same age and are contempo- 

 raneous with our English green sand. There are several shells common 

 to Trichinopoly and Verdachellum and which are quite identical with 

 fossils of the green sand. The Pondicherry beds are lower than these, 



