3RIST0L NATUHALISTS SOCIETY. 
From the " Bristol Daily Post " of February 8th, 1864. 
The fifth monthly meeting of this society for this session 
took place on Thursday evening last, at the Philosophical 
Institution, and was attended by about thirty members and 
several ladies. 
Upon the recommendation of the council, it was resolved 
to purchase an apteryx offered for sale by M. Charbonnier, 
in order to present it at a future time to the museum of the 
institution. The secretary, Mr. Leipner, stated that this 
curious bird, which was remarkable as having no wings, only 
rudiments of them, was becoming extremely rare. It 
inhabited New Zealand, and an Australian museum had 
recently paid £100 for a pair. The Earl of Derby had, 
without success, offered £500 for a living specimen. 
The President (Mr. W. Sanders) then introduced Mr. 
Charles Moore, F.G.S., of Bath, who had kindly undertaken 
to give a paper, entitled, " Results of a Geological Kamble 
to Patchway." 
Mr. Moore, after adverting to the excursion of the 
society in August last over a portion of the South Wales 
Union Railway, and the unfortunate weather which obliged 
geologists on that occasion to use their umbrellas far more 
than their hammers, explained that, after leaving Bristol, 
the line passed through a cutting in some red marls, belong- 
ing to the upper red sandstone, and then over an open 
country where the beds of the lower lias, geologically higher 
than the N.R.S., appeared. This series was incomplete, con- 
taining only the ammonites bucklandi beds, and lay uncon- 
formably upon the white lias. At Patchway, a set of beds, 
known as the rhastic beds, presented themselves, belonging 
to the Triassic or N.R.S. period, which were only 30 feet in 
thickness in this country, but on the continent they attained 
5000 feet. The rocks through which the Over tunnel passed 
could only be judged of from the heaps of stone round the 
mouths of the shafts, at the first and second of which un- 
doubted new red marls were found ; at the third, some- 
thing supposed at first to be white lias, or by others the 
refuse of a limekiln ; and at the fourth a very dense 
quartzose sandstone. In the cutting at the mouth of the 
tunnel was a very remarkable series of contorted beds, con- 
taining coal, fireclay, and many other minerals. It was, 
however, to the stone around the mouth of the third shaft 
that the author's special attention had been directed, and he 
described, in an amusing manner, the difficulty he met with 
in getting a load of the stone removed to his own house at 
Bath, for quiet examination of the fossil remains in it ; the 
results of which examination he detailed, illustrating his 
remarks with the specimens obtained. Several specimens 
of a Permian and carboniferous fossil, chonetes, were soon 
found ; also, several masses of entomostraca (little water 
fleas, &c.) ; but the most remarkable organism was a chono- 
dont, which had only previously been found in the 
Ludlow bone bed. What chonodonts were was a disputed 
point, some authorities considering them as jaws of fish, 
others as dermal scales, and others again as crustaceans. 
Mr. Moore then stated that certain mineral veins 
in Yorkshire had been under the ocean, and had 
organic remains deposited therein, among which were 
chonodonts of these very species — hence the inference 
was almost certain that these lead veins in Yorkshire and 
the Patchway beds were contemporaneous. A list of the 
fossils found was then given, many of which were very re- 
markable, and the author concluded an able paper by re- 
