NATURALISTS SOCIETY. 
[ON MEETING, JULY Sth, 1864. 
About forty members and friends, including ladies, joined 
the second excursion of the season, held on Friday, July Sth. 
1 The party left Bristol for Glastonbury by the 9.50. a.m. train, 
I and, on their arrival, proceeded at once to Street, to visit 
some of the remarkable limestone quarries. The one chosen 
j as an example belonged to Mr. Crees, and had been carefully 
figured and described by Dr. Wright, of Cheltenham, as a 
typical example of these lias quarries. The quarry exposes 
about 20 feet of rock, perpendicularly, and contains 31 
separate beds, all horizontal, and of different materials, 
limestones of various kinds, shales, &c., of thicknesses 
varying from one to fifteen inches. Halting here, the party 
, gathered round the president, Mr. Sanders, who briefly 
explahied the nature and peculiarities of the beds. He said 
that they belonged to the Lias, which was the lowest set of 
I rocks of the Oolitic period, and which, in some parts of 
I England, attained a thickness of 700 feet, but near Bristol 
I only 300, of which 100 feet were taken up by the upper Lias 
sands; then the upper Lias ; then beds of clay and marlstoiie, 
seen in the excursion on Bitton-hill, and then the lower Lias, 
the beds of which occurred in zones 20 to 50 feet thick, each 
; zone being identified by its own ammonite. Underneath 
I this lay the white Lias, seen at Saltford station, forming a 
capital building stone ; below these were beds of clay and 
shale, the so-called Eheetic beds, and then the New Red 
Sandstone. Having thus given the geological position, Mr. 
Sanders said that this particular quarry was remarkable, as 
being the one in which so many remains of the extinct 
saurians had been found, furnishing some of the specimens in 
the Museums of Economic Geology in London, and the Bristol 
Institution. The beds belonged to the zone of Ammonites 
planorbis, and besides furnishing remains of Plesiosaurus, 
Icthyosaurus, &c , they yielded a shell allied to the mussel, 
a modiola; an oyster, Ostrea liassica ; a lima ; the spines of a \ 
peculiar echinus, remains of coral, several fish, and a few 
plants, chiefly ferns. 
After examining the beds, the party adjourned to some 
houses, where the fossils obtained at different times had been 
preserved, and especially admired some slabs of stone, ten 
feet square, in the village. This being accomplished, three 
smaller parties were formed ; one, which quietly returned to 
Glastonbury through the meadows, while a second, under 
the guidance of Mr. Clarke, a gentleman of the neighbourhood, 
started for Glastonbury Tor, and on the way were shown a 
specimen of the lesser auk, shot on the moors, and they 
also met with Butomus umbellatus, and a Eing-snake, on 
their return to Glastonbury. 
The third, and largest party, including most of the 
botanists and entomologists, crossed the country to the 
neighbourhood of Ashcot, and spent a considerable time among 
the peat bogs, encountering, as a consequence, numerous small 
and amusing mishaps, caused by the ditches. In answer to 
several inquiries, it was ascertained that if a place, whence ^ 
peat has been taken, be left for about 15 years it will appear 
