NOTES AND QUERIES. 
77 
to tliis natural facing, the whole expense of digging out the corner of the clill", 
and the building of two rcctangnlar walls of brick to support and protect the 
artilicial face of the cliff thus excavated might have been avoided; for so 
smooth a surface resting so nearly at tlie true angle of repose as the plane of 
the slickcnside there presented, would have been perfectly safe without any 
extraneous support whatever. 
Any one travelling along the Brighton, Croydon, or North-Kent railways, 
or, indeed, any one visiting any large chalk-pit or cliff-section can, we think, 
hardly fad to notice slickensides of greater or less extent. 
In the lower beds of the wliite chaDc, and in the lower beds of the grey 
chidk, there are cones of chalk having glossy sHckensided surfaces, the origin 
of which I have never been able to account for, unless we regard them as con- 
cretionary masses shifted, squeezed, and pohshed by^the " creep" of the beds. 
Specimens of these may be got by hundreds in the nodular white chalk between 
the ArehcHff and Shakespeare tunnels at Dover, and from the grey chalk of 
Abbot's Cliff and the Pelter. In the upper white chalk in the clifts near the 
castle at Dover, small planes of slickensides of a few inches in extent are of 
common occurrence, completely passing through shells such as terebratulae, 
spatangi, and other fossils. 
The marly vems in the white chalk containing fish-remains are often pene- 
trated by numerous small slickensides. 
It is curious how so acute and talented an observer as Mr. Ansted should 
have fallen into such an error. — Editor of " Geologist." 
Mammalian Remains near Salisbury, &c. — Sib, — Having noticed from 
time to time communications from various correspondents respecting the locali- 
ties in which mammalian remains have been discovered, and deeming that it 
is from the comparison and arrangement of the accumidated evidence of separate 
individuals that any important results will be derived, I have presumed to 
trouble you with one or two instances that have come under my observation. 
The pleistocene deposits lying to the west of Salisbury, and exposed in 
several brick-yards adjacent to the road leading to WUton, seem peculiarly rich 
in mammalian remains. Dui'iug the past summer there have oeen obtained 
teetli of the leptorhine, and tichorhine rhinoceroses, the mammoth, red-deer, ox, 
a portion of the jaw of a ti^er, with a tooth in situ, the bones of a diminutive 
species of rat, and the coprolite of a hysena. 
Fossils of a similar character to some of these have recently been discovered 
in the neighboui'hood of Northampton. When excavating for the extension of 
tlie gas-works, a peaty gravel bed was exposed about sixteen feet below the 
surface, which contained abundant remains of deer, mammoth, and rhinoceros ; 
associated with these were great quantities of dark discoloured wood, 
amongst which were recognised the oak, ehn, and hazel — the nuts also of the 
last mentioned were very numerous. 
The pleistocene deposits around Luton have recently been frequently dis- 
turbed, but as yet have yielded no remains of manunals, the characteristic 
fossils being water-worn fragments of belemnites, ser])ul£e, encrinites, and gry- 
phsese, apparently derived from the Has. If you would kindly assist me by any 
information respecting the geology of South Bedfordshire, you would greatly 
oblige yours truly, Silex, Luton. 
Tertiary Strata at Peckham Rye. — Dear Sir, — Some notes having 
appeared in former numbers of the " Geologist," on the deposits on the south- 
east side of London, I may caU your attention to a bed which has been met 
with in excavating the high-level sewer at Peckham Rye. The deposit is 
about eight inches in thickness, and consists in part of a hard argillaceous Hme- 
stone, in which are embedded layers of paludinee, with occasionally traces of a 
large bivalve, which I believe to be a imio. 
