BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING. 
501 
described the deposit as Carboniferous ; while Mr. .Jukes had gone so far on the 
■wrong side as to declare his conviction that ' the whole of the fish-beds of Scotland, 
and the similar rocks in Glamorganshire and South Wales, might belong to the 
(Carboniferous system.' This confusion arose, he believed, from the confusion in 
tlie rocks themselves, where, through means of the intrusive traps, they are 
all greatly upheaved and disturbed in their positions and their relations to each 
other. But in Dura Den the whole series are in the closest juxtaposition, and 
can be read oif with the ease of letter-press for sectional descriptions. I will 
only further add, upon the question of age and position, that no Pterichthys has 
ever been found in any of the series immediately above the yellow deposit 
of Dura Den, and will challenge the detection of one from any of the 
' Cephalaspis,' or the grey sandstone beds beneath either in Forfarshire or in 
Caithness." Passing from this point, now, he thought, completely established, 
the doctor proceeded to a description of the fossils so abundant in the deposit. 
He said — "they had now obtained about four new genera and seven or eight new 
species of fish and Crustacea. The beautiful drawing of the large specimen before 
them was that of HolojHycldus nobilissimus, adding thus a new member to the Dura 
Den family of the genus, and placing it higher in the series than the rocks of 
Clashbennie, or those of Cromarty and Elgin in the north. He held in his hand 
a specimen of the two bones of the head, which he had just been informed by Sir 
Philip Egerton, now present, were termed the fjlosso-hyal plates that supported the 
lower jaw, and resembled very much the plates in the existing Siidis giyas of the 
American rivers. The huge Megalichthys of our Scottish coal-fields had, he was 
informed by the same high authority, three of the glosso-hyal supporters, as if 
Natui'e in her arrangements had made size a condition of organic structure. The 
whole organisms in the Dura Den deposit were in general very entire, of a deep 
pink enamelled colour, and when lying in their stony bed suggested the idea that, 
instead of the long series of geological terms to be counted, they were the crea- 
tions of yesterday, the relics of living things that had just ceased to breathe. His 
eye, while speaking, glanced at the large section in the opposite wall, in which he 
observed the Dipterus and Diplopterus family marked, in the accompanying descrip- 
tion, as confined to the Middle series of the Old Red. Now he begged to inform the 
section and members around him that the specimens of both these genera, now in 
his cabinet at Newburgh, were both found in the yellow deposit or upper series of 
the formation. Upon the whole, he concluded there was in Dura Den a classic 
field for geologists of the deepest interest ; much has been obtained, much remains 
to be detected in future researches." 
TuE Alluvial Lands and Submarine Forests of Lincolnshire. — By the 
Rev. Edward Trollope, F S.A., General Secretary to the Associated Midland 
Ai'chitectural and Archoeological Societies. — A great contest between 
the sea and the land had been raging upon the Lincolnshire coast for 
centuries before the arrival of the Romans in that part of Britain, whilst a 
similar conflict had also been very obstinately carried on between portions 
of the soil of that country and the fresh waters flowing from the interior 
of England at the same early period with varying success and attended by more 
or less permanent consequences. Traces of the sea's former conquests may still 
be observed at inland spots now removed twenty miles from its present boundary, 
and yet remains of forests are occasionally revealed sixteen feet below its usual 
level, and at some distance from the existing coastal line, equally indicative of 
losses sustained by the land. Above the wavy subsoil of Oxford clay, once forming 
the surface, has swept a violent rush of waters charged with boulders, large 
flints, remains of elephants and other pachydermata, silt, and gravel, in wild and 
eccentric profusion, and over these for the most part, has been deposited a funeral 
pall of peaty earth covering innumerable trunks of oaks, fir, alder, hazel, and 
other trees accompanied by their berries, nuts, and leaves. To prevent such 
aggressions on the part of the sea the Romans, entering into an alliance with 
the land, surrounded the Lincolnshire coast with a vast sea-bank pierced 
at intervals, and with due precautions, for the purpose of allowing an exit 
for the fresh water ; at the same time they formed an immense catch-water drain 
