512 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
remains, apparently spicula of sponges and Spiniferites, as may be seen 
with a good microscope. The lower portion contains 
At the bottom of one of the alternating beds of blue rag, large masses 
of oval-shaped echinites occur in groups of from three to a dozen ; 
they resemble the Ananchjtes ovatus of the chalk. They are largely per- 
meated with iron, and are so firmly embedded in the surrounding matrix 
that to extract them is a work of great difficulty ; but it sometimes 
occurs that the wash of the sea accomplishes that which the hammer 
fails to do, and specimens are often thus brought to light exhibiting the 
beautiful construction of the shell, and its division into the armour-like 
plates of which it is made up. The author discovered a year or two 
since, in these beds, a single vertebra of a large saurian, the Strepto- 
tpondylus (?), and it is now in the British Museum ; such remains are 
very rare. 
Fossil wood is common in these beds; it is white and silicified, but many 
specimens are beautifully coloured by infiltration of iron. The author 
has now in his possession a large piece of a longitudinal section of a tree 
about eighteen inches in circumference, with the bark entire, which 
is an inch thick, and of a brown ochreous tint ; the wood has annular 
rings of growth, and is much perforated by boring shells. It is probably 
dicotyledonous, and belonging to a cone-bearing species. It was 
also from these beds that the fine specimen of Clatharia Lyelli — 
figured in " Mantell's Excursions," at page 217 — was obtained, 
and not from the chalk-marl, at Eonchurch, as is there erroneously 
stated, that specimen came from the "great chert beds" in the 
quarry above Steephill Castle, and was found by a workman whilst 
excavating stone for building, and sold by him to Captain Ibbetson. 
Such portions of wood and vegetable remains as are found in the 
Eoman Chalk of this locality,are always in such a decayed and decomposed 
state, and in such small fragments, as to be utterly valueless for the 
purposes of scientific determination. 
Nautilus radiatus 
expansus (?) very large 
Ammonites rostratus (?) 
inflatus 
Ammonites, n. sp. 
quinquc-costatus, common 
Ostrea ■vesicularia 
Casts of Venus or Thetis 
Spondylus, sp. 
Echinus (?) — two species 
Siphonia, Choanites, and other sponges 
Bones and teeth of sharks and saurians 
Fossil wood 
Pecten orbicularis, two varieties 
Belemnites lanceolatus 
Rbynchonella plicatilis 
octoplicata 
Bubplicata 
