237 
PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 
Geologists' Association. — 3fay hth, 1862. — "On Bone-beds — their 
occurrence in Sedimentary Deposits, and probable Origin." By George E. 
Eoberts, Esq. The author described those zones of osseous and coprolitic 
matter which occur in parallel positions nearly throughout the range of 
sedimentary strata. Commencing with the most recently deposited bone- 
beds, he described in descending stratigraphical order those of the Eocene, 
Wealden, Oolitic, Liassic, Ehffitic, Carboniferous, and Silurian ages ; point- 
ing out the peculiarities in the position of each, and its range through 
the British area, and its relative correspondents in Europe and elsewhere. 
The author's conclusions were that these deposits presented the 
simple and normal life-forms of the period, unaugmented, as a rule, 
by any drift of dead fishes and Crustacea from other localities or by any 
cataclysmal change or local epidemic destroying life in the seas. Bone-beds 
he regarded as representing more nearly tlian other deposits the actual 
population of the areas in which they occur at that period of their past 
history, and he urged that special search should be made for life-relics in or 
near to such zones ; for a rock, he considered, was generally not only more 
fossiliferous and richer in the ordinary organisms of the period in the strati- 
graphical vicinity of a bone-bed, but also contained intermediate forms 
linking together past species with those which succeeded, a consequence 
of change in the water from salt to fresh, or vice versa, at the time 
of their deposition. 
The probability was that all bone-beds were deposited in shallow water, 
swept by light currents, under geographical conditions favouring the 
multiplication of fish and Crustacea in Archipelagic areas, which are ever 
seen to be crowded with marine life, and are the great feeding grounds 
of fishes. Of this we have a modern example on the cod-banks of 
Newfoundland. 
2. "On a Superficial Deposit near the Blaekfuiars Hoad." By C. 
Evans, Esq. In this deposit, some mammalian bones and land and fresh- 
water shells of recent species have been found. The deposit consists of 
peat and woody clays, resting on a bed of gravel, and was exposed in the 
excavations for the Charing Cross Railway. 
Manchester Field-Natuealists' Society. — We have received the 
annual Report of this Society, which announces its continued prosperity 
both as to funds and members, and the general and deserved success of 
the excursions and soirees. We shall not soon forget the brilliant display 
of excellent diagrams and the large and instructive collections made by 
this Society in the Free Trade Hall on the occasion of the British Asso- 
ciation Meeting, and we should freely spare a page or two of our much- 
demanded space to notice their labours if they had given us the oppor- 
tunity of doing so. All the geology however they appear to have done 
was the picking up some Carboniferous calamite stems when the Todmor- 
den Botanists fraternized with the Manchester Naturalists at Whiteley 
Dean. "So little," says the report, "of Nature's archaeology can be 
read upon the surface near Manchester — scarcely any, indeed, except in 
the fossil herbariums of the coal-pits — that to find such relics in our path 
was peculiarly interesting." However, if the naturalists do not do much 
geology, the Manchester geologists do — and well too, as the papers of 
Binney, Hall, Dickinson, Darbishire and others testify. 
