518 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
Chalk, and Greensand," in which he draws attention to certain minute objects 
often found in the cavities of the tubes of, fossil Teredines, but the origin of 
which is still unexplained. 
Mr. George E. Roberts has contributed a " Notice of the Plant-bed cut 
into by the Severn Valley Branch of the West Midland Railway," the speci- 
mens met with being chiefly carboniferous ferns of the genera Pecopteris, 
Neucopteris, and Sphenopteris. Of the last a new species " with very small 
but most elegant pinnules," resembling a delicate form of Hymenophyllum, 
from New Zealand, was abundant. 
The Woodwardites Robert sii, Morris, was first met with in these shales. 
A long paper by Mr. Gray " On the Geology of the Isle of Portland," is 
illustrated by one of those pieces of hacked wood far too common in modern 
geological books. Of the short comings of the paper itself we are disposed 
to speak lightly, for the sake of the spirit in which it is penned, but there is 
one part to which we hope the author will devote more accurate attention. 
After speaking of the bone-fissures in the Portland stone, he adds : — 
" Graves are frequently met with on various parts of the island, and from the 
discovery of vases, coins, and other articles in them, are acknowledged to be 
of Roman origin. These graves are generally sunk down into the calcareous 
slate of the Purbeck beds, and the body was deposited within a case, rudely 
formed of unhewn stones or slates — without the intervention of a cof&n — the 
earth being filled in upon a covering of similar material. 
" It would appear that the human remains are only found in fissures beneath 
the calcareous slate, so that it is highly probable that the weight of the earth, 
in the above instances, caused the heretofore undisturbed layer of slate between 
the graves and open fissures to give way, and launch its contents into the space 
below. Captain Manning, Her Majesty's Lieutenant of Portland, and resident 
magistrate, has in his cabinet at Portland Castle, a good collection of fissure- 
bones, skulls, and other human remains, as well as the bones of the deer, boar, 
and other animals, found in fissures in the central quarries, and therefore below 
the calcareous slate. In a cabinet, in the office of the Commanding Royal 
Engineer, Yern Port, there are also several specimens of bones, the latter 
having been found on the Yern Hill, where the calcareous slate is not deve- 
loped. These bones were not accompanied by human remains. The fissure- 
bones of Portland are generally found in good preservation, usually separate, 
but often cemented together by carbonate of lime, the shells of land snails 
being rarely associated with them. In some of the fissures, passed through 
by the Yern Ditch excavation, there were discovered numbers of 
shells, very delicate, yet well preserved, and similar to those described 
as common in the Loess of the Yalley of the Rhine, viz., Helix ple- 
bium. Helix nemoralis, and Cyclostoma elegans. Numbers of them were 
detached, but they were principally cemented together with broken pieces of 
stone, and cherty fragments, into a concretionary mass, by a filtration of car- 
bonate of lime crystallized, and encrusting each. The specimens obtained 
were thirty feet from the surface." 
We confess we do not clearly comprehend what the author means. If he 
intends to say that the human bones are older than calcareous slate, we deci- 
dedly think he is wrong. On the other hand, we do not see the value of 
whether a fissure extends down through other strata to the calcareous shale or 
whether it does not. 
The subject of human remains has a high interest just now, and Mr. Gray 
should give us the exact particulars of these bone-fissures and their contents. 
Mr. Curtis contributes a note " On the Gault of Alice Holt Porest," and 
Mr. Pickering, Mr. Lionel Woodward, and other gentlemen have contributed 
other papers on different subjects, the series concluding with an illustrated one 
