NOTES AND QUERIES. 
35 
toral ridge on the humerus indicated a bird which possessed the power to 
beat its wings down forcibly, and that the shape of the furculum also in- 
dicated a bird of flight. The black rail had no furculum. Mr. Gould ad- 
hered to his previous opinion. 
Manchester Philosophical Society. — Bee. 2iid. — E. W. Binney, 
F.E.S., the President, said that in a paper published in vol. x. (second 
series) of the Society's Memoirs, " On the Drift Deposits found near 
Blackpool," he had stated, in a note at page 122, that since the paper was 
written, Mr. J. F. Bateman, C.E., F.G.S., had informed him that in 
making the Hollingwortli reservoir, near Mottram-in-Longdeudale, he had 
met with the common cockspur shell {Titrritella terchra) in considerable 
abundance. During the past summer he bad visited the locality alUided 
to by Mr. Bateman, in company with Mr. Prestwich, F.R.S. After going 
up to the uppermost part of the reservoir, which is one of those belonging 
to the corporation of the City of Manchester, to the point where the goit 
conveys the water on the east side of the valley, we saw-a deposit of brown 
sandy clay, or till, which had been cut through to the depth of between 
three and four feet for the purpose of forming tlie goit. This deposit con- 
tained small granite and greenstone pebbles, some rounded, and others 
angular. In it he found a considerable number of shells, some quite 
entire and others in fragments. He procured and showed to the meeting 
specimens of Turritella terchra, Fusiis Bamjius, Purpura lapilJus, two 
specimens of Tellina, and Cardium edule. The city engineer, Mr. J. G. 
Lynde, F.G.S., had given him the exact height of the spot where the 
fossils were found at as 568 feet above the level of the Irish Sea. 
Sheila, identical with recent sea-shells, have been found at much greater 
elevations on the mountains of North Wales, but very few so far inland ; 
for the locality wliere the specimens were met with is full llft}^ miles in a 
straight line from the Irish Sea, and a greater distance if the watercourses 
of the Etlierow and Mersey are followed. Mr. John Taylor has fonnd 
recent marine shells in the sands at Bredbury and Hyde, which he has 
described in the Transactions of the Manchester Geological Society ; and 
Mr. Prestwich informed him that he has found similar fossils on the 
Buxton Road, about three miles from Macclesfield, but the specimens 
herein described are the first that have been noticed in the deep valleys 
running up into the sides of the Pennine chain. 
He further stated that he had found a large mass of greenstone, evi- 
dently a travelled rock of the Drift period, at the extreme end of one of 
the tributary valleys of the Tame, in Saddleworth, as high up as New 
Year's Bridge, near Denshaw Vale. All these facts proved the former 
presence of the sea (in some cases containing inhabitants similar to those 
found on our present coasts) high up on the sides of the Cheshire, York- 
shire, and Derbyshire hills at a recent period, geologically speaking, and 
show that many of our deep valleys have not been formed by the streams 
of water now traversing them, but are chiefly due to the more powerful 
action of the waters of the ocean, most probably assisted by ice. 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 
Obituary. — On the 19th of December, one of the oldest and tlie most 
famous anatomists and ethnologists of England departed this life. We 
allude to the venerable Dr. Robert Knox, Hon. F.E.S., the friend of Cuvier 
