PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 
153 
form is special to any stratigrapliical portion of the Lias ; but that in 
the Cotswolcl district, wherever Gryphites numerously occur, all the forms 
most widely diverging from the ordinary type of G. incurva are found, 
presenting differences from it, so infinitely modified as to make arbitrary 
separation between them of specific value, quite as unintelligible as absurd. 
These observations may be applied with equal propriety to other species 
and genera of shells equally common in the Liassic strata." 
The Annual Meeting of this club took place on March 4th, on which oc- 
casion there was a large muster of the members and their friends from dif- 
ferent parts of the county. Captain Guise, president, read the annual 
address, in which he gave a detailed account of all the different meetings 
which had taken place during the past year, and pointed out tbe various 
novelties which the members had noted in their excursions to Weston- 
super-Mare, Cardiff, Penarth, etc. After the address, the meetings for 
1863 were fixed, and Mr. Buckmau's report on the tumulus opened by 
the club at Nymphsfield last summer, was read ; one very fine human skull 
and portions of other skulls obtained from this ancient burial-place, were 
exhibited. At the dinner fifty-eight members were present. Dr. Wright 
read a report on the collection of organic remains made by Miss Holland, 
of Dumbleton Hall. The Lias beds, in the neighbourhood of Dumbleton 
consist of Lower Lias, Middle Lias, and Upper Lias. The report con- 
tained an enumeration of all the species found in each of these divisions 
of that great formation ; these detailed lists will appear in the Transac- 
tions of the Society. Dumbleton Hill has long been a capital locality for 
the fossils of the marlstone and for the fish-bed of the Upper Lias. Dr. 
Wright likewise cxbibitcd a vertebral and other bones of a large reptile, 
which had lately been discovered at Stowell Park. This saurian is new 
to England, although the same or an allied form has been found in a for- 
mation of the same age, the Gj*eat Oolite of Normandy. The bones be- 
long to the genus Teleosaurus. The next commimication was by the Eev. 
T. W. Norwood, on a tumulus which had been recently exposed at Fox- 
cote, near Whittington, in this county. This locality had been visited on 
February 25th, when several human bones, horses' bones, and flint-flakes 
were found. In another part of this timiulus a vessel containing a num- 
ber of Homan coins of Valens, Yalentinian, Tetricus, Faustina, Constan- 
tine II., Claudius II., was said to have been discovered, together with a 
fragment of rude pottery and a piece of rusty iron. The author believed 
the grave to have been a Eoman burial-place of about the fourth or fifth 
century. The next paper was an account of the natural history of the 
Severn, by Mr. John Jones, of Gloucester. In it lists were given of the 
fishes, shells, diatoms, and plants living in the estuary of the river. 
Mr. Notcutt read an outline of the ^jroceedings of the Cheltenham 
Working JSi aturalists' Association, formed in 1861, for the purpose espe- 
cially of uniting the naturalists of the town in the effort to work out a 
complete flora and fauna of the district. The area which the Association 
has thus undertaken to work out, embraces a definite district laid out on 
the Ordnance map, and averaging a radius of about six miles from Chel- 
tenham as a centre ; — 649 species are found within these limits. Of these 
] 12 are new to the district, being unrecorded in the Flora published eigh- 
teen years since by Mr. Buckman ; while 67 of the plants recorded in 
that work have not been seen by the members ; of these, it is believed 
that 17 are either extinct in the places assigned for them, or are mis- 
nomers, while the other 50 will probably be yet rediscovered. The 
mosses have been studied by Mr. Beach, and Ins lists contain 146 species. 
In the animal kingdom. Dr. Bird has contributed a list of 24 species 
VOL. YI. X 
