260 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
of Professors Tennant and Morris, they inspected minutely the various ^ 
plants that have an interest for geologists ; particularly the magnificent col- laJ 
lection of ferns, in connection with the fossil ferns of the coal-measures, ri! 
The plants that characterize the Oolitic and Tertiary beds were also illus- ' 
trated with reference to modern groups. On the 24th ult. the Association i*' ' 
made an excursion to Herne Bay and Eeculver, where the most competent pr 
of the members delivered field lectures on some of the Secondary and 1 1 
Tertiary formations exposed on the coast between those places. 
CoTTESWOLD Natue ALisTs' FiELD Club.— A most interesting and uu- tM 
merously attended meeting of this Club took place on 27th May, at Bown- (it 
hill, Woodchester, where, by the permission of William Leigh, Esq., the Ta 
proprietor of the estate, a tumulus was opened, under the superintendence ' 
of Mr. E. Witchell and Dr. Payne, of Stroud. On leaving the barrow, Mr. 
Samuel S. Marling, of Stanley Park, invited the Club to luncheon. From 
this point the President and Secretary proceeded, under the guidance of 
Mr. Witchell, to a neighbouring brick-kiln, to examine the fullers' -earth ; 
thence to Penwood Quarry, where the bastard freestone is laid open to a 
depth of twenty-five feet, upon which rests the lower trigonia bed with its M 
characteristic fossils ; and onwards to a freshwater formation, exposed c! 
during the excavation of a reservoir on the side of the hill, at a consider- p 
able elevation above the town. From the organic contents it was presumed u 
to represent the bottom of a small hill-lake, of which the margin towards tii 
the vale has long been swept away. The shells found in it comprise the i 
same species which are constantly found in the tufaceous accumulations of j; 
the district, and which still inhabit it — Ci/clostoma elegans, Helix rotun- \, 
data, a. umhilicata, Pupa, umhilicata, Zua lubrica, Azeca tndens, and r 
Carychium minimum, as land-shells ; Valvata pisciyialis, hymncBus trun- 
catulus, and two or three species of Pisidium, as water-shells. The Rev. r 
S, Lysons, availing himself of the presence of Dr. Thurnham, and Mr. o; 
Cunniugton, of Devizes, Mr. D. Nash, and other ethnologists from Chel- t 
tenham, submitted for examination four skulls exhumed by him from the 
tumulus recently opened at Eodmarton. After dinner at the George Hotel, 
several gentlemen took part in a long and animated discussion on the 
events of the day, and upon the views expressed in a paper, by Captain Bell, 
" on the rough unhewn Stones of Cromlechs, Circles, and Chambered Tu- 
muli," in which he inclined to the opinion that no tools were used upon 
them from superstitious motives, or reverential feelings due to the wide 
difi'usion of the divine command repeatedly referred to in the Scriptures, 
where altars are especially mentioned as of unhewn stone.* He argued that 
the tool-marks were not absent from want of skill on rhe part of the mound- 
formers, as a knowledge of the powers of the lever, and the construction 
of sledges upon which ponderous masses were probably removed, implied 
familiarity with tools of various descriptions. Mr. D. Nash doubted whe- 
ther iron had not been used, and believed that the stones uncovered to- 
day, if not hewn, had been shaped to fit them for the purpose to which they 
were applied. He did not assign to the barrows of this district the high 
antiquity attributed to them by many antiquaries, and thought that our 
knowledge of the race by whom they were constructed had become more 
confused, instead of more clear, by recent discoveries. He thought that 
the majority of them were of a period subsequent to that of the Eoman 
dominion in Britain, and that, they were the work of a people which had 
derived the civilization to which it had attained from the Eomans, and 
were therefore of Eomano-British origin. 
* I have long thought it possible that some of these uuhewn stone monuments may 
be relics of perhaps even the flint-implement men, or, at any rate, a very early race ; 
and have more than once pnblished the idea. — En. Oeol, 
