WILLIAMSON: JOHN WILLIAMSON. 
305 
When these fossils were collected, most of them were new, and 
consequently unnamed. My father naturally availed himself of 
Phillips' publication, to re-arrange and name the specimens in his 
collection according" to the nomenclature of that work. 
Our evenings were regularly spent in the little museum, 
effecting these changes. How many anathemas I secretly poured 
out upon the book and its author, can scarcely be told. My play- 
mates had no such restrictions upon their freedom ; they were 
bowling their hoops, and spinning their tops, and I longed to be 
with them ; I felt that I should have been so, but for this obtrusive 
geologist and his inopportune publication. Such is the blindness 
of early youth ! Few of those playmates did any good in the world, 
whilst I owe an everlasting debt of gratitude to him who thus 
planted tastes that have been the joy of my subsequent life. From 
this time onwards, our two lives and pursuits became so completely 
blended, that it would be almost impossible to separate the records 
of them. 
The number of previously undescribed fossils, noticed in Phillips' 
book, to which the names of Bean and Williamson are attached, 
demonstrate the energy and success with which the two cousins 
explored this district prior to the year 1829. These explorations 
specially bore important fruit in two directions — at the southern end 
of Filey Bay, the blue clay known as the "Speeton" clay, crops out 
from below the red chalk. Phillips concluded that this clay was the 
equivalent of the Gault of Folkstone ; but that it comprehended 
more than the Folkstone deposit was soon made clear. Near the 
base of this clay in the vale of Pickering, the two Kimmeridge clay- 
fossils, Ostrea deltoidea and Terebratula inconstans were found not 
to be uncommon. This proved to be an important geological fact. 
In most parts of the world, the Cretaceous beds rest uncon- 
formably upon the Oolites ; the transition from the one epoch to the 
other having been marked by subterranean upheavals and disturbances. 
But the Speeton clay was accumulated in a tranquil sea, during a 
period which not only embraced the age of the Portland Oolites, but 
also that of the Neocomian beds. Triassic and Liassic fossils are 
found intermingled in the strata of Hallstadt and St. Cassian ; and 
