TILGATE FOREST. 
219 
In this list of the fossils of Tilgate Forest, the 
reader cannot hut remark on the almost entire 
absence of the remains of the inhabitants of the 
sea. The vegetables are either terrestrial, or be- 
long to those tribes which affect a marshy soil ; 
tlie shells are lacustral ; and the reptiles, with 
hut one or two exceptions, are those which bear a 
resemblance to the living species that now inhabit 
the banks of lakes and rivers, of tropical regions ; 
the fish, also, appear to be of freshwater origin ; 
but on this point, some degree of uncertainty may 
exist. The absence of ommoniteSy helemnites^ and 
other multilocular shells of our ancient seas, and 
of the echinodermata and zoophytes, whose re- 
mains are so frequent in the sands and chalk above 
the Hastings sands, and Weald clay, and in the 
Portland stone and other deposits beneath^ is also 
another remarkable feature in the oryctological 
characters of the strata of Tilgate Forest.* 
LOWER GROUP OF THE WEALDEN STRATA, 
INCLUDING THE ASHBURNHAM BEDS. 
In this division of the Hastings sands formation, 
we include the beds of shale, forming the lower- 
most strata in the cliffs at Hastings ; and the 
inferior limestone, shale, and blue clays, which ap- 
pear in various places in the interior of the country. 
* The ammoniteSy nautili, &c. mentioned in jNIessrs. Conybeare and 
Phillips’s Geology of England as occurring in the iron-sand, as well as 
those figured in Sowerby’s Mineral Conchology, which are referred to 
that formation, must not be admitted as exceptions, until their several 
localities have been carefully examined ; the confusion that formerly 
existed in the geological nomenclature of the sands below the chalk, 
having given rise to many erroneous geological habitats. 
