351 
A. J. Juhes Browne — On the Upper Greensand, etc. 
Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, and it was said to assume dif- 
ferent facies in other districts ; thus the Blackdown Beds, the War- 
minster Greensand, and the Cambridge “Coprolite Bed,” have all 
been referred to the Upper Greensand, and have been considered as 
local developments of that formation. It is true the two latter have 
also more recently been called Chloritic Marl, but this only shows 
the uncertainty attending the use of that term, and the general 
opinion has been that they were all “ Upper Greensand ” ; the great 
dilferences between the above-mentioned deposits being accounted for 
by the relative distances from contemporaneous land and other vary- 
ing geographical conditions. 
It was known that these Greensands contained very different 
fossil faunas, but no one had followed up the beds possessing any 
of these local faunas, nor had the fossils even from the separate 
beds of one locality been collected with the view of ascertaining 
whether the succession of strata contained the same fauna from top 
to bottom. Such investigations must inevitably have led to more 
accurate views, but the valuable evidence afforded by the fossils was 
to a great extent ignored, and the more obvious dilferences were 
explained away in the manner above mentioned ; explanations 
which in themselves suggest very interesting questions, but which 
are inadequate to account for all the circumstances of the case. 1 
Within the last few years, however, the Cretaeeous System has 
been more carefully studied both in England and France, and the 
Greensands have received their due share of attention ; the strati- 
graphical details of the several divisions have been investigated by 
men who were at the same time careful to pay attention to the 
paleeontological evidence, and it is now possible to answer most of 
the questions above indicated as obscure or unknown. 
The result of these inquiries has been to alter very materially our 
conception of the importance of the Upper Greensand and Chloritic 
Marl, and to render it very doubtful whether they should continue 
to rank as divisions of primary importance in the Cretaeeous series. 
It is perhaps the position of the Chloritic Marl which is at present 
the most doubtful and undefined. Mr. C. J. Meyer has claimed for 
it an importance equal to that of the Upper Greensand, while Mr. 
Whitaker has expressed himself as objecting to the term altogether 
on the ground of its being nowhere satisfactorily defined, but applied 
in one place to Upper Greensand and in another to Chalk. 
Again, in the March Number of the Geological Magazine, p. 123, 
the reviewer of Mr. Bonney’s “ Cambridgeshire Geology” takes 
exception to the application of the term Chloritic Marl to the 
Cambridge Greensand, and in the April Numbei-, p. 191, Mr. H. G. 
Fordham expresses surprise at this, and wishes to learn what may 
be taken to constitute “ the true typical Chloritic Marl.” 
It seems therefore that it woulcl be useful to give some general 
account of all the Glauconitic, or mis-called Chloritic, sands between 
1 These arguments have been recently renewed by Mr. Seeley, but without the 
support of any additional observations, and in the face of the facts brought forward 
by Dr. Barrois and myself. 
