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BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
Geology. 
The following note on a new locality for post-pleioscene shells 
may be taken as the report of the geological committee for the 
past year : 
In December last Mr. J. P. Clayton, the superintendent of 
Fernhill cemetery, brought to this Society a lump of clay which 
he had dug up in making a catch-basin for one of the drains in 
the cemetery grounds. 
In digging for this basin he stated that he had first passed 
through about a foot and a half of gravel and sand, then through 
six feet of red clay, and finally had struck the layer of black clay 
or mud of which the sample consisted. 
The notable feature about this black clay is that it abounds in 
shells of the common mussel. These shells are in an excellent 
state of preservation ; some of them with valves applied to each 
other as in life, and all having the color and nacre of the shell 
perfectly preserved. 
In the same bed, but at a somewhat higher level, were a few 
sea-urchins, which must have been recently living or dead when 
they were entombed, as the plates of the skeleton were applied to 
each other, and the spines were in juxtaposition to the bosses 
on the plates to which they had been attached. 
A few colonies of bryozoans also were observed and plates that 
may have belonged to barnacles. 
Remains of strap-like and confervoid seaweeds are abundant 
in the upper layers of the bed, the black color of which seems- 
largely due to the decomposed organic matter of these seaweeds 
and the animal fossils. « 
It is‘ evident that the bed of shell-bearing clay, which is a 
few inches thick, was deposited in water of some depth, as the 
remains are in such perfect condition and show no evidence of 
having been subjected to the wash of the waves, nor does the 
deposit contain any strictly littoral shells. 
It is interesting to compare the height of this bed above the 
present sea level with those of other localities where sea-shells 
have been found. A well known level of this kind, where the 
