36 
none of the characteristic fauna of the former period have been 
obtained from the modern beds. Their companions are 
altogether different, the Marsupites, Ananchytes and Goniaster 
are replaced by widely different zoological representatives, 
whilst the chambered Cephalopods, the Ganoid fishes and the 
Saurians have entirely disappeared. 
That a deposit very similar to chalk is now, as in other 
geological times, going on, is evident; hut the VfholQ facies and 
character of the two periods are so essentially different that the 
exact identity of the two seems to he at once disproved. 
The Rev. J. Kenrick read a Notice of a Roman Sarco¬ 
phagus lately discovered near Westminster Abbey, and bearing 
a Sculptured Cross.”—He said,—Although Roman troops 
occupied Britain for a long time (at least 120 years) after the 
conversion of Constantine in a. d. 312, no clear traces of the 
prevalence of the Christian religion among them have been 
found in the numerous places where their remains exist. A 
Roman villa, at Chedworth, in Gloucestershire, exhibits the 
Christian monogram, hut it is doubtful whether it may not 
have been inserted at a subsequent time. By the kindness of 
Mr. Way I am enabled to exhibit a photograph of the cist 
lately found at Westminster, and a copy of the inscription 
upon it. It reads Memoriae. Yaleri. Amandini. Yalert. 
SupERVENTOR. Et. Marcellus. Patri. Fecerunt. The cist 
is of soft Oxfordshire oolite, and the slab which covers it is of 
the same material. It was found last November, in levelling 
the North Green, Westminster, a place where no Roman 
remains had ever before been found. It lay E. and W. 
Enclosed were the hones and cranium of a young man, in the 
prime of life and vigour (Mr. Way’s letter). The meaning of 
the inscription is plain enough, with the exception of a single 
word. Two sons, Yalerius and Marcellus, inscribe the 
monument to the memory of their father, Yalerius Amandinus. 
The difficulty is in the word Superventor. It may denote a 
soldier of the Superventores, a body of light troops mentioned 
by Ammianus Marcellinus (18,9,3), and in the Notitia, or 
it may be the cognomen of Yalerius. The latter seems the 
more probable. The bones found in the cist cannot have 
