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Some thirty yards east of the Lift a leaf bed, which must 
have been of considerable extent, has for some years yielded 
masses of mottled pink sandy clay, crowded with leaves, especially 
Podocarpus, Lygodium , Hewardia, and some flowering plants not 
yet determined. Many good specimens I have obtained for our 
museum, and they will, I hope, be shortly displayed and named. 
The various leaf beds from this position of the cliff have continued 
to vield occasionally specimens of Ferns, Aroids, Fan-palms, and 
a Eucalyptus, also traces of a Conifer, as described by Mr. 
Gardner. The upper beds here, and also a little eastward, afford 
occasional pockets of white china clay ; after which no more 
occurs. It is commonly found in larger masses beyond the Pier, 
increasing in a westerly direction. 
We now come to a point 200 yards east of the Lift, where, 
for many years, a shelving bluff of dark grey clay stood out from 
the cliff face for some distance towards the sea, forming a prominent 
object from a distance, and the only one of its kind between the two 
piers. (Plate XVII. Fig.i). On its east side it formed a little cove, 
which was originally some 20 yards deep, but had diminished to 
much less, by erosion of the projecting bluff, when it was finally 
destroyed by the Undercliff Drive works in 1912. This projecting 
cliff had escaped erosion owing to a local hardening of the lower 
marine beds by a mixture of thi clay with a fine earthy marl and 
much pyrites. This bluff was crowded with twigs, fragments of 
wood and vegetable debris, and was divided into layers by thin 
bands of lignite. But in the upper part it contained innumerable 
fronds of a fan-palm, probably Sabal , often three or four together 
in one hand specimen, and many fine examples have been obtained 
from this spot. 
The cliff forming the base of this little cove (Plate XVI., Fig. 1) 
affords a good illustration of the conditions which prevailed at 
this spot when the strata were deposited, for the beds are broken 
up and distorted in an extraordinary way. A mass of quartz 
sand, some ten feet thick, contains numerous chunks or slabs of 
brown unfossiliferous clay, jumbled together in great confusion, and 
of various sizes, from that of an orange to a foot or more in thick¬ 
ness. (Plate XVI., Fig. 2). These are not rolled, but 
.roughly quadrangular, and appear to have been torn 
from a clay bank, in the estuary of the river, which 
must have been broken up under the violence of a great 
storm. Great waves have dashed together these masses of clay 
with sand from a neighbouring sandbank, and have redeposited 
the whole as a sort of clay “ breccia ” in sand as we now find 
' it. The sand matrix contains much pulverized lignite, but is other¬ 
wise white or grey in colour. 
Above this the cliff shows sand of a lighter colour, and 
evidence that it was deposited under much calmer conditions than 
the lower Feds is afforded by the fact that it contains numbers 
of leaves, many beautifully preserved and exhibiting the venation 
quite clearly. Some have thin. patches of pink clay adhering to 
