Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 27.djvu/232

118 that he and his son had made a valuable collection from this pit, which he at once kindly placed in my hands.

The following is a list of the principal and more important specimens thus obtained.

These are fossils identical with the species from the Red Crag; and, like them, they present a highly mineralized condition, and are, with the exception of some of the Cetacean and a few of the other Mammalian remains, all more or less rolled, worn, and polished.

Over this nodule-bed are about 4 feet of finely comminuted shells, with a few single valves of Pecten, Cyprina, Mactra, together with Turritella and Terebra, and then 17 feet of light-coloured marly Crag, abounding in large shells and with few Bryozoa. In the lower part of this bed were some specimens of the Mya truncata, in the position in which they lived; the Cyprina islandica, var., sometimes double, was common in certain layers; and in the upper part of the bed Anomia, Astarte, Diplodonta, and Venus abounded, together with a variety of Foraminifera, whilst univalves were comparatively scarce. They had ceased working this pit when I visited it in 1861 and 1862; and on my returning at a later period, hoping to make a more complete collection of the shells, I found it levelled down. It is probable that part of bed c of this section is synchronous with the crag of the small Ramsholt pit, which yielded so large a number of rare and beautiful fossils to the researches of Mr. Charlesworth, Sir Charles Lyell, and Mr. Colchester. Many species were more abundant at Ramsholt than in any other locality, and were generally in a very fine state of preservation—the bivalves often with both valves. Among the commoner species were Cardita senilis, Cyprina islandica, Pecten maximus, P. opercularis, Panopæa Faujasii, Astarte Burtini, A. gracilis, Trochus zizyphinus, T. conulus, and the large Balanus concavus. The latter occurred in hundreds. This bed is also characterized by Cytherea chione, Hinnites Cortesyi, Lima hians, Tapes perovalis, Natica proxima, N. varians, N. cirriformis, Pyrula reticulata, Balanus bisulcatus, Pyrgoma anglica, Spatangus purpureus, Brissus scillæ, Flabellum Woodii, and several species of Echinus and Temnechinus.

The upper part of the section at this pit (fig. 1) seems to be on the level of that part of the Coralline Crag which is under the Red Crag in the Bullock-yard (, Pl. YI.). It may be seen by digging through the 2 to 4 feet of Bed Crag forming the floor of the pit. It was full of Cardita, Pecten, Astarte, and various characteristic shells of the