The Bracklesham beds seen at Whitecliff Bay were first treated of, and Mr. Prestwich's section referred to in detail. No. 6 (a pebble-bed) of this published section is regarded by Mr. Fisher as the base of the Bracklesham series; the upper limit being somewhere in No. 19. Descriptions followed of the beds seen at Bracklesham Bay; the eastern side of Selsea; at the Mixen Rocks; at well-sinkings near Bury Cross; at Stubbington (including the Cerithium-bed at.Hillhead, discovered by the author in 1856); Netley, Bramshaw, Brook, and Hunting Bridge (where H. Keeping has lately found a fossil-bed high in the series), in the New Forest. Indications of the western range of the marine shells of "Bracklesham" age were quoted as occurring at Lychett, near Poole, and as very rare (one Ostrea) near Corfe.
Bracklesham beds, containing marine forms, seen at Alum Bay, Isle of Wight, and at Highcliff, near Christchurch, were then described in full. The Bracklesham series is regarded by Mr. Fisher as commencing in both these sections a few feet beneath a dark-green clay (part of No. 29 of Mr. Prestwich's section of Alum Bay) containing a peculiar variety of Nummulina planulata and many shells of the Barton Fauna.
Remarks were also made on the estuarine condition of the lower Bracklesham beds in their western area; on the probable sources of their materials; on the successive deepenings of the old sea-bottom, and the formation of the pebble-beds; and lastly, on the fitness of the Bracklesham and Barton series as a field for research in the history of molluscan species.
The paper was illustrated by a series of specimens from the author's collection.
Specimens of gold in quartz-veins, of gold-dust, and of gold-ingots, from Nova Scotia, sent by Mr. Secretary Howe, were exhibited by Professor Tennant, F.G.S.
CORRESPONDENCE.
Northampton Sands.
Dear Sir,—The November number of your valuable journal contains a paper by Mr. J. H. Macalister, on "The Fossils of North Bucks and the adjacent Counties," in which, I believe, reference is made to myself in the following passage, page 481:—"The identity of the Northampton Sands (formerly classed with the lias) with the Stonefield Slate of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire, and constituting the lower zone of the Great Oolite;" and in a note it is added, "so classed by Dr. Wright, being separated by him from the inferior oolite, which they formerly were supposed to represent."
To this statement I have simply to say, that Mr. Macalister is altogether incorrect, as I have nowhere classed the Northampton Sands with the lias, nor made any reference to them. If that gentleman will refer to my memoir on "The Palæontological and Stratigraphical Relation of the so-called Sands of the Inferior Oolite" (Quart. Journal of the Geol. Soc. vol. xii. p. 292), for 1856, he will find a full statement of the case, as regards the counties of Gloucester, Somerset, and Dorset, but no reference whatever to Northampton; and in the preface to my 'Monograph on the Oolitic Echinodermata,' p. ix., he will find it stated that "in every
