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Geological Society, Nov. 19.-Prof. Ramsay, F.R.S., vice-president, in the chair.-The following communications were read:-“Supplemental Note on the Anatomy of Hypsilo-phodon Foxii,“by Mr. J. W. Hulke, F.R.S. The material for this note was a slab from Cowleaze Chine, containing portions of two individuals of HypsilopJiodon Foxii, one consisting of a skull with a great part of the vertebral column, thejother of a portion of the vertebral column. The author described some details of the structure of the skull, and especially the palatal apparatus. In connection with the question of the generic rank of Hypsilophodon, the author stated that in Hypsilophodon the centra of the sacral vertebrae are cylindroid and rounded below, whilst in Iguanodon they are compressed laterally and angulated below. -“The Drift-beds of the North-west of England, Part I, Shells of the Lancashire and Cheshire Low-level Clay and Sands,“by Mr. T. Mellard Reade. The author gave a list of the localities in which shells were found, and stated that in all forty-six species had been met with distributed through the clay-beds, those found in the sand-seams being rare and generally fragmentary and rolled. He contended that the admixture of shells in the boulder-clay was due to the tendency of the sea to throw up its contents on the beach, whence changing currents and floating ice might again remove them, and to the oscillations of the land bringing all the beds at one time or another within reach of marine erosive action. He maintained that it is in the distribution of land and sea at the period of deposition of the Lancashire deposits, and not in astronomical causes, that we must seek the explanation of the climate of that period, the conditions of which he endeavoured to explain by a consideration of the proportions of the species and the natural habitats of the shells found in the drifts.-“Note on a deposit of fiddle Pleistocene Gravel near Leyland, Lancashire,“by Mr. R. D. Darbishire. The bed of gravel, about forty feet thick, and about 240 feet above the level of the sea, is covered by yellow brick clay, and overlies an untried bed of fine sea-sand. The shells and fragments occur chiefly at the base of the gravel. The author considered the Leyland deposit, like those on the west of the Derbyshire hills, to be more probably littoral and truly climatic than that of the Liverpool clays, the subject o£ Mr. Reade's paper, and hazarded the conjecture that the latter were sea-bottom beds, into which, during some process of degradation and redistribution, the specimens found and enumerated by Mr. Reade had been carried down' ftorii the former more ancient retreating coast-lines.
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Societies and Academies . Nature 9, 94–96 (1873). https://doi.org/10.1038/009094a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/009094a0