Page:Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, Volume 1.djvu/378

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
FAUNA AND FLORA OF THE BRITISH ISLES.
365

3rd. "Concha lævis, altera tantum parte clusilis, apophysi admodum prominente lataque prædita."—Lister. Angli., 191, tab. v. fig. 36. The figure referred to in Lister, represents Mya arenaria.

4th. "Cochlea testa ovata, spiris quinque striatis fasciatis, aperturæ margine postero dilatato rotundato,—kupunge."—Lister, Angli., 162, tab. iii. fig. 9. The figure referred to in Lister is that of Littorina littorea.

5th. "Concha Mytilus dicta." Mytilus edulis.

6th. "Cochlea spiris quinque utrinque producta striis acutis imbricatis."—Tab. v. fig. 6. This is the well-known and characteristic glacial fossil, Fusus scalariformis, which, since Linnæus's time, has been over and over again described and figured as new, under difierent names.

7th. "Concha Pecten dicta striis numerosissimis."—Table v. fig. 7. This is the Pecten islajidicus, equally characteristic of these beds.

8th. "Cochlea spiris octo oblonga utrinque producta lineis duabus elevatis."—Tab. v. fig. 8. This is the subcarinated variety of Fusus antiquus.

9th. "Lepas concha anatifera transversim sulcata longitudinaliter striata."—Tab. v. fig. 9. This is Balanas sulcatus.

10. "Concha Pectunculus dicta (Fauna 1340)."

Sixty years after the observation of the fossils at Uddevalla, by Linnæus, they attracted the attention of the all-observing and philosophic Von Buch, who also noticed the occurrence of remains of existing testacea, in upheaved beds, in Norway. The presence of organic remains in similar beds in Scotland was noticed from time to time in the 'Memoirs of the Wernerian Society'—volumes which contain numerous valuable papers bearing upon the phenomena, both geological and zoological, of the glacial epoch. The Memoir of Mr. Lyell, on the Uddevalla deposits already referred to, published in 1836, gave a new impulse to the natural history part of the inquiry, from the invaluable list of fossils there given. The fruit of this in Britain, soon appeared in the researches of Mr. Smith, of Jordanhill, whose essays 'On the last Changes in the relative Levels of the Land and Sea in the British Islands,'[1] published in the Memoirs of the Wernerian Society, for 1837-38, will ever be esteemed as the foundation of a critical investigation of this most interesting subject, in Britain; and I feel proud to acknowledge that my first insight into "Newer Pliocene" geology waa acquired through the instructions of that distinguished geologist, when accompanying him in one of his arduous but delightful journeys of investigation, in the Clyde district and north of Ireland. In the latter country, the phenomena of the drift had attracted the attention of many observers, among whom Dr. Scouler, Captain Portlock, Mr. Bryce, Mr. Griffith,

  1. In this memoir the history of the subject, especially to far as Scotland is concerned, is given so fully, that I have not thought it necessary to enumerate separate papers.