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III.—On the Long Meadend Bed

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

Searles V. Wood
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Extract

In the September Number of this Magazine, Mr. H. Keeping impugns the accuracy of my father’s view as to the shell-bed at Meadend, which it seems has now disappeared; and says that it was a slipped mass from a bed which, by digging, he found in situ higher up the cliff slope, “close under the gravel with all the Lower Headon Freshwater beds below it”; adding “that he wishes to be distinctly understood to maintain that it is the marine Middle Headon of the Geological Survey, and equivalent to the Middle Headon of Colwell bay, Headon hill, Whitecliff bay, and Brockenhurst in the New Forest.” As I am the only survivor of those who in 1843 worked at this bed, and upon whose discoveries in it my father’s description of it was based, I wish to put on record the facrs at that time, and vindicate my father’s accuracy.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Geological Magazine , Volume 10 , Issue 11 , November 1883 , pp. 493 - 497
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1883

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References

page 493 note 1 To this list he, by a footnote at p. 117 of the continuation of his paper, adds two genera, viz. Cardium and Gastrochmna. By a clerical error he refers in this note to p. 4, instead of p. 3, of the first part of his paper.

page 493 note 2 I take Prof. Judd to indicate this bed in his “ New Forest ” vertical section (Q. J. G. S. vol.xxxvi. p. 170)Google Scholar by the thin marine band, which he connects by dotted lines with the Brackish-water beds of his parallel vertical “West end of Isle of Wight” section; the Meadend bed not being indicated at all by him, but belonging to the upper portion of that division of his “New Forest” section which is marked “Sands.”

page 494 note 1 Their list does not appear to be intended as a complete one for Meadend, but only to show what Middle Headon shells occur at that place, for they mention species of two more of these genera, viz. Cytherea and Corbula, as occurring there, but explain that they are omitted from the column because lliey are not Middle Headon species. In that paper Messrs. Keeping and Tawney seem to take the correct view that the Meadend bed is Upper Bagshot, though Mr. Keeping now wishes to be understood to maintain that it is Middle Headon.

page 494 note 2 This species is represented in the Edwards Collection, now in the Britis Museum (Natural History), Cromwell Road, and is marked by F. E. Edwards a from Meadend-—Edit Geol Mag.

page 495 note 1 Prof. Judd having in his vertical section (Q. J. G. S. vol.xxxvi. p. 170)Google Scholar, representing his view of the beds on the Hampshire side of the Solent, marked one horizon as that from which the Keptilian, and another as that from which the Mammalian remains of Hordwell were obtained, I desire to record that the whole of those which my father and I obtained (with the exception of a fragment of the jaw of Palceotherium with teeth, many plates of Trionyx, and some Crocodilian teeth, which were obtained from a layer of brown sand over the shelly seam in the Meadend bed itself,) were procured from the one place and horizon mentioned in the text, and comprised the remains of Alligator (Crocodile according to some palaeontologists), Emys, Palæotherium, Microchærus, and Spalacodon, figured in the London Geological Journal, as well as the cranium of a Rodent, still, I believe, unnamed, some small ophidian vertebras, and part of a bird's bone, all of which have been these 35 years past in the British Museum. Mr. J. W. Flower obtained the larger of the two fragments of the jaw of Spalacorion figured, and a fragment of Palæotherium jaw with teeth, from a few feet lower in the same hard sand nearer to Meadend. I sent to Professor Judd a sketch that I made in 1843, and had preserved, of the cliff, showing all the parties at work at it in that year, and the positions they occupied. From what part Mr.Keeping procured the remains collected by him for the Marchioness of Hastings I know not; but this was not until after the conclusion of our labours in 1845.