File:The Quarterly journal of the Geological Society of London (14053250996).jpg

66
S. V. WOOD ON A NEW DEPOSIT OF PLIOCENE A&E
fossiliferous clav rests, but abandoned some ten years since. In
1881, clay being required for the puddling of a dock wbicb was
then being constructed at Penzance, the excavations were at his
instance renewed, the upper (yellow and unfossiliferous) clay, into
which the blue clay yielding the shells passes upwards, being found
suitable for this purpose ; since which the pits have again fallen
into disuse. It was during this renewal of the excavations that
Mr. Whitley visited them, obtained the shells mentioned in his paper,
and recorded the sections in his note-book from which the one I
herewith give (fig. 1) is taken. Mr. Cornish exhibited at the Jubilee
Fig. 1. — Pit near St. Ertli Vicarage, from the JSlote-BooTc of
Mr. NicJiolas Wliitlei/, of Truro:
1. Surface-soii.
2. Clayey loam full of angular stoBes pitched at all angles, but mostly upright,
3 to 5 feet. (This is probablv the formation described under the letter y in
my ISTewer Pliocene Memoir in Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xsxviii. p. 720,
mider -vrhich the ancient beaches of the south coast are buried, and which
has a great extension in Cornwall.)
3. Stones cemented with oxide of iron, &c.., 6 to 12 inches.
4. Tenacious yellow clay with unrecognizable fragments of some bivalve shell
passing down into —
5. Blue clay, very irregidar, 3 to 5 feet (and more in places), and containing
marine shells.
6. Fine sand, base rot exposed, but described by the workmen as having gravel
and rubble at bottom, resting on rock.
meeting of the Falmouth Polytechnic Institution in 1882 some
specimens of the shells, but the first (and only) scientific notice
which has been given of the bed is a short paper by Mr. jSTicholas
Whitley, published in the Transactions of the Eoyal Geological
Society of Cornwall for January 1882, entitled " On the Evidence
of Glacial Action in Cornwall," in which he incidentally refers to the
St. Erth bed, and gives a list of ten species of MoUusca that he had
obtained from it, and had submitted to Mr. G. P. Sowerby, Junior, for
identification.
On my writing to Mr. Whitley, and pointing out to him that he