Fig. 173: Lower molar tooth. From this formation on the shores of Whitecliff Bay, Dr. Mantell obtained a fine specimen of a fan palm, _Flabellaria Lamanonis,_ Brong., a plant first obtained from beds of corresponding age in the suburbs of Paris. The well-known building-stone of Binstead, near Ryde, a limestone with numerous hollows caused by Cyrenæ which have disappeared and left the moulds of their shells, belongs to this subdivision of the Bembridge series. In the same Binstead stone Mr. Pratt and the Reverend Darwin Fox first discovered the remains of mammalia characteristic of the gypseous series of Paris, as _ Palæotherium magnum_ (Fig. 174), _P. medium, P. minus, P. minimum, P. curtum, P. crassum_; also _Anoplotherium commune_ (Fig. 173), _A. secundarium, Dichobune cervinum,_ and _Chæropotamus Cuvieri._ The Palæothere above alluded to resembled the living tapir in the form of the head, and in having a short proboscis, but its molar teeth were more like those of the rhinoceros. _Palæotherium magnum_ was of the size of a horse, three or four feet high. The woodcut, Fig. 174, is one of the restorations which Cuvier attempted of the outline of the living animal, derived from the study of the entire skeleton. As the vertical range of particular species of quadrupeds, so far as our knowledge extends, is far more limited than that of the testacea, the occurrence of so many species at Binstead, agreeing with fossils of the Paris gypsum, strengthens the evidence derived from shells and plants of the synchronism of the two formations. Fig. 174: Palæotherium magnum. Osborne or St. Helen’s Series, A.2.—This group is of fresh and brackish-water origin, and very variable in mineral character and thickness. Near Ryde, it supplies a freestone much used for building, and called by Professor Forbes the Nettlestone grit. In one part ripple-marked flagstones occur, and rocks with fucoidal markings. The Osborne beds are distinguished by peculiar species of _Paludina, Melania,_ and _ Melanopsis,_ as also of _Cypris_ and the seeds of _ Chara._ Fig. 175: Planorbis euomphalus, Fig. 176: Helix labyrinthica. Headon Series A.3.—These beds are seen both in Whitecliff Bay, Headon Hill, and Alum Bay, or at the east and west extremities of the Isle of Wight. The upper and lower portions are fresh-water, and the middle of mixed origin, sometimes brackish and marine. Everywhere _Planorbis euomphalus,_ Fig. 175, characterises the fresh-water deposits, just as the allied form, P. discus, Fig. 170, does the Bembridge limestone. The brackish-water beds contain _Potamomya plana, Cerithium mutabile,_ and _Potamides cinctus_ (Fig. 37), and the marine beds _ Venus_ (or _Cytherea_) _incrassata,_ a species common to the Limburg beds and Grès de Fontainebleau, or the Lower Miocene series. The prevalence of salt-water remains is most conspicuous in some of the central parts of the formation. Fig. 177: Neritina concava.