Bracklesham Beds and Bagshot Sands, B.1, Table—Beneath the Barton Clay we find in the north of the Isle of Wight, both in Alum and Whitecliff Bays, a great series of various coloured sands and clays for the most part unfossiliferous, and probably of estuarine origin. As some of these beds contain _Cardita planicosta_ (Fig. 191) they have been identified with the marine beds much richer in fossils seen in the coast section in Bracklesham Bay near Chichester in Sussex, where the strata consist chiefly of green clayey sands with some lignite. Among the Bracklesham fossils besides the Cardita, the huge _Cerithium giganteum_ is seen, so conspicuous in the Calcaire Grossier of Paris, where it is sometimes two feet in length. The _Nummulites lævigata_ (see Fig. 192), so characteristic of the lower beds of the Calcaire Grossier in France, where it sometimes forms stony layers, as near Compiègne, is very common in these beds, together with _N. scabra_ and _N. variolaria._ Out of 193 species of testacea procured from the Bagshot and Bracklesham beds in England, 126 occur in the Calcaire Grossier in France. It was clearly, therefore, coeval with that part of the Parisian series more nearly than with any other. Fig. 191: Cardita (Venericardia) planicosta, Fig. 192: Nummulites (Nummularia) lavigata. According to tables compiled from the best authorities by Mr. Etheridge, the number of mollusca now known from the Bracklesham beds in Great Britain is 393, of which no less than 240 are peculiar to this subdivision of the British Eocene series, while 70 are common to the Older London Clay, and 140 to the Newer Barton Clay. The volutes and cowries of this formation, as well as the lunulites and corals, favour the idea of a warm climate having prevailed, which is borne out by the discovery of a serpent, _Palæophis typhœus_ (see Fig. 193), exceeding, according to Professor Owen, twenty feet in length, and allied in its osteology to the Boa, Python, Coluber, and Hydrus. The compressed form and diminutive size of certain caudal vertebræ indicate so much analogy with Hydrus as to induce Professor Owen to pronounce this extinct ophidian to have been marine.[2] Among the companions of the sea-snake of Bracklesham was an extinct crocodile (_Gavialis Dixoni,_ Owen), and numerous fish, such as now frequent the seas of warm latitudes, as the Ostracion of the family Balistidæ, of which a dorsal spine is figured (see Fig. 194), and gigantic rays of the genus _ Myliobates_ (see Fig. 195). Fig. 193: Palæophis typhoeus, Owen; an Eocene sea-serpent, Fig. 194: Defensive spine of Ostracion. Fig. 195: Dental plates of Myliobates Edwardsi. The teeth of sharks also, of the genera _Carcharodon, Otodus, Lamna, Galeocerdo,_ and others, are abundant. (See Figs. 196, 197, 198, 199.) Fig. 196: Carcharodon angustidens, Fig. 197: Otodus obliquus, Fig. 198: Lamna elegans, Fig. 199: Galcocerdo latidens. MARINE SHELLS OF BRACKLESHAM BEDS.