Although vertebrate remains are more common on some horizons[62] than on others, they are occasionally met with in most of the beds. The most prolific bone horizon is, however, about half-way down, i.e., those beds numbered 16 and 17 in the above section; bed 7 also yielded a number of remains. At the point where the upper part of the section was measured, 3½ kilometres north-east of Qasr el Sagha, the beds 16 and 17 yielded a considerable number of land-animal remains, all of which occurred within a fairly confined space, suggesting that they had been carried out from the land to this point by a strong river-current and deposited when the latter became too feeble to carry them further out to sea. The same beds were also examined in the faulted bay 8 kilometres to the north, but no bones, or at most a very occasional fragment or two, were obtained here. This is easily explained by the greater distance of this locality from the land-mass to the south. Westwards the same beds were always found more or less bone-bearing, isolated detached mandibles, limb-bones and vertebræ of _Mœritherium_, being of frequent occurrence, although no such complete remains were found as those from near Qasr el Sagha. Reptilian and fish bones are very widespread throughout the area. An extensive and detailed examination of these beds over a large area can hardly fail to yield important results, as other localities where skeleton-carrying currents came out from the land would very likely be discovered. That the Qasr el Sagha series was deposited in fairly shallow water at no great distance from land seems certain, not only from the general lithological character of the beds but from the number of land-animal remains and the frequency of river and shore-frequenting whales, dugongs, crocodiles and turtles. The clays, moreover, are found to abound with impressions of plants, and in some cases are highly lignitic, being made up of compressed masses of vegetation including solid twigs, now found in a state more resembling charcoal than ordinary dense lignites; some bands approximate to an impure brown coal. In certain beds of the series further to the west, very thin seams of true coal occur; they were, however, never seen to exceed one or two millimetres. The intercalated bands of limestone are generally impure and do not indicate any great conditions of depth, but only rather a temporary cessation in the supply of sand and clay. Corals, moreover, abound along many horizons. [Illustration: PLATE IX. UPPER BEDS OF FLUVIO-MARINE SERIES WITH BASALT CAP, LOOKING WEST FROM THE EASTERN EXTREMITY OF JEBEL EL QATRANI.] SECTION XI.—UPPER EOCENE (BARTONIAN)—LOWER OLIGOCENE. _E._—=Fluvio-Marine Series= (_Jebel el Qatrani Beds_).