On the Insect Beds of the Purbeck Formation in Wiltshire and Dorsetshire

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Abstract
P rof . E. F orbes , in a valuable paper† in Jameson's Edinburgh Journal, was the first to divide the Purheck Series in Dorsetshire into upper, middle, and lower, and to define the varied conditions under which the whole was accumulated. In this memoir he pointed out that this Series consisted of alternations of freshwater, marine, and brackish water deposits, differing as much in their lithological as in their zoological characters, giving us also a new and more enlarged view of the distribution of freshwater and marine life during this portion of the Oolitic period. At the time when I first (now nearly thirteen years ago) laid before this Society an account of the occurrence of Insects and other new fossils in the Purbecks in the Vale of Wardour, I was induced to consider the Insect and Isopod limestones as belonging to the lower part of the lower Purbecks. Since then, however, the subdivisions of Professor Forbes, and the joint investigations of my friends the Rev. Messrs. Austen and Fisher, have led me to examine the few available sections in the Vale of Wardour again, and to pay a visit to Durlstone Bay, in order to institute a more careful comparison between these two distant portions of the formation,—the result of which I now proceed briefly to describe.

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