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The salt was placed in the large shell of the then rare pecten of the South Seas, which is edged with a silver-gilt rim chased in floriated ornament, and further enriched by garnets; to it is affixed the half-length figure of a lady, whose bosom is formed of the larger orange-coloured pecten, upon which a garnet is affixed to represent a brooch; a crystal forms the caul of the head-dress, another is placed below the waist.
The shells embedded in the calcareous beds forming the surface of this fringe-like plain, at the height of from 200 to 250 feet above the sea, consist of: Venus opaca. 2. Mulinia Byronensis. 3. Pecten purpuratus. 4. Mesodesma donaciforme. 5. Turritella cingulata. 6. Monoceros costatum. 7. Concholepas Peruviana. 8. Calyptraea Byronensis.
In the clay banks are well-preserved petrifactions, so similar in color, habitat, and aspect to many of those in the German tertiary formations that they might be taken for them. The breccia also is fossil, probably also tertiary; at all events, the identity of the few species which were recognisable in it Cerithium, Pecten, and Venus with living species could not be determined.
Many gigantic specimens of the Ostraea Patagonica were collected in the Gulf of St. George. A good section of the lowest fossiliferous mass, about forty feet in thickness, resting on claystone porphyry, is exhibited a few miles south of the harbour. The shells sufficiently perfect to be recognised consist of: Pecten Paranensis, d'Orbigny, "Voyage, Pal." Nucula ornata, G.B. Sowerby. 6.
M. Domeyko has sent to France a collection of fossils, which, I presume, from the description given, must have come from the neighbourhood of Arqueros; they consist of: Pecten Dufreynoyi, d'Orbigny, "Voyage" Part Pal. Ostrea hemispherica, d'Orbigny, "Voyage" Part Pal. Turritella Andii, d'Orbigny, "Voyage" Part Pal. Hippurites Chilensis, d'Orbigny, "Voyage" Part Pal.
The tuff cones and craters rise from a floor of Tertiary sandstone and shale, the horizontal strata of which are laid open in the precipitous bluffs of Waitemata and Manukau harbours; they sometimes contain fossil shells of the genera Pecten, Nucula, Cardium, Turbo, and Neritæ.
Triton verruculosus, G.B. Sowerby. 18. Sigaretus subglobosus, G.B. Sowerby. 19. Natica solida, G.B. Sowerby. Terebra undulifera, G.B. Sowerby. 21. Terebra costellata, G.B. Sowerby. 22. Dentalium giganteum, do. 24. Dentalium sulcosum, do. 25. Cardium multiradiatum, do. 27. Venus meridionalis, do. 28. Pecten, fragments of.
Pecten Dufreynoyi, d'Orbigny, "Voyage, Part Pal." This species, which occurs here in vast numbers, according to M. D'Orbigny, resembles certain cretaceous forms. Ostrea hemispherica, d'Orbigny, "Voyage" etc. Also resembles, according to the same author, cretaceous forms. Terebratula aenigma, d'Orbigny, "Voyage" etc. Is allied, according to M. d'Orbigny, to T. concinna from the Forest Marble.
The uppermost layers of this ferrugino-sandy mass are conformably covered by, and impregnated to the depth of several inches with, the calcareous matter of the bed D called losa: hence I at one time imagined that there was a gradual passage between them; but as all the species are recent in the bed D, whilst the most characteristic shells of the uppermost layers of E are the extinct Perna, Pecten, and Monoceros, I agree with M. d'Orbigny, that this view is erroneous, and that there is only a mineralogical passage between them, and no gradual transition in the nature of their organic remains.
I found only one specimen of the Concholepas, and the Pecten was very rare, though both these shells are now the commonest kinds, with the exception, perhaps, of the Calyptraea radians, of which I did not find one in the calcareous beds.
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