210
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
of the Eastern Counties. In 1868 Alfred Bell published "The
Molluscan Fauna of the Red Crag," in the Report of the British
Association, and in 1869 a paper on the "Sussex and Suffolk
Tertiaries" in the Geol. Mag., vol. vi. A paper on "Some New
or little-known Shells, etc., of the Crag formation" (Ann. Nat.
Hist., Ser. 4, vol vi., 1870), brought the Bells to the notice and
acquaintance of Searles V. Wood, who was then collecting
information for a supplement to his "Crag Mollusca." For
a number of years, especially during the 70's, the brothers gave
close attention to the East Anglian Crags, Alfred in particular
spending considerable periods in the district. The result of their
field work appeared in a paper, "On the English Crags and the
Stratigraphical Divisions indicated by their invertebrate fauna,"
printed in the Proc. Geol. Assoc., vol. ii., in 1871. The list of
species contained in this paper, despite later additions and
discoveries, was always quoted by Alfred Bell as being the most
correct ever published. In 1872 Alfred Bell published "The
Succession of the Crags" in the Geol. Mag., vol. ix., and also
"The Butley Crag Pits," in vol. viri., 1871. At the instance of
Searles V. Wood, Robert Bell examined the. shells obtained from
the St. Erth deposit in Cornwall. Before the publication of Mr.
Woods' paper on this new Pliocene deposit the death vi its
compiler occurred, and the deciphering of the mollusca fell to
Robert Bell, who, with P. F. Kendall, subsequently opened a
new section, the results appearing in a paper on "The Pliocene
Beds of St. Erth" (Rept. Brit. Assn. for 1887). The views therein
put forward, together with those of other investigators of the site,
were afterwards summarized by Mr. Clement Reid in his mono-
graph on "The Pliocene Deposits of Britain" (Mem. Geol
Survey, 1890).
Robert Bell died in 1888, and his work was continued by
Alfred, who published a list of the St. Erth shells in the Proc.
Ry. Irish Academy, 1893, and in 1898 published in the Tran-
sactions of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall the results
of a study of all the available collected material in the British
Museum, the Woodwardian Museum, Cambridge, and elsewhere,
and also of considerable personal excavation and examination
of the St. Erth site. In addition to the foregoing, Alfred Bell's
scientific output was considerable. He wrote on the Selsey mud
deposits, on the post Tertiary deposits of the South Coast of