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PLATE VIII. 


—— 


THE GEOLOGIST; 


A POPULAR ILLUSTRATED 


PONTHLY MAGAZINE 


OF 


GKOLOGY. 


EDITED BY S. J. MACKIE, F.G.S., F.S.A. 


LONDON : 
“GHopoGrs lt OFETCE, 154, STRAND. 


1859. 


PRINTED AT THE ‘‘ GEOLOGIST”? OFFICE, 154, STRAND, LONDON. 


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OncE more all the world is preparing for that most jovial of all 
jovial seasons, when the workman lays down his tools, the clerk for- 
sakes his desk, the merchant his counting-house; and authors and 
editors rejoice, like other people. Poor, indeed, must he be both in 
- pocket and heart who cannot afford a day’s holiday and a good 
dinner on “Merry Christmas.” For the second time we, too, 
abandon our monthly labours. We have prepared our Index, made 
up our Volume, bound it in its cover of purple and gold, despatched 
it far and near over the British isles and abroad, even to the confines 
of America and India; and now, for the second time, in all sincerity 
and earnestness, we wish our Friends and Readers a “ Merry Christ- 
mas, and a happy New Year.” 


Again we have brought the good ship “ Gxouocist” safely into 
port. Onwards we have steered our steady course, encouraged 
throughout by the kind words and appreciation of almost numberless 
friends. If the expressions of goodwill and laudation which have 
reached us from so many quarters could make us vain, we might 
print pages of authorities for our title to give loose to an easily- 
developed passion; but every word of praise will only make us more 
chary of an acquired reputation—more careful in what we do—more 
anxious to be ever and ever more worthy of patronage and support. 


To my friend Mr. Davidson I have been indebted for a valuable 
paper on the Strophomenide and Productide, and the beautiful 
plates which accompany it. And in the closing pages of this volume 
we have commenced another extremely valuable contribution by the 
same hand on the Carboniferous Brachiopoda of Scotland, which will 
be accompanied by many equally beautiful plates. 


PREFACE. 


To the Rev. W. S. Symonds, F.G.S., the Rev. T. Wiltshire, 
F.G.S., the Rev. Dr. Anderson, Dr. Phipson, Count Marschall, Dr. 
Bevan, Dr. G. D. Gibb, F.G.S., Professor Harkness, M. Jules 
Marcou, Messrs. H. C. Salmon, F.G.8., H. C. Sorby, F.R.S., F.G.S.,] | 
Edw. Wood, F.G.S., W. Pengelly, F.G.S., Geo. Tate, G. H. Roberts,} | 
H. Mitchell, and the too long list of contributors for insertion here, 
my grateful thanks are due. And to my numerous friendly querists| | 
I would only say how much pleasure it has given me to answer their 
many questions. 


Of my own labours past and intended I may speak without self- 
vanity. My desire is to advance the popularity of the science, and| | 
to extend its beneficial influences. My own articles on “ Common} | 
Fossils,” with the “Gems of Private Collections,” will give me the 
opportunity of figuring all the British species of fossils; and that 
the unavoidable inconvenience of having to follow a consecutive 
order may be less felt, it is my intention to give from time to time 
special papers on particular well-known fossiliferous localities, such 
as Folkestone, Bridlington, Scarborough, the Isle of Wight, &c., by 
which means those of our readers living on other rock-formations 
than those treated of in the regular order of our course, may derive 
some advantage from the figures of fossils and descriptions of the 
strata with which those projected papers will be illustrated. 


To Sir Roderick Murchison, Professor Huxley, Professor Ramsay, 
Messrs. Salter and Etheridge, Mr. Long the Librarian, and to other 
gentlemen of the Geological Survey; as also to Professor Owen, Mr. 
Waterhouse, Mr. Woodward, Mr. Davis, and other gentlemen at the 
British Museum, I have to express my thanks for the facilities 
afforded me on all occasions when I have had occasion to visit the 
departments under their respective controls. 


Lastly, to my sincere and valued friend the Assistant-Secretary of 
the Geological Society, I have again to express my warmest thanks 
for many kindnesses, personal and editorial. 


S. J. M. 
London, December, 1859. 


: COMPARATIVE TABULAR SECTIONS OF FOREICN AND BRITISH 
UPPER OOLITIC, WEALDEN, AND NEOCOMIAN BEDS. 
FIGURE | Adsace Sectton cf the Sers of strata FIGURE Il _Adstrace Secteorv of the series of strata 
comprized betweerr the Barre LUnescone comprixed betweerr the -Lortland Store and 
and the lhodartary Croup w the the Lower Greasazww wv the South Laster 
Sire Mouretaties. ; pare of Tglamwn. 
MARNE JATNE contenant te NALICA LOWER PERNA BLD cortasiieg NALLCA LLOTTN- 
ROLTUNDATA, ttc, div groupe Lthotanis bes DATA, ete, of the Liwa Creeasand, Isle of Wight. 
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THE GEOLOGIST. 


JANUARY, 1859. 


ON THE NEOCOMIAN AND THE WEALDEN ROCKS IN 
THE JURA AND IN ENGLAND. 


By M. Jutes Marcov, Professor of Geology in the Federal Polytechnic 
School, Zurich. 


In June, 1827, Dr. W. H. Fitton read before the Geological Society of 
London the following statement :—“It is obvious that, during a 
period of time sufficient for the accumulation of the Wealden, the 
deposition of matter in the adjacent seas could not have been 
inconsiderable ; so that we might expect to find, interposed between 
the strata which then formed the bottom of the sea and the Lower 
Greensand, a series of beds coeval with the Wealden in point of date, 
but differing from it in possessing the characters of a marine deposit, 
and including marine shells and other productions of salt water ; with 
which, near the shore, the productions of the land, or even the fresh- 
water shells of the rivers, might be occasionally intermixed. 
Ist. That the Wealden and its marine equivalent could not both be 
found in the same place ; and consequently (since we have the former 
in England) that the marine beds of that date are not to be expected 
generally in this country ; 2dly. That the marine fossils of the beds 
cotemporaneous with the Wealden would probably be distinct, both 
from those of the Portland group beneath, and of the Greensands 
above them; a consideration which gives peculiar interest to the 
fossils of this intermediate group.”* Since that day, the Neocomian 
* See Observations on some of the Strata between the Chalk and Oxford Oolite 
in the South of England. Transact. Geol. Soc. 2 Ser. vol. iv. p. 329. 
"VOL, TI. ee 


2 THE GEOLOGIST. 


formation has been found and named ; its rocks and fossils have been 
described ; and the Purbeck beds have returned to their former 
associates—the Jurassic rocks. 

During this period of time several geologists have tried to find the 
marine equivalents of the Purbeck and Wealden rocks, without, 
however, arriving at results satisfactory to all observers. The ques- 
tion is still very far from a solution; but I have lately learned several 
new facts on the subject which perhaps may be of some assistance in 
facilitating a recognition of the marine deposits coeval with the 
Wealden. 

In order that my references and data may be clearly understood, I 
will first give a short description, or réswmé, of the strata in the Jura 
Mountains comprised between the Portland stone and the Lower 
Greensand, This réswmé is also graphically presented in the Abstract 
section of the series of strata comprised between the Banné Limestone and 
the Rhodanian group, in the Jura Mountains (Pl. I., Fig. 1)—under 
the form of a tabular and proportional view. . 

The Jurassic divisions known under the names of Banné Limestone 
(Calcaires du Banné) and Salins Marls (Marnes de Salins)* contain a 
fauna identical with that of the Portland beds, with the addition of 
some new species peculiar to the Jura, and a few fossil shells common 
to the Kimmeridge clay. The Salins Marls are succeeded by a series 
of compact limestone strata, very thick (100 feet at least), of a 
whitish-grey, and sometimes clear yellow colour, containing beds of 
lithographic stone a little above the middle of the division, and 
always capped by a sort of magnesian limestone (Dolomite). This 
series, called Salins Limestone (Calcaires de Salins), contains numerous 
fossil remains, all of marine animals, especially Corals, Echinodermata, 
Nerinea, and Natica; two hundred different species at least. The Leit- 
muscheln (guide-shells) are :—Hemicidaris Purbeckensis, Forb. ; Pygurus 
Jurensis, Agass.; Pinna Barrensis, Buv. ; Trigonia gibbosa, Sow. ; Natica 
Marcousana, D’Orb.; NV. Athleta, D’Orb.; Rostellaria Barrensis, Buv. ; 
Nerinea Salinensis, D’Orb.; WN. Elea, D’Orb.; NV. subpyramidalis, 
D’Orb.; MN. grandis, Volt.; NN. trinodosa, D’Orb.; NV. cylindrica, 


* See, for explanation of these terms, Lettres sur les Roches du Jura et leur 
distribution géographique, dans les dewe Hémisphéres, par Jules Marcou ; 
Paris, 1857. 


MARCOU——-ON THE NEOCOMIAN AND THE WEALDEN ROCKS, 3 


D’Orb. ; Stylina intricata, From. ; and Thamnastreea dumosa, From. 
Typical localities ; vicinity of Salins, Gray, Besangon, Montbéliard, and 
Borrentruy. 

The Salins Limestone terminates the Jurassic strata, and a well- 
marked discordance of stratification exists between it and the Neoco- 
mian rocks; a discordance varying from 5° to 15°, and which may be 
seen on all the flanks of the different longitudinal valleys of the Jura. 

The Neocomian rocks are divided into three groups: the Lower 
Neocomian, or St. Croix group; the Middle Neocomian, or Chateau 
group; and the Upper Neocomian, or Noirvaux group. 

The Lower Neocomian has its type in the vicinity of St. Croix, a 
village in the Canton de Vaud, celebrated for the numerous and suc- 
cessful researches of Dr. Campiche, who has collected there the most 
complete set of Neocomian fossils in existence. Professor Pictet de- 
scribes them in his Matériaux pour la Paléontologie Sursse, seconde série ; 
Descruption des fossiles du Terrain crétacé de Ste. Croix, now in course of 
publication. The St. Croix group may be divided into three princi- 
pal parts, (a) the Villars Marls, (6) the Auberson Rocks, and (c) the 
Métabief Limonite. 

(a). The Villars Marls (/arnes de Villars), forty feet thick, consist 
of very hard, grey marls, alternating near the top with marly and 
very compact limestone. In some places, such as Renaud du Mont, 
La Riviére, and Foucine, the murls become green and even variegated, 
and then contain layers of white gypsum and dolomitic limestone. 
Professor Lory of Grenoble has found freshwater shells in this division, 
such as Planorbis Loryt, Coq.; Physa Wealdina, Coq.; Paludina, Cyclas, 
Anodonta, &c.; and M. Renevier has lately discovered the Corbula 
alata, Sow., which indicates a mixture of brackish-water animals. The 
typical localities for fossils are, Villars-le-lac near Morteau, Charix 
near Nantua, Jongue, Les Rousses, and Cinquétral near St. Claude. 

(>). The Auberson Rocks (Roches @ Auberson), eighty feet thick, are 
composed of a series of compact, whitish, oolitic limestones, with beds 
of blue and yellow marls, varying in thickness from half-a-foot to ten 
or twelve feet, intercalated near the base. ‘The marls contain in great 
quantity a small sea-urchin called Zoxaster Campichei, Pic., and a small 
Terebratula related to the Ter. biplicata, var. acuta, von Buch. In the 
limestone beds are found, Strombus Sautiert, Coq.; Sigaretus Pidancett, 

B2 


<< 


% 


4 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Coq., and the Watica Sautieri, Coq. The typical localities are, the 
Auberson Valley, near St. Croix, St. Cergues, and Les Rousses. 

(c). The Métabief Limonite (Limonite de Métabief ), forty feet thick, 
is generally a reddish limestone, containing oolitic iron-ore; the 
strata are thin, and easily decomposed by atmospheric action. in 
some places, as in the valley of Nozeroy, blue marls exist at the base 
of this division. The fossils are very numerous, and beautifully pre- 
served ; those characteristic are—Chelonia Valenginiensis, Pic. ; Croco- 
dile ; Plesiosaurus Neocomiensis, Camp.; Pycnodus cylindricus, Pic. ; 
Asteracanthus granulosus, Eger.; Ammonites Gevrilianus, D’Orb.; A. 
Marcousanus, D’Orb.; Nerinea Marcausana, D’Orb. ; Pholadomya 
Scheuzeri, Agass.; Pygurus rostratus, Agass.; Hemicidaris patella, 
Agass.; Acrocidaris depressa, Gras.; Catopygus Renaudi, Agass.; &c. 
Typical localities : Métabief, Boucheraus, and St. Croix. 

The Middle Neocomian, or the Chateau group, as it is called in 
reference to the castle of the town of Neuchatel, the foundation of 
which rests entirely on this group, is composed of three divisions ; 
(a) the Hauterive clay, (6) the Ecluse rocks, and (c) the yellow, or 
Neuchatel stone. 

(a). The Hauterive clay (Marnes d’Hauterive), thirty feet thick, 
consists of blue and sometimes plastic clay, with more or less of a 
yellow tint and very numerous fossils; the most common are, 7oxaster 
complanatus, Agass.; Diadema rotulare, Agass.; Terebratula prelonga, 
Sow.; Yer. Marcousana, D’Orb.; Rhynchonella depressa, D’Orb.; Ostrea 
Couloni, Defr.; Corbis cordiformis, D’Orb. ; Trigonia caudata, Agass.; 
Venus Dupiniana, D’Orb.; Panopea Neocomiensis, Agass.; Cardium Voltzii, 
Leym.; Pleurotomaria Neocomiensis, Agass., &c. It is easy to distin- 
guish three zones in these clays, characterised by different associations 
of fossils ; the lower zone, or Censeau beds, the middle, and the upper 
zone. ‘Typical localities: Hauterive, near Neuchatel, St. Croix, Cen- 
seau, Nozeroy, &c. 

(>). The Ecluse rocks (Roches de [ Ecluse), forty feet thick, are com- 
posed of yellowish, often green, spotted limestone, alternating near the 
base with yellow marls. Characteristic fossils: Rhynchonella depressa, 
Sow. ; Ostrea Bousingaultti, D’Orb.; Lima Royeriana, D’Orb. ; Pecten 
Cottaldinus, D’Orb., &ce. Typical localities: the Ecluse behind Neu- 
chatel Castle, and Censeau. 


MARCOU—ON THE NEOCOMIAN AND THE WEALDEN ROCKS, 3) 


(c). The Neuchatel stone, or yellow stone (Prerre jaune ou Pierre de 
Neuchatel), sixty feet thick, is the beautiful material which gives to 
the buildings of the town of Neuchatel that clear yellow colour so 
much admired by travellers. Fossils are rare in this division, and 
never in a good state of preservation. ‘Typical localities: vicinity of 
Neuchatel and Pontarlier. 

The Upper Neocomian, or Noirvaux, group is well developed in the 
Noirvaux valley near St. Croix; it is this group, or rather the 
fauna contained in its strata, that D’Orbigny has called Urgonian. 
Two divisions are generally found in it; (a) the Mauremont rocks, 
and (6) the Noirvaux-Dessus Limestone. 

(a). The Mauremont rocks (Roches du Mauremont), forty feet thick, 
consist of yellow limestone, very difficult to distinguish from the divi- 
sion below ; they become marly, and finally terminate with a bed of 
yellow marls containing numerous fossils. The characteristic fossils 
are: Jamra atava, D’Orb. ; Toxaster Couloni, Camp. ; Pygurus pro- 
ductus, Agass.; Cidaris clunifera, Agass. ; Caprotina Dubuisit, Mer. ; 
Rhynchonella lata, D’Orb., &e. Typical localities: Mauremont in 
the Canton de Vaud; St. Croix, Travers, Béle, &c. 

(6). The Noirvaux-Dessus Limestone (Calcaires de Noirvaux-Dessus), 
one hundred and ten feet thick, has been often called the Caprotine 
Limestone ; it is a series of beautiful white and sometimes yellow 
limestones, affording a marble much employed at Thoiry, near Geneva. 
Characteristic fossils : Caprotina ammonia, D’Orb., and Radiolites Neoco- 
miensis, D’Orb. Typical localities: Noirvaux-Dessus, near St. Croix, 
Thoiry, Les Rousses, &c.* 

The strata of the Greensand formation lie directly above the 
Neocomian and in concordance of stratification. Eugéne Renevier, 
who has made a special and very successful study of the Greensands 
in England and at the Perte du Rhéne, considers the lower Perna- 
bed, containing the Natica rotundata, Sow., &c., of the Lower Green- 
sand of the Isle of Wight, to be the equivalent of the yellow clay 
(Marnes jaunes) contaiming Natica rotundata, Sow., &c., of his 
Rhodanian group of the Greensands of the Perte du Rhone. 


* For a more detailed account of the Neocomian Strata, see Sur le Néocomien 
dans le Jura et son réle dans la série stratigraphique, by Jules Marcou, 
Genéve, 1859. 


> 


y 


6 THE GEOLOGIST. 


I have given a rough sketch under the form of a tabular and 
proportional view (Pl. I. Fig. 2)—Abstract Section of the series of 
strata comprised between the Portland stone and the Lower Greensand, 
in the South-Eastern part of England—for the sake of comparison. 

The Banné Limestone and Salins Marls being the equivalents of 
the Portland beds, and the Rhodanian presenting exactly the fauna of - 
the “ Perna-beds” and “ crackers” of the Lower Greensand, it appears 
rational to conclude that the Purbeck beds, the Hastings sands, and 
Weald clay, are fluvio-marine and terrestrial deposits coeval with 
the marine deposits known in the Jura under the name of Salins 
Limestone and Neocomian. 

A few marine fossils, or, at least, belonging to brackish- water 
animals, have lately been found common to the two series in the 
Jura and in England, and they may serve as landmarks for future 
investigations. 

In the first beds of the Salins Limestone, immediately above the 
Salins Marls, the Zrigonia gibbosa, Sow., is quite abundant, and in a good 
state of preservation. Fitton says, that the last bed in the Portland 
quarries, called by the. quarrymen “roach,” contains a great quantity 
of Zrigonia gibbosa. So we may suppose that the “roach” of Portland 
is equivalent to the first beds of the Salins Limestone, or a little older. — 
I have indicated both suppositions by dotted lines uniting the two - 
abstract sections. In both countries, the stratigraphical position. of 
the Hemicidaris Purbeckensis, Forb., forbids the supposition that 
the “roach” may be younger than the Salins “ Trigonia gibbosa 
beds.” Until now, paleontologists and geologists have regarded 
the Echinodermata as more characteristic than the Acephala and 
Gasteropoda, and of equal importance with the Cephalopoda and 
Brachiopoda. As an example of their importance, it is sufficient to 
say that Forbes replaced the Purbeck beds in the Jurassic rocks, because 
he discovered a Hemicidaris in the “ Cinder-bed” near Swanage. 
That Hemicidaris was new, and he called it Hemicidaris Purbeckensis. 

A few years later, the same species was signalized in France by 
Cotteau, who had it from the Salins Limestone of Burgundy (see Htudes 
sur les Echinides fossiles du département de V Yonne, vol. i. p. 300). But 
Cotteau says that his three specimens belong to a variety of the species 
described by Forbes, who found only a single complete specimen ; and 


MARCOU—ON THE NEOCOMIAN AND THE WEALDEN ROCKS. 7 


the Hemicidaris Purbeckensis is regarded as a rare fossil in Purbeck, 
and also in Burgundy. 

During my explorations of the Jura in 1844-47, I met with 
fragments of a Hemicidaris in the Salins Limestone several times ; 
and when Forbes published his Hemicidaris Purbeckensis, I perceived 
at once the possibility of an identity with the Jura sea-urchin ; and on 
making a rapid excursion to Portland in 1852, I saw immediately 
that the strata called in the Jura Portlandian were not equivalent to 
the Portland-stone of England, but a little younger. Having learned 
that a well-preserved Hemicidaris had lately been found by M. Perron, 
of Gray, in the Salins Limestone near that town, I wrote to call his 
attention to the subject ; and the result of researches made by him 
and M. Etallon is, that the Hemicidaris of Gray is identical in all 
respects with the Hemicidaris Purbeckensis. MM. Perron and Htallon 
say that their specimens do not indicate any variations from the true 
Hemicidaris Purbeckensis of Professor Edward Forbes ; and this beau- 
tiful fossil is quite common even with the spines adherent to the shell. 

The exact position of the Hemicidaris Purbeckensis at Gray is about 
thirty feet from the base of the Salins Limestone. There are also some 
indications of the existence in the Salins Limestone of the Hxogyra 
bulla, Sow., and Ostrea distorta, Sow., but nothing positive as yet. 

Relying only on the Hemicidaris Purbeckensis, it is, however, quite 
probable that the Salins Limestones are the marine deposits coeval 
with the Purbeck beds; especially if we consider that in England a 
change of some note takes place in the distribution of deposits ; for 
the Hastings Sands and Weald Clay range through a very different 
part of the country from the Purbeck strata. The discovery of the 
Hemicidaris Purbeckensis in the last division of the Jurassic rocks in 
the Jura mountains shows the soundness of Forbes’ view when he 
replaced the Purbeck beds in the English Oolites. 

_ The Villars Marls contain a fluvio-marine fauna, which will aid us 

in the endeavour to find the equivalents in the two countries, and the 
more as we now know that Professor Lory, of Grenoble, has found in 
Dauphiné the marine deposit coeval with them. Until now, only one 
species truly identical with an English fossil has been discovered in 
the Villars Marls: it is the Corbula alata, Sow., known in the Ash- 
burnham beds of Pounceford, near Burwash, Sussex. 


8 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Professor Pictet has lately recognised among the fossils picked up 
_at St. Croix, in the Métabief Limonite, a well-preserved spine of the 
Asteracanthus granulosus, Kger., a fish found by Mantel! in the middle 
division of the Tilgate beds. It is interesting to add that Campiche, 
Pictet, and some other Jurassian geologists, have found in the same 
Métabief Limonite numerous vertebree, teeth, and scales of Plesiosaurus, 
Crocodiles, and fishes, indicating that a rich fauna of vertebrated 
animals existed there during the deposits of the Métabief beds (see 
Description des fossiles du Terrain crétacé de Sainte Croix, par Pictet 
et Campiche. Genéve, 1858). If we remark that the middle division 
of the Tilgate beds is precisely where Dr. Mantell found such 
numerous remains of Plesiosauri, Crocodiles, Iguanodons, fishes, &ec. ; 
it is not improbable that we may synchronize the Lower Neocomian 
with the Lower part of the Hastings Sands, from the Middle division 
of the Tilgate beds downwards, with some degree of truth. I have © 
indicated this supposed synchronism by dotted lines. (See Pl. I. Abstract 
sections, &C.) | 

We have as yet no paleontological evidence that will permit us to 
identify the Middle and Upper Neocomian with the upper part of the 
Hastings Sands and the Weald Clay ; but, if the preceding synchronisms 
be exact, we may accept this also on stratigraphical grounds. 

At all events, it appears from the preceding remarks,—Ist, that 
the Neocomian is not the equivalent of the Lower Greensand ; 
2d, that the Purbeck beds are coeval with the marine deposits called, 
in the Jura, Salins Limestone; 3d, that there is great reason to 
suppose that the Neocomian of the Jura is the marine equivalent of 
the Wealden of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex ; and that the great gap 
existing in Great Britain in the marine deposits between the strata of 
Portland and those of the Lower Greensand will be filled up by the 
Neocomian and the Salins Limestone of the Jura Mountains. 


NOTE ON THE SPEETON CLAY OF YORKSHIRE. 
By Joun Lecxensy, Esq., of Scarborough. 


THE lowest beds of Speeton Clay in overlying contact with any inferior 
stratum have never been found in Filey Bay, but a little to the south 
of a point where it is first exposed Lias “scars” exist with Ammonites 
communis and A. Walcotte in situ, showing great upheaval or disturb- 
ance, or else great unconformability here. 

1. The lowest known beds of Speeton Clay, so called, consist of blue 
clay, with seams of septarian nodules. In one of these seams, in beds 
of a black claystone, specimens of Ammonites biplex three to four inches 
in diameter are not unfrequent. This is the only fossil found in this 
bed. 

2. Above this is a band of strong, slaty, brown clay, very ligneous 
and peaty, containing remains of fishes only. Here was found the 
unique Palconiscus Hgertoni, now in the possession of the Earl of 
Enniskillen. Thickness . . ier : us Nous \euglereteet: 

3. Next we have a black sae clay, nee large ae like 
the cement-stones, but not used as such. These nodules contain a 
beautiful Ammonite, named by Mr. Bean A. evalidus, but no other 
Mollusea.»: °. = . Mien ali iusatcnisaticha wy. hy peOrieet, 

4, Another afd of ne clay, containing compressed Ammonites 
and other shells, all too imperfect for discrimination. This band is 
traversed at intervals by seams of septarian nodules. . . . 50 feet. 

5. A thin seam of impure clay, with fragments of Ammonites and 
ee ae aPC God a Betula Nu genhisn ts fing dltes, & toot. 

6. A stratum of dark-brown shaly clay, containing imperfect, com- 
pressed, bivalve shells, and a seam of coprolitic nodules. . . 5 feet. 

7. Compact light-grey argillaceous stone, destitute of fossils ; 
forming a remarkable line of demarcation between the beds below and 
PMMSCESCCCEUIMG fel seal) ofl BM teach i nok oh ORL: 

8. Tough and almost pure clay, containing many of the characteristic 
ig@eamcor the speeton Clay as under.. ... .°,. * . .. .. 8 feet, 


10 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Serpula vertebral. Cucullea. 
Astarte sinuata (Bean). Gryphea sinuata. 
a larger species. Pecten (undescribed). 
Nucula ovata. Ammonites quadrifidus. 
subrecurvum. cavaticus. 


9. An impure micaceous sandy clay, containing many nodules, 
and numerous fragments of Ammonites and Belemnites ; apparently 
the detritus of a previous deposit. It also contains many ribs and 


vertebra’ of saurian anuimalsy 9-5 Se Oe ee ee ee iicet 
In this bed we find— 


Pholadomya decussata. Terebratila subundata: 
Mya (*) depressa. 
Cytherea plana. Rostellaria Parkinson. 


Avicula multicostata. 


Inoceramus concentricus. Pleurotomaria (undescribed). 


10. A clay similar to 7, but of a higher colour, containing — 


“Serpula vertebralis. Turbo pulcherrimus. 
Belemnites jaculum. Cerithium, 0. Ss. 
B. subrecurvum. Nucula ovata. 


At its base is a thin pyritic layer, rich in beautiful Ammonites. 
Ammonites currindus. A. regalis (Bean, MS.). A. furcellatus. 
Thickness 4 feet. 
11. A band similar to 9, with similar fossils. Thickness . 2 feet. 
12. A strong band of blue clay, with a few imperfect fragments of 
AVTAINOMIEES! Sorat Le eR 2 ea EEN 7) al ie eect 
13. A bed of whitish claystone, containing a species of Astacus (not 
in nodules) and two very well marked distinct species of Ammonites,— 
A, munitus (Bean, MS.), and a species in which the costee of the outer 
whorl are so-deeply divided as to cut half through the whorl. 1 foot. 
14. Another band containing compressed flattened casts of bivalves, 
all imperfect, and Ammonites marginatus - » « « « . . 4 feet. 
15. The great band of Hamites, comprising 7. maximus and kindred 
forms, sometimes free, when they are generally crushed except the last 
chamber, representing about halfa whorl; often in nodules, and then 
better preserved... : SS Se tee: 
16. Another bed of eee. like ea iogae not the same as the 
last ; comprising Crioceras Beanit and kindred forms, often of immense 
Se EE Se Ga uen yey | AMAIA TEES Ee ES Sea Ree 


LECKENBY—-NOTE ON THE SPEETON CLAY OF YORKSHIRE, il 


17. Blue clay with Ammonites and Belemnites as under :— 


Ammonites rotula. | with coarser radii). 
venustus. Belemnites jaculum. 
concinnus. —— (ashort thick species). 
(variety Thickness 12 feet. 


18. A band of clay without fossils except traces of decomposed 
BRI C Smet Op ity ert So OS) aS feet, 
19. The remarkable “ Astacus ornatus bed,” with innumerable 
nodules, each containing an Astacus (Astacus (?) ornatus, Ph.). 3 feet. 


ZOwetrone, clay without fossils, 7.) 0 2. so 1 feet. 
21. Another thick deposit containing no fossils except the outer 
whorl of a large undescribed Ammonite. . . . . . . . 5O feet. 


22. Another thick bed of stratified clay, forming the Cliff; the 
lowest portion full of crushed imperfect bivalves (ya depressa) ; 
through its centre runs a band of cement-stone, containing a large 
smooth Ammonite, and fragments of Hamites maximus; and imme- 
diately above the cement-stone-band is a seam of soft stone with 


RT OVCHINATHEDOUGLOU,. oan) 8 5s er tems ny oe gen te & 9, 00 feet. 
The cement-stone yields— 
Hamites Banksw (Bean). Auricula. 
Ammonites fissicostatus. Plagiostoma. 


The occurrence of Vermicularia Sowerbu and Ammonites fissicostatus, 
which so nearly resembles A. Deshayesi of the Greensand of the Isle of 
Wight as to be almost inseparable, would seem to refer the upper por- 
tion of these beds to the Neocomian era; while so characteristic an 
Ammonite as A. biplex in the lowest beds would with equal certainty 
refer the lower ones to the era of the Kimmeridge Clay. Between 
them we have probably the representatives of the Gault in the Hamite- 
yielding beds, while we are puzzled to account for the presence of 
such true Oxfordian forms as the coronated Ammonites, A. quadrifidus 
and A. caveatus, although perhaps these are not more erratic than A. 
Parkinsoni, which, while it characterizes the Inferior Oolite of the 
south, occurs in the Grey Limestone at Scarborough, not seventy 
feet below the Cornbrash. 


ON THE GEOLOGY OF THE SCILLY ISLES. 


By the Rev. Francis F. Staruam, B.A., F.G.S., Incumbent of St. 
Peter's, Walworth. 


(Read before Section C. (Geology) of the British Association for the 
Advancement of Scrence, on Thursday, September 23, 1858.) 


THE majority of persons, merely acquainted with the name and position 
of the Scilly Isles, generally associate in their mind with the mention 
of this group a cluster of rugged rocks, affording shelter and suste- 
nance to a few poor fishermen and pilots, and famous for nothing else 
than the frequent shipwrecks and naval disasters of which in times 
past they have been the scene. From their isolated position, and their 
comparative difficulty of access, they have been much less frequently 
visited, and less accurately described, than many other of the beau- 
tiful islets which surround our favoured shores; hence much mis- 
apprehension prevails both as to their extent and their capabilities, 
while very little indeed, of a scientific character, has been put on 
record with reference to their varied attractions, zoological, botanieal, 
or geological.* A visit of three weeks, during the past summer, 
having enabled me to make a few cursory observations, I have 
imagined that, in the absence of more definite knowledge, they may 
prove interesting, or, at any rate, that they may serve to attract atten- 
tion to the very curious phenomena which these islands present to 
the student of geologic truth. The entire group consists, it is said, 
of 145 rocks, or rocky islets, varying in size from the mere solitary 
crag jutting out at low water from the surface of the ocean, to the Isle 
of St. Mary, the largest, the most populous, and the most fertile of the 
whole, which measures about three miles by two and a half miles, and 
contains an estimated area of about 1,640 acres. The Scilly Islands lie 

* With the exception of an admirable paper read before the Geological Society 
of Cornwall, in Sept., 1850, by Joseph Carne, Esq., F.R.S., F.G.S., &c., and a few 
brief lines in one of the earlier volumes of the Transactions of that Society, I am 


not aware of any notices of the geology of these islands which have been offered to 
the public. 


STATHAM—ON THE GEOLOGY OF THE SCILLY ISLES. 15 


in latitude 49° 57’ N., and in longitude 6° 43° W. bearing west by south 
from the Land’s End, and due west from the Lizard ; from the former 
point they are distant little more than twenty-seven miles in a direct 
line, though the distance from Penzance pier, the usual starting-place 
of the vessels from the mainland to St. Mary’s Pool, is about forty 
miles. So far from being mere rugged rocks, these islands afford a 
pleasant home to between two and three thousand inhabitants, the 
total population having been computed in 1851 at 2,601 souls, the 
majority of whom dwell upon St. Mary’s, although five of the other 
islands—viz., Tresco, St. Martin’s, St. Agnes, Bryer, and Sampson’s— 
have a scattered population upon them nearly in proportion to their 
relative size. As the character of the rocks, being almost exclusively 
granitic, is very similar to that of the extreme promontory of Corn- 
wall, it has been suggested by some writers that they may have been 
originally united to the mainland, and traditions are not wanting, of 
a very ancient date, which might serve to confirm this opinion, were 
there not many countervailing reasons to be alleged in opposition. 
From the circumstances that the Gulf, or Woolf Rock, which lies 
midway between Scilly and Land’s End, is of greenstone, and not 
of granite, and that, in dredging the sea-bottom between these two 
points, shells and sea-weeds have been occasionally brought up 
clinging to greenstone, or clayslate, it is conceived that a tract of 
metamorphic rocks exists beneath the ocean between the mainland 
and the Scilly Isles, and that the latter are thus outliers only of 
the great granitic range of Devonshire and Cornwall. Many circum- 
stances tend to prove that the conformation of the islands is very 
different now from what it has been at a former period, within even 
historic times. Local tradition asserts that anciently there was a 
narrow causeway by which persons could pass across Crow Sound from 
St. Mary’s to St. Martin’s, and the ledge of rock which is visible at 
low water. a little below the surface in this part is still called the 
“ Pavement.” Then, again, the Gugh, which, in the time of Borlase 
(about 100 years ago), was described as “a part of Agnes, and never 
divided from it but by high and boisterous tides,” is now at each period 
of spring-tides an island, and there is then sufficient depth of water 
in mid-channel for a boat to shoot across the bar. These considera- 
tions would seem to show that there has been a decided sinking of the 


14 THE GEOLOGIST. 


land in the vicinity of these islands even during the last century. 
Another fact, which came to my knowledge while sojourning in the 
isles, confirms me in this opinion. The masons who had been engaged 
in laying the foundations of a large warehouse, belonging to Mr, Kd- 
wards, a short distance from the strand in the Pool of St. Mary’s, 
assured me that when they had dug down several feet below the sur- 
face, they came across the remains of former wooden buildings which, 
at one time, must have been above the level of the sea, although they 
were thus found considerably below it. 

Possibly, at no very remote period, geologically speaking, the whole 
of this group to the north, including Bryer, Tresco, St. Martin’s, and 
the adjoining islets, have formed one continuous island, the soundings 
between the contiguous portions being still very shallow, so much so 
that several of them can be reached from the others by walking over 
the bars at low water. The question of their continuity at any former 
time with the mainland is one of greater difficulty ; for although the 
tradition previously referred to speaks of a large tract of country 
covered with parish churches, and called the ‘ Leonais,” as formerly 
uniting Scilly with Cornwall—and there are not wanting stories also 
of the remains of windows and doorways having been seen midway 
beneath the ocean in seasons of clear weather—yet no facts of a 
geologic character, in any way bearing out this view, have as yet been 
ascertained. I made the most careful search, during my stay in the 
islands, to discover, if it were possible, any traces of greenstone or 
clayslate in those parts of the islands looking towards the Cornwall 
shores, but I could discover nothing of the kind. On the summit of 
the promontory called the Hugh, forming a part of St. Mary’s, I did 
indeed find clayslate ; and on the very highest point of Newford Down, 
in a pit not far from the Telegraph Station, I met with similar traces ; 
but both of these points would be out of the line of communication with 
the nearest points of the Cornish coast, and they are only interesting 
inasmuch as they prove that some land, higher than any now existing 
in St. Mary’s, has formerly consisted of metamorphic rocks, the 
broken fragments of which, after having been subjected to the action 
of water, have been deposited in an irregularly stratified manner 
amidst the shattered débrs of the surrounding granitic rocks. The 
position in which I found these solitary traces of slate-rock was in a 


STATHAM—ON THE GEOLOGY OF THE SCILLY ISLES. 15 


pit to the right of the path leading from the Star Fort, on the Hugh, 
to the two dismantled windmills on the summit of the Downs. The 
pit consists almost exclusively of crumbling granitic rubble, so fre- 
quently met with almost immediately beneath the surface-soil in these 
islands ; but, in one corner of the pit, that to the south, the character 
of the rubble is entirely changed, and it consists of irregular angular 
fragments of hard clayslate, many of them of considerable size, lying 
in a kind of rough order, as though they had been broken by the 
action of the elements from some higher spot, and had rolled down 
and become tightly wedged in the position in which they are now 
found. Lying at no great distance (probably two feet) below the 
existing level, and isolated altogether from all the traces of any other 
rocks of a similar character, I was almost inclined to think, at first, 
they might have been the rough fragments left after some building- 
operations, which, in the lapse of ages, had allowed the surface-ground 
to have gradually formed above them ; but a closer inspection of the 
pit assured me that this could never have been the case ; indeed, the 
fragments were so diverse in shape, and their position in the midst of 
the granitic rubble so unmistakeable, that I could form no other 
opinion than that they belonged to some different class of rocks, now 
destroyed, and leaving no traces of their previous existence, save in 
these buried fragments. 

The general appearance of this group of islands, when approached 
from the east, is that of smooth, swelling lowlands, scattered in 
picturesque confusion on the bosom of the deep; Hangjague alone 
presenting the appearance of a rugged precipitous crag, almost 
of the shape of a sugar-loaf, and gleaming white in the sun. But, 
if visited from the north, by way of Round Island and Menavawr, 
or from the south-west, passing the Bishop Rock, the Crebawethans, 
and Annette, the aspect of the islands is entirely changed, 
and they show forth in all their dangerous and romantic beauty, 
fringing the sea with pinnacled crags and battlemented headlands, 
against which many a gallant vessel has dashed and gone down 
with its terrified crew. The cause of this difference of aspect is 
obvious. The wide Atlantic, rolling in its tremendous waves during 
stormy seasons of the equinoxes, sweeps against these exposed sides 
with almost incalculable force. To form some idea of its power when 


16 THE GEOLOGIST. 


thus lashed into fury by the winds, it may suffice to mention one fact, 
which is not in itself devoid of geological interest, inasmuch as it 
may serve to explain the occasional appearance of large blocks of 
stone in unexpected localities. In passing along Broad Sound from 
the south-east, there is an island called Great Crebawethan, which is 
probably in some way more exposed than others to this oceanic force. 
At any rate, there it is to be witnessed, standing probably eighteen 
or more feet out of the surface of the deep, at the highest spring- 
tides, with large boulders of granite, from halfaton to two tons 
weight, heaped upon its surface, as though the ballast of a dozen 
vessels had been discharged there by the hands of man, every 
stone of which, as I was assured by Mr. E. Douglass, the intelligent 
superintendent-engineer of the Bishop’s Lighthouse works, has been 
raised to its present position, and deposited there, by the force of 
the waves.* The total destruction, too, of the iron lighthouse upon’ 
the Bishop’s Rock, which, when near completion, was instantaneously 
uprooted, and dashed into the sea, on the night of February 5th, 
1850, may serve to convey an impression of the violent force to 
which the sides of the islands facing the Atlantic le exposed; and 
this will explain how it is that, when viewed in this direction, they 
appear rugged, precipitous, and excavated into caverns and gaps, while, 
approached from the eastern side, they lie smiling in the sun like 
fairy lands, or like the islands of the A%gean transplanted to our 
hyperborean shores. 

As the geologic features of St. Mary’s are more or less repro- 
duced on a smaller scale in the other islands, I shall now proceed 
to give a detailed account of its most important characteristics. It is 
an irregular-shaped elliptical island, having two peninsulas attached, 
one to the lower, or western, extremity—viz., the Hugh, now 
fortified for a garrison, on the isthmus of which Hugh Town, the 
capital of the Scilly Islands, is built ; and the other at the extreme 
end, south of the island, terminating in the bold promontory of 
Peninnis Head, which is surrounded by Path Cressa Bay, the Atlantic 
Ocean, and Old Town Bay. The surface of the island is very various, 


* Mr. Douglass also informed me that, when lodging on Rosevear island, to 
superintend the works connected with the Bishop Lighthouse, he had known 
blocks of granite twenty tons in weight to be moved some distance by the sea. 


- 


STATHAM—ON THE GEOLOGY OF THE SCILLY ISLES. 17 


the higher portions being constituted by the two peninsulas above- 
named ; and from the flat table-land of Newford Downs, an irregular 
ridge stretches from Inisidgen Point in the north, forking off in two 
branches to enclose the low marshy lands, about Carnfriars and Old 
Town Porth on the southern coast. The highest point probably in 
the whole island is the Telegraph upon Newford Down, which is 204 
feet above mean water-mark ; but the Downs on the top of the Hugh, 
and the ridge extending from Carn Thomas to Peninnis Head, cannot 
be much lower than this. The isthmus joining the Hugh to the | 
mainland of St. Mary’s is so low, that it has already been once or 
twice swept over by huge waves during severe tempests, and much 
injury done to the town; it is even possible that on some future 
occasion, should a strong breeze from the south or the south-west 
prevail at the time of spring-tides, it may be again devastated in a 
similar way, unless timely precautions be taken. From Permellin 
Bay on the north, to Old Town Bay on the south, the ground lis 80 
low and exposed, that if the sinking of the land, already referred to, 
should continue, the sea will, at some distant period, break through 
these two channels, and so divide the Hugh, on the one hand, and the 
peninsula formed by the above-named ridge, on the other, from the 
mainland of St. Mary’s, resolving them into three separate islands. 

In the valuable notice of the Geology of the Scilly Isles, by Joseph 
Carne, Esq., of Penzance, to which reference has already been slightly 
made, it is stated, that at that time (1850) “no excavations worthy 
of the names of quarries” existed, whereby to form a judgment of 
the nature of the soil. Since that date, however, numerous openings 
(some of them of considerable depth) have been made, chiefly for the 
purpose of procuring ballast, or stone for building-purposes, and I was 
enabled, therefore, by comparison of such welcome sections, to arrive 
at a fair estimate of the character of the several deposits to be found. 
No greater mistake can be made than to imagine that these are 
barren or unfruitful islands. Perhaps there is no land in the whole 
empire, which is so fertile, or so profitable to the cultivators, as many 
patches which might be pointed out in Scilly and in the adjoining 
portions of the Cornish coast. While I was residing at St. Mary’s, a 
notice appeared, in one of the local newspapers, of the price which a 
plot of ground, in the neighbourhood of St. Michael’s Mount, Corn- 

VOL, Il. U 


18 THE GEOLOGIST. 


wall, had just realized, It amounted to the almost fabulous sum of 
twenty pounds an acre, with a covenant, on the part of the lessor, that 
he should still reserve to himself the right of drawing one crop per 
annum. The richest market-garden land in the immediate neigh- 
bourhood of London does not fetch (so far as I am aware) more than 
twelve pounds an acre. I was informed, too, this was no unusual 
price for many plots on the Cornish coast, and, though the price may 
not range so high as this in any of the Scilly Isles, there can be no 
doubt that the soil is equally fertile, and the advantages of climate 
perhaps even superior to those of the most favoured Cornish fields. 
It may seem strange that a group of granite rocks should supply the 
London markets with vegetables of a superior quality to those pro- 
curable from places apparently much more eligibly situate ; but, 
nevertheless, it is a curious fact, that large fortunes have been, and 
still are being made, by sending up to the metropolis innumerable 
baskets of early potatoes—the growth of which is fostered not more by 
the genial character of the winter in these lonely isles than by the 
valuable qualities and admixtures of soil which have resulted in the 
course of ages from the decomposition and disintegration of the 
granite. I think it probable, also, that from the very circumstance 
of much of the soil lying immediately above the granite, it would 
enjoy a double advantage, viz., that of the radiation of heat upwards 
from the solid rock, which would obviously retain any imparted 
warmth derived from the sun’s rays for a longer time than a less 
compact subsoil ; secondly, the retention of a certain amount of 
moisture from the inability of the rain to sink very low beneath the 
surface. Certain it is, that with very slender means of manuring, 
except with burnt sea-weeds and crushed shells from the sea-shore, 
very abundant crops of cereals are continually reared, not only in 
St. Mary’s, but in all the other inhabited islands, while even those 
which are now uninhabited afford, by their decaying stone-hedges and 
walls, proofs that most of them have been once fully cultivated, and 
are still capable of supporting a large number of inhabitants. 

The various soils which are to be found superimposed upon the 
granite in the Island of St. Mary—and, so far as I could observe, the 
order and relation of them seemed precisely the same in St. Martin’s, 
St. Agnes’, and Tresco—were the following: Ist. A black surface-soil, 


STATHAM—ON THE GEOLOGY OF THE SCILLY ISLES, 19 


composed of decayed vegetable matter, and in many places largely 
intermixed with sand, either blown up from the adjoining beach or 
derived from intermixture with the underlying stratum ; 2d. A fine 
white or ash-coloured sand, in some places, as in the pit below the 
National Schools, containing fragments of shells; 5d. A dark reddish- 
or chocolate-brown clay, in many parts of considerable thickness, and 
haying angular blocks of half-decomposed granite disseminated through 
it; 4th. A stratum of loose grit, or rubbly granite, locally called “ram,” 
sometimes so comminuted as to look, at a short distance off, like 
a bed of cream-coloured limestone or sandstone, but more frequently 
coarse, and, in the portions resting upon the granite, mingled with large 
fragmentary masses of that rock. Finally, in the low and marshy 
grounds, as at Holy Vale, and in the 

neighbourhood of Carnfriars, traces of “®"’ giy, beneath Mouns Blasan 
a band of whitish pipe-clay have been 
found, the position of which is most pro- 
bably to be placed above the last 
deposit, although I was not able to meet 


with any section by which I could ascer- 
tain its exact order. The best locality 
for seeing at one view these various 
beds, is a pit immediately below Mount 
Flagon, on the bridle-path leading 
towards Porthloo Bay. The accom- 
panying diagram will give a fair idea 
of it. Between 3 and 4 the road-path 
intervenes, and No. 5 constitutes the 
low cliff at this part of Permellin Bay. 
The stratum No. 2 seems to take its 


rise a little beyond Carn Morval Point, 
1. Black surface-soil, mixed with sand 


where it can be seen capping th iff. (15 inebes). 
pping ene cliff, 2. Fine ash-coloured sand (5 feet). 


which is there much higher. and run- .3: Reddish and Chocolate-coloured 
5 “4 clay, having large blocks of coarse 


ning along the line of the coast, No. 2 sis mbedaedir feet, °° ON 

gradually thickens as it approaches St. Hanite Qu ieee 7S aT masses of 

Mary’s Bay, where it. assumes the * S7@mteteck 

greatest depth, exhibiting, in the neighbourhood of the National 

School, and in a section nearly opposite the Church, sandpits of con- 
c 2 


20 THE GEOLOGIST. 


siderable depth, from which large quantities of sand are continually 
carted for the purposes of ballast or manure. Other sections, similar 
to the above, are to be found further inland, the most interesting of 
which is that in a pit by the side of the road on the Green leading 
towards New Quay. The stratum of sand there is not, it is true, more 
than six inches thick, but lying, as it does, under about eight inches 
of soil, upon one of the highest points in the island, the section is 
valuable, as showing that, in all probability, at one time, the whole of 
the surface of the island has been capped with sand, which has been 
washed away from those portions where it is now deficient, leaving the 
underlying stratum of brown clay visible. The section in this pit I 
estimated as follows :— 

Surface Soil, 8 inches. 

Fine White Sand, 6 inches. 

Brown Clay, 2 feet. 

“Ram,” or coarse grit, 7 feet. 

Granite. 

The stratum No. 3 prevails very widely over the whole island, 
coming to the surface in all the lower lands, and forming the great 
bed in which agricultural and gardening operations are carried on. 
I traced it completely across the island to Tolman Point in one 
direction, and to Watermill Cove in the other. Its dark colour is in 
all probability due to the large proportion of oxide of iron which it 
has derived from the chemical decomposition of the mica of the disin- 
tegrated granite. No. 4 is a very instructive bed as developed in the 
various sections in which it is brought to light. It gives a thorough 
insight into the mode by which the apparently solid granite has in 
the course of ages been broken up and crumbled, and thus gradually 
submitted to the action of the elements, until its constituent parts 
have been resolved into strata serviceable to man. In many places 
within these islands, may be traced the several stages of decomposi- 
tion, from solid masses of granitic rock, to broken fragments, thence to 
crumbling rubble, and to coarse granitic sand, and the final passage 
into aluminous and siliceous earth from the degradation and decompo- 
sition of the felspar and quartz, in many places tinged deeply with 
the oxides of iron from the decaying mica. That the islands have been 
several times submerged, during the course of these successive changes 


STATHAM—ON THE GEOLOGY OF THE SCILLY ISLES. 21 


in the ages of the past, there can be little doubt ; for no other hypo- 
thesis could account for the finding of beds of siliceous sand on 
the highest points, and those sheltered from the action of the wind. 
T am aware that sand is to be found at moderate heights which has 
undoubtedly been drifted up from below, and many portions of land 
which were once productive have been rendered useless from this 
cause. 

Troutbeck, in his history of the Islands, mentions the finding of 
human bones interred in a spot of waste land called the “ Neck of the 
Pool,” in St. Martin’s, where upwards of twenty feet of sand had accu- 
mulated in the course of time over the ground once used as a burial- 
place. And in St. Mary’s I noticed a similar accumulation of drift-sand 
which, from the peculiarity of its appearance, and the shape it had 
assumed, was one of the most interesting features of the island. It 
was at the turn of the coast between Bar Point and Inisidgen Isle. 
The sand forming Crow Bar, and extending very widely between St. 
Mary’s and St. Martin’s, is at this point almost entirely composed of 
minute fragments of white quartz, so that the waters seem to repose 
upon a bed of porcelain, and present much the appearance of water 
in a swimming-bath lined with Dutch tiles. Quantities of this beau- 
tifully white sand have been blown by the strong currents of wind 
occasionally driving from the south-west, and have been deposited in 
drifts around Bar Point, and up the adjoining steep for a considerable 
distance. In the bright glare of a summer sun they look exactly like 
snow-drifts, and as you walk over them and leave impressions of your 
footsteps in the sand, the illusion, so far, is almost as complete as if you 
were suddenly transplanted into an Arctic region, and were absolutely 
treading upon snow. But the sand to which I have referred above as 
existing in the several sections, either on the coast or inland, is of a 
widely different character from this, or indeed from that of any other 
of the sands now found upon the coasts. It is finer, more strictly 
siliceous, and, from its compactness, evidently of more ancient deposi- 
tion. I take it, therefore, that its presence upon points of the highest 
range is decisive as to the former submergence of the land. But 
there is another very curious geologic feature which will tell the same 
tale. Immediately behind the guard-house, inside the gateway of the 
garrison on the Hugh, is a kind of shallow cavern, now used as a place 


22 THE GEOLOGIST. 


for storing lumber. The rough blocks of granite have fallen from the 
top of the entrance so as to form a rude arch, and irabedded in the rock 
forming the sides of the entrance are to be seen several large round 


Lign. 2,—Natural Cave on the Hugh—a, a, Rounded Boulders of Granite. 


boulders of granite, almost as regular as if they had been turned in 
a lathe, and compactly fixed in the matrix of the rock. Now this 
spot is considerably above the present level of the sea, probably from 
150 to 180 feet, and the boulders of granite bear all the marks of 
having been long rolled on a rough sea-beach. Moreover, I was 
assured by the masons to whom I referred above, that they had been 
engaged in repairing the guard-house floor; and on digging beneath it, 
they found other boulders, of precisely the same character as those at 
the sides of the cave, firmly imbedded in the soil. It is manifest, then, 
that the spot now adjoining the guard-house must once have been on 
a level with the surrounding sea, or, at any rate, at no great elevation 
above it, for glacial action alone would be, I conceive, scarcely suf- 
ficient to account for the presence of these rounded boulders, so deeply 
impacted in the solid rock. 

It becomes interesting, therefore, to inquire whether there are 
any traces of volcanic or subterranean action still visible in these 
islands, to which this upheaving of the land, after one or, it 
may have been, frequent submersions, may be attributed. And a 
careful investigation will bring to light several proofs of such 
volcanic or subterranean force. In the direction of the causeway, 


STATHAM—ON THE GEOLOGY OF THE SCILLY ISLES. 23 


which, at low water, joins Taylor’s Island to the main and of St. 
Mary’s, I detected the existence of a trachytic vein about twelve feet 
wide, crossed by joints in the granite running south-west by south. 
On each side of this dyke the granite is altered in character, and, from 
being of the white coarse character so common in this island, assumes 
a brownish, speckled, and porphyritic nature. I imagine that the 
heat occasioned by the irruption of this trachytic vein has fused the 
surrounding granite, or in some way altered the character of its 
constituents,* causing them to re-arrange themselves in a different 
form; for the granite upon Taylor’s Island is found to contain 
crystals of tourmaline replacing the mica. The dyke probably ex- 
tends a good way inland, as [ noticed, at a deep well, cut in the rocks, 
near Newford Down, that such porphyritic granite seemed to abound 
about all those parts; indeed, the blocks lying in all directions, do 
not at first sight present the appearance of granite at all; and it 
requires a close inspection to be assured that they are really granite. 
On the north side of Porthloo Bay, likewise at low water, I found 
portions of a porphyritic ridge running parallel with the line of coast, 
stretching out to Newford Island, at north-west by west. But by far 
the most interesting relic of igneous action is to be found in the por- 
phyritic dyke, or elvan-course, in Watermill Bay, near New Quay, to 
the north-east of the island. Attention was called, in one of the 
earliest volumes of the Transactions of the Geological Society of Corn- 
wall, to this remarkable geological feature, in a paper entitled “ The 
Geology of some parts of Cornwall and the Scilly Isles.” The writer 
expresses therein his belief that the mass of surrounding granite was 
“decidedly stratified ;” and, so far as mere appearances are concerned, 
any unscientific observer would readily concur in such an opinion. Mr. 
Joseph Carne, in the able paper to which I have already made allusion, 
thus adverts to this interesting phenomenon. “ At Watermill Bay 
in St. Mary’s, the pebbles on the beach indicate the contiguity 
of porphyry and porphyritic granite ; and on the south side of it, 
between the rivulet and the curious little quay called New Quay, 


* The constituents of Felspar are, according to Rose, silica 65.91, alumina 
21.00, lime or magnesia 0.11, potash 10.18, or soda 3.50. Those of Tourmaline, 
according to Rammelsberg, silica 37.80, lime or magnesia 1.42, alumina 30.56, 
soda 2.09, iron 0.50, or manganese 2.50, other substances 9.90. The iron might 
be procured from the mica, which contains from 4.56 to 27.06 of that metal, 
according to the analysis of Kobell and Turner. 


24 THE GEOLOGIST. 


there is what has been called by some an elvan-course, and by others 
a mass of decidedly stratified granite. This is of considerable length, 
and rises aboye the granite adjoining it on each side, and seems to lie 
in thick beds, subdivided into smaller strata, and dipping at a large 
angle about north-north-west. It is decidedly porphyry, with small 
crystals of quartz and felspar. The adjoining granite has likewise the 
same stratified appearance. The question is, whether the lines of 
division of the apparent strata are joints, or whether the whole has 
a slaty structure. The former appears to me the most probable.” 


Lign. 3.—Porphyritic Dyke or Elvan-course, at Watermill Bay, St. Mary’s, Scilly; visible only 
at low-water. 


The shaded portion, a, b, c, represents the ridge of porphyry, of lemon-yellow colour at a, or 
Erol cr about 40 degreva: and dopacndy qraiies °° ce a ccna 

Mr. Carne does not enter into any argument to show why he con- 
siders that the apparently slaty structure of the granite contiguous 
to this porphyritic ridge is due to joints in the rock itself; but I 
think it will be obvious to any careful geologist that this must be the 
case, when he considers this simple fact of the false stratification being 
confined to the granite in the immediate neighbourhood of the por- 
phyry ; and, secondly, that this appearance is equally visible on both 
sides of the erupted mass. The whole question of the origin of joints in 
the granite is one of a most interesting character ; and I believe few 
localities will be found capable of throwing more light upon the sub- 
ject than this. Mr, J. Henwood, C.E., has brought a vast amount of 
industry and experience to the task of unravelling the mystery, in his 
admirable reports upon the “ Metalliferous Deposits of Cornwall and 
Devon,” read before the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall, between 
1830 and 183 6, and subsequently published in a separate yolume. He, 


STATHAM—ON THE GEOLOGY OF THE SCILLY ISLES. OP) 


as well as Mr. Carne, has shown, that though these cracks or joints 
seem at first sight to run in a variety of directions, they are found, 
upon more careful examination, to be reducible, in most granitic 
districts, to three distinct classes ; viz. 1. horizontal, or parallel with the 
grain of the rock; 2. vertical or perpendicular, having generally a 
direction north-north-west and south-south-east ; and, 3. vertical, 
but having a direction from east and west to east-north-east and 
west-south-west. In Mr. Henwood’s report, a tabulated view is 
given of the directions of the joints in the different mines which 
came under his inspection; but, if I mistake not, no comparison 
is attempted to be drawn with the respective lines of the elvan- 
courses, nor of any indications of the lines of igneous action, 
which may have been presented in the mines. Now, I cannot but 
think it probable that, as in the case before us, if the course of 
the erupted igneous matter were previously ascertained, some 
decided connexion would be discovered between those lines and the 
direction of the joints in the surrounding granite. For what is more 
consonant to reason, than that the heated matter which has at one 
time pushed its way upwards, either filling some existing cavity in the 
granite, or thrusting it aside in its upward course, should so fuse and 
melt that rock, or so thoroughly charge it with heat, as in cooling it 
would possess a tendency to crack in some definite direction and 
according to some definite law? It is obvious that, if this were at any 
time the case, the joints or cracks, in whatever direction they might 
be, whether parallel to the line of the heated matter, or at right 
angles to it, would all have a tendency to run the same way; and, 
thus, when decomposition subsequently commenced, and portions of 
the rock began to break away in fragments along the line of joints, 
an appearance of stratification would, in the course of time, be 
brought about, just as we might produce the same appearance in an 
ordinary brick-kiln, by removing tiers of bricks in regular order, 
and leaving others standing in an inclined but orderly succession. I 
do not know whether I shall by this simple illustration render my 
meaning clear, but I cannot help thinking that, in the case of the 
porphyritic ridge of Watermill Bay, the “decidedly stratified” 
appearance of the granite is entirely due to some such action. The 
granite has, in all probability, at some distant time covered the por- 


26 THE GEOLOGIST. 


phyry, but, having been thoroughly cracked or jointed in one given 
direction by cooling, after having been heated by contiguity with the 
erupted mass, it has become liable to split into blocks formed by the 
transverse sections of the joints themselves ; and these blocks having 
been removed by the action of the waves, which cover the whole reef 
at high water, the porphyry has become exposed to view, and being 
harder than the granite has resisted the force of the water, while the 
granite has been, not exactly worn, but gradually split in such a 
manner as now to lie in ledges against the porphyritic ridge, present- 
ing the curious and unusual appearance which I have attempted to 
describe. This undoubted action of the elements upon the granite in 
other parts of the island has produced some curious results ; but I 
fear the length to which my remarks have already led me will scarcely 
allow of my doing more than briefly to advert to them. At Peninnis 
Head, at Giant’s Castle, at Old Town Porth, at the Pulpit, and 
Clapper Rocks, and at various other places in St. Mary’s, admirable 
examples occur of almost columnar structure brought about by the 
wearing away of the granite in the direction of the vertical or trans- 
verse joints. Some of these are on a most magnificent scale. The 
Pulpit Rock affords an example of one large mass of granite, estimated 
at 40 feet long, poised in a projecting position like the sounding- 


Lign. 4.—Granite Blocks at Porth Hellick. 


board of a pulpit, and maintained in its place by a large mass of 
disk-like rock at the base, and effected entirely by the operation of 
natural causes. At Porth Hellick—the reputed spot at which the 


STATHAM—ON THE GEOLOGY OF THE SCILLY ISLES. 27 


body of Sir Cloudesley Shovel was washed ashore, after the dreadful 
wreck of the “ Association ” and two other vessels on the 22nd Oct., 
1705, when between 1,500 and 2,000 men perished miserably—there 
is a remarkable group of rocks. As if to commemorate this terrible 
disaster, one of the piles of granite has become so curiously worn as 
to present a rude resemblance to the shipwrecked admiral, conspi- 
cuous as he was for the use of that peculiar triangular hat which is 
still called after his name. ‘To a lively imagination the mass of stone 
in the adjoining block may present some resemblance to the admiral’s 
favourite dog, which he carried continually with him, and which 
perished with him in the wreck. There are many other highly inte- 
resting masses of granite in the several islands, which afford curious 
configurations from the degradation or decomposition of the rock 
from atmospheric or other causes. The Logan Stone on the ledge 
beneath Giant’s Castle, for example; or the Tooth Rock, near 
Peninnis Head ; or the Kettle and Pans, near the same locality, which 
might afford us some convincing arguments against the theory of 
Druidical rock-basins. The curious caverns, too, which exist in these 
islands, as, for instance, Piper’s Hole in St. Mary’s, with its roof of 
supposed regenerated granite, having blocks or boulders imbedded in 
it, and the singular occurrence of red alternating with white granite, 
may induce some more competent geologists than myself to visit this 
interesting locality, and to increase our knowledge of the curious 
phenomena which these islands present to the careful student of the 
wonders of nature. 


28 


THE GEOLOGY OF HOOK POINT. 
By Professor R. Harxnuss, F.R.S. F.G.S. 


THERE is something about the margins of Ireland, as seen on a map, 
and even more so when these margins are visited, which gives to this 
island a peculiar rugged aspect. Its northern, western, and southern 
sides are penetrated by deep bays, and cut into prominent headlands 
by the force of the waves of the Atlantic ; and this erosive power of 
the ocean has not only added much to the boldness and beauty of its 
coasts, but has also revealed to us much information concerning its 
physical structure, and the conditions under which many of its rocky 
masses were formed. 

Among the many promontories which stand out to tell us of the 
destructive operations of the restless sea, is one which forms the 
western extremity of the county of Wexford, and which is known as 
Hook Point. This has its records of history in connexion with the 
state and condition of Ireland at a period when that country first 
became the permanent abode of the Saxon. 

A short distance eastward from Hook lies Bag-un-brun, the spot 
on which the Normans first trod in Ireland, when 1,300 English, led 
by Strongbow, arrived to assist and foster those international quarrels 
which rendered that country an easy conquest for its foreign foe. 

Hook Point has, however, a more ancient record to reveal—a history 
of a state of things long antecedent to the period ere Ireland’s 

*“ Faithless sons had betrayed her.” 
In its stony bosom, torn and lacerated by the angry waves, is written 
the history of circumstances and conditions which existed at a time, 
not only long previous to the English invasion, but antecedent to the 
existence of the human race on the surface of the globe,—even 
anterior to the time when many of those Jands which are now the 
abode of the human family were elevated from the bosom of their 
parent ocean, The stony hieroglyphics of Hook Point speak to us of 
a period so far back in the abyss of Time, that if we contrast this 
period with that of other rocky records, we can only arrive at the 
conclusion, that long ere the heads of the Alps or the Himalayas were - 


HARKNESS—THE GEOLOGY OF HOOK POINT. 29 


lifted up, the stony matter of Hook was formed, and had the arrange- 
ment which it now exhibits to us. 

Its rocks are older than the great mass of rocks which afford the 
food of the steam-engine,—man’s great organ of progress, —and they 
equal in antiquity the hard grey limestones of the north of England, 
which support the coal-bearing beds of that region. 

Hook Point is a spot of much geological interest, and the limestones 
of which, in a great measure, it consists are perfect charnel-houses of 
solid skeletons of beings which existed in an ancient sea. 

Although Hook Point is composed of strata which are known to 
the geologist under the name of the Carboniferous Limestone, these 
are not the only rocks which enter into the composition of the 
promontory terminating in this headland. The whole of the geology 
in connexion with this portion of the county of Wexford is of great 
interest, and tells of circumstances and agencies which produced 
different results, as these several conditions and agencies differed from 
each other. The structure of the great mass of the county of Wexford 
consists of rocky strata, which are designated Lower Silurian, and which 
are equivalent, in geological age, with the great mass of rocks forming 
the mountainous range traversing Scotland from north-north-east to 
south-south-west, south of the Forth and Clyde, and which is now known 
under the general name of the Southern Highlands of Scotland. Wales, 
too, has rocks which occupy the same geological position ; and from the 
circumstance that these rocks are well developed in the neighbourhood 
of the town of Llandeilo, the illustrious author of the Silurian System 
has given them the name of Llandeilo-flags. In the south of Ireland 
these Lower Silurian rocks consist not only of deposits such as emanate 
from the ordinary action of marine causes, but they have, associated 
with the usual products of aqueous action, beds of ashes resulting 
from the matter evolved from ancient volcanos, which were in active 
operation at that remote geological epoch; and these volcanic ashes, 
falling upon the surface of the ancient sea, were sifted and arranged, 
and finally deposited among shells and corals, imbedding these animal 
remains often in particles which retain, to a great extent, their original 
crystalline form, as the ash of felspathic lava. None of these ancient 
ashes enter into the structure of the promontory of which Hook Point 
forms the southern termination, although they approach very nearly 


30 THE GEOLOGIST. 


thereto. The mass of rocky strata which more pr< perly appertains 
to Hook has an age much more recent, and the older rocks have 
undergone not only consolidation, but have been subjected to the 
action of violent subterranean forces, which have bent, twisted, and 
elevated the older masses, long previous to the period when the 
conditions prevailed which gave rise to these newer rocks which make 
up the headland of Hook. Those more ancient rocks have to a con- 
siderable extent furnished the materials out of which a portion of the 
Hook promontory was constructed, and they afford evidence that, 
after the twistings and elevations referred to, a portion of their area 
formed the margins of the sea from whence resulted the rocky masses 
which more immediately support the Carboniferous limestones of Hook 
Point. The western side of Hook, at a small bay near the village of 
Templetown, among the rocks of the coast, gives us an insight into 
the physical causes which were the prelude to those conditions from 
which the limestones, rich in organic remains, emanated. Here we 
find coarse sandstones, and sometimes there are what are known to 
geologists under the name of conglomerates, consisting of rounded 
pebbles cemented together by a sandstone-base, and recording in their 
structure the fact of their having been originally fragments broken 
by the action of ancient waves from previously existing rocky coasts, 
aud afterwards ground upon each other, each one rubbing from its 
neighbour its angularity and asperities in the same manner that we 
find, at the present time, the sea-margins of even rocky coast fringed 
by an outline of pebbly beach, the result of the force and abrading 
power of the ever-restless ocean. _ 

These conditions of an agitated sea, preceding the formation of the 
newer and overlying rocks, were succeeded by features of a more 
tranquil nature, with respect to the ancient physical geography of 
this portion of Ireland. The sandstones became gradually less coarse ; 
and in the strata which are intermediate between the conglomerates 
below and the limestones above, traces of organic beings begin to make 
their appearance. These consist of fragments of land-plants, having 
a coaly aspect, and, on the whole, indistinct as to their characters. 
They bear about them sufficient evidence to show that they formerly 
flourished on the surface of the earth as the stems of ferns; and 


from their nature and geological position, there is strong reason for 


HARKNESS—THE GEOLOGY OF HOOK POINT. 31 


concluding that they are the relics of that form of fern which is so 
abundant in rocks of the same age in the county of Kilkenny—the 
Cyclopteris Hibernica of the late Professor EK. Forbes,—a fern which also 
makes its appearance among contemporaneous strata in the county of 
Berwickshire, at Prestonhaugh, near Dunse, associated with a Pterich- 
thys—one of the fossil fish so well described by the late Hugh Miller. 

In Ireland, however, this fern has no such companion in its burial. 
In Kilkenny we, however, find it associated with a bivalve-shell (the 
Anodon Jukesiv) of such a character as to lead to the inference that in 
some localities fresh-water lakes exerted some influence in the produc- 
tion of these sandstones antecedent to the period of the Carboniferous 
limestones. 

These sandstones, and their associated conglomerates, bear about 
them features which indicate that they have been subjected to violent 
forces since they were deposited, and even subsequent to their consoli- 
dation. These are very beautifully marked by the phenomena known 
to geologists under the name of jointing; and these phenomena are 
nowhere better exhibited than in the district about Hook Point. 
These joints consist of divisional planes, which in this locality are for 
the most part perpendicular, and run in nearly a north and south 
direction. These planes not only separate the masses of rock into 
distinct portions, but they also exhibit themselves in the form of 
narrow openings, which seem to have resulted either from a rigid 
mass breaking itself up into distinct portions in consequence of great 
pressure, or from each separate portion—included between two joints 
—so shrinking as to leave intervals arranged in such a manner that 
these intervals shall be nearly constant and uniform in their course. 
There is about these joints which intersect the conglomerates a 
feature of great interest ; and this feature is not confined to the 
country about Hook, but likewise manifests itself in many other 
localities where we have jointed conglomerates. The quartz-pebbles 
which enter largely into the structure of these conglomerates, have 
been cut through by the force which has produced these joints in such 
a manner as to exhibit regular smooth faces, as perfect and uniform 
as the faces of an apple when cut through by a knife. There are so 
many features in connexion with jointing in general, and so many 
phenomena of a complex character, that of all geological problems, 


32 THE GEOLOGIST. 


jointing is about the most difficult to render a satisfactory account of, 
or to find a solution for. Pressure and shrinkage are the two causes to 
which*these phenomena have been attributed, and the influence of the 
former seems to have been that by means of which we can best explain 


the features manifested by this portion of the physical geology of Hook. 
(To be continued.) 


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 
By Dr. T. L. Puipson or Paris. 


Recent Earthquake at Lisbon —Another Earthquake at Biarrite— 
M. Lejeunes “ Lectures on the Geology of France”—A generalization 
by Alexander Von Humboldt—A word by Georges Cuvier—Burning 
Coal-pits of ? Aveyron—Formation of Alum—Salt-basins of 1 Hérault 
—Waterfall of Gavarnie—A passage from the “ Views of Nature” 
—French Kaolin—Death and Writings of Madame Ida Pfeiffer— 
Submarine Volcano near Leghorn—Supposed vertebrate remains in 
the Silurian Strata. 


An earthquake took place at a quarter past seven and at nine in the 
morning of the 11th of November last, in Lishon and some of the pro- 
vincial towns of Portugal. The first shock, which some accounts divide 
into two distinct ones, lasted fully half a minute, and shook every house 
in Lisbon ; the vibrations of the soil were apparently in a north-south 
direction. This is said to have been the most violent earthquake ex- 
perienced in Lisbon since the great one of 1755, and very little more 
vibration could not have failed to produce the most disastrous conse- 
quences. Many chimneys fell, and walls were thrown down or cracked ; 
but it is said that no building was destroyed completely, although one 
death was caused by the falling of a half-built wall at the Ecole Poly- 
technique. At Villa Franca another death occurred, and at Cintra and 
Mafra a good deal of injury was done to the houses. But of all the 
accounts hitherto received, those from St. Ubes, about eight leagues 
from Lisbon, on the south side of the mouth of the Tagus, are the most 
distressing. A great number of houses were thrown down, and some 
of the inhabitants were buried in the ruins. 

This earthquake was preceded by two days of aia incessant 
rain. 

M. de Monfort has addressed a letter to the Abbé Moigno, editor 
of Le Cosmos, describing an earthquake, the first he ever witnessed, 
felt at Biarritz on the 29th of November last :—At about one o'clock 
in the afternoon, a dark fog floated heavily in the air, giving to the 
horizon an unusual tint that made M. de Monfort suppose that some- 
thing extraordinary was about to happen. Indeed, he was so influ- 


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. ag 


enced by the existing state of things that he actually spoke of earth- 
quakes to some persons present. His head felt heavy and weary, and 
he quitted his office quite overcome. A Réaumur thermometer marked 
fifteen degrees and a half. The sea was furious and of a grey colour, 
and M. de Monfort’s dog had hidden himself under a bed. Two sheep 
that were grazing in a court-yard escaped and hid themselves. 

It was ten minutes to one when, standing upin the middle of his 
room, he felt the floor moving, and perceived the objects on the table 
in motion also. He was immediately aware that it was an earthquake, 
and saw distinctly the oscillatory motion of his house, by comparing 
the level of his window-ledge with that of the sea. These oscillations 
may have lasted about four or five seconds, and took place very regu- 
larly in a north-south direction. M. de Monfort counted three of them. 
The direction of these oscillations was observed likewise by all of whom 
he inquired concerning them. It was moreover indicated by objects 
hanging from the ceilings of the dining-room and kitchen ; they con- 
tinued to oscillate five minutes or more after the phenomenon had 
ceased. An hour afterwards the dark fog had disappeared, and the 
sun’s rays darted down with all the fierce heat of an August day, 
although the thermometer had not varied. A storm-cloud then dark- 
ened the heavens ; its electricity was dissipated by a few lightning 
flashes and a little thunder. M. de Monfort did not learn that this 
earthquake was accompanied by any damage to habitations. 

The detail of this account renders it very interesting. The Abbé 
Moigno adds to this letter, from the accounts given by various French 
papers, that the phenomena observed by M. de Monfort at Biarritz had 
also been remarked at Bayonne, Anglez, and Saint-Palais :—‘ In several 
other places doors were slammed, persons were knocked down, a shep- 
herd saw the animals in his flock lifted up; the fruit of the cypress 
tree moved on the ground as if agitated by a violent wind. At a place 
called Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port some tiles were detached from a roof, a 
chimney fell, strong beams were heard to crack with much noise, fur- 
niture and clocks were put into violent motion. The oscillations of 
the ground seemed to be accompanied by a deafening noise; people 
walking stumbled as if the ground was taken suddenly from under 
their feet.” 

A small work has just appeared in France, entitled “Lectures sur la 
Géologie de la France,” together with another, taken from the first, 
entitled “Zectures sur les Pyrénées.’ The author, M. Lejeune, has 
published the first of these with a view of popularizing the study of 
Geology in his native country. It is composed of a series of lectures 
delivered by him to a Literary Society (now no longer existing), and 
he has found it necessary every now and then to pass beyond the 
limits of the country in which he is more particularly interested, in 
order to render his lectures more interesting and agreeable. The 
other volume is a brochure treating only of the Pyrenees ; it is ex- 
tracted from the furmer work, and is destined for the use or amuse- 
ment of the numerous strangers who visit these remarkable mountains, 


VOL. II. D 


4 THE GEOLOGIST. 


ie) 


In publishing his Lectures on the Geology of France, M. Lejeune does 
not pretend to have produced a book from his personal investigations, 
but a work compiled from the best authorities, in which, however, the 
author has been able to add, here and there, details of his own. 

It is now established beyond a doubt, that it is impossibie to have 
even a mediocre knowledge of any country, without being to a certain 
extent a geologist. It is many years since Alexander von Humboldt, 
in some of his admirable writings, made us familiar with the fact, that, 
throughout Nature, rocks alone show themselves identical in each 
hemisphere, in every latitude. Passing from one climate to another, 
we see, for instance, birch-trees, oaks, and maples, give place to palm- 
trees, opuntias, and bamboos; deer, rabbits, and wolves, to camels, 
lions, elephants, &c.; whilst granite is granite in every clime ; amphi- 
bole, porphyry, and basalt are found to be identical from one pole to 
the other ; sand, clay, and limestone are everywhere similar. 

Georges Cuvier, however, said one day, and with much truth, that 
every mineral has its use, and upon its greater or less abundance in 
such or such a place, or upon the greater or less facility with which it 
can be extracted, often depends the prosperity of a nation, its progress 
in civilization, and the whole detail of its manners and customs. This 
is certainly saying enough of the importance of Geology and Mine- 
ralogy; and we perceive that these beautiful sciences, so intimately 
connected with Chemistry and Physics, attract more and more each 
day the attention of the admirers of Nature. 

But to return to M. Lejeune. His book is not divided into very 
characteristic sections, except that he passes in succession from one 
geological massif of France to another. It is rather a series of 
chapters, written simply and clearly, each of which constitutes an 
interesting excursion into some French province, or into some neigh- 
bouring country. We will analyse a few passages :— 

In speaking of Aveyron, our author relates that this part of France, 
bordering on the voleanic formations of Auvergne, presents to us, not 
ancient voleanos which once upon a time vomited floods of lava, but 
hills of Coal-formation, where, some centuries ago, damp air and spring- 
water occasioned the phenomenon of spontaneous combustion, which 
continues to the present day. This combustion, kept up by the 
chemical change going on in the decomposition of iron-pyrites, the 
formation of sulphate of iron, sulphate of alumina, &c. “ produces 
crystals of alum in such quantity as would supply with this substance 
the entire wants of French industry.”’* The conflagration going on in 
these Coal-beds is hardly perceptible in the day-time; but in the dark- 
ness of night one sees many little craters throwing up volumes of 
vapour, the production of which is maintained by the water that 
constantly filters through the soil. The people living near one of these 
hills, hoping to extinguish the combustion, directed to the place all 
the little rivulets of the neighbourhood ; but, instead of producing the 


* The alum thus produced is no doubt iron-alum, ¢.e. sulphate of iron and 
alumina,—T. L. P. 


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. ay) 


desired effect, the water of the streams augmented its intensity to such 
a degree, that every one feared an explosion would have taken place. 

A little further on, we have a description of the Salines de ( Hérault, 
or Salt-basins of Hérault. They ave large quadrangular basins, in 
depth a few inches below the level of the sea, and surrounded by banks 
to retain the sea-water. ‘The latter enters at high tide, by an opening 
which is then immediately closed, and a little fresh water is added 
from the neighbouring springs. By evaporation, the salt is deposited 
in thin crusts, and, as fast as these form, new supplies of salt water are 
allowed to enter. When a layer of salt some 27 or 33 centimétres in 
thickness has been obtained, it is taken out and piled up into triangular 
heaps, which are covered with grass, rushes, &c. aud allowed to dry, 
whilst awaiting exportation. 

The following is given by M. Lejeune concerning the falls of Ga- 
varnie :— In the Hautes Pyrénées, the cascade of Gaavarnie is fed by 
the perpetual snows which cover the summit of a circular wall of rock, 
having a vertical height of 389 méctres. This circle is so vast, and the 
purity of the air in mountainous districts is so adverse to the just 
appreciation of distances, that being placed one day near the falls, I 
perceived something on the opposite side of the semicircle of rocky 
wall, that appeared to be a fly about to crawl over... . This fly turned 
out to be asmuggler on his way to the bréche de Roland.” —Here is 
something similar in the charming Views of Nature of Baron Von 
Humboldt :—‘“ The transparency of mountain air is so great near the 
equator, that, in the province of Quito, I was able to distinguish with- 
out the aid of a telescope the white cloak (poncho) of a gentleman at a 
horizontal distance of 84,132 feet... . It was my friend, M. Bonpland, 
who had just left the charming villa of the Marquis de Solvalegre, 
and was walking along the dark-coloured sides of the volcano of 
Pichincha.” ; 

The decomposition of certain varieties of Granite, and above all of 
Peomatite in the central mountains of France, has produced many 
different qualities of Kaolin, so extensively used in the manufacture 
of porcelain. M. Lejeune informs us that the white Kaolin of Saint- 
Yrieux, near Limoges, notwithstanding the great variety of rocks 
accumulated as if were in this district, is extremely pure. It is found 
to extend in a bed many kilométres long, and sometimes is seen 
peuetrating the rocks, like lodes or veins, attaining here and there 
twenty métres in thickness. This bed of Kaolin has supplied the 
porcelain-manufactory of Sévres since the year 1765, and not only 
furnishes the best material to all the china-manufactories of Paris, but 
_is even sent out to the United States of America. 

In passing near the town of Limoges, our author has evidently 
forgotten to pick up a specimen of the common variety of Emerald 
Which serves to pave the coach-road from that town in the direction 
of Paris. We will terminate here what we had to say of his book. 
It is written in a lively style, and is one which will contribute to 
inspire a taste for Geology, at the same time giving its readers a desire 

D 2 


36 THE GEOLOGIST. 


to consult works of a higher order ; and, if we mistake not, such has 
been the author's intention. 

We are grieved to learn the death of the celebrated traveller, 
Madame Ida Pfeiffer, who has been known for some time to our English 
readers by her “ Visit to Iceland,” “ The Scandinavian North,” “ Tr quel 
in the Holy Land, Egypt and Italy,” or perhaps better still by “A 
Woman's Journey round the World, and “A Woman's Second Journey 
round the World.” The writings of the late Madame Ida Pfeiffer are 
more adapted for the general reader than the scientific world. She 
appears to have tre avelled from pure curiosity to see the different places 
she has visited, and her works are naturally of a very interesting 
character. It is rarely that she speaks of the geological formations 
of the numerous spots on which her feet have trod, though in her 
‘““ Visit to Iceland,” for instance, she speaks of what she saw at the 
Geysers, without, however, bringing away any new scientific fact. 
Here is a passage from her work entitled “4A Woman's Journey round 
the World,” which is not uninteresting in a mineralogical sense, and 
which will perhaps give an idea of her style of writing. Speaking 
of the environs of Valparaiso, she says -—“ Persons. discoveri ing 
mines are highly favoured, and have full right of property to their 
discovery, being ‘obliged only to notify the same to the government. 
This license is pushed to such an extent, that if, for instance, a person 
can advance any plausible grounds for asserting that he has found a 
mine under a church, or a house, &e. he is at liberty to have either 
pulled down provided he is rich enough to pay for the damage. 
About fifteen years ago a donkey-driver accidentally hit upon a pro- 
ductive silver-mine. He was driving several asses over the mountain 
when one of them ran away. He seized a stone and was about to 
throw it after the animal, but stumbled and fell to the ground, while 
the stone escaped from his grasp and rolled away. Rising i in a great 
passion, he snatched up a second stone, and had ‘stretched his arm to 
throw it, when he was surprised by its enormous weight. He looked 
at it more closely, and perceived that it was streaked with veins of pure 
silver. He preserved the stone as a treasure, marked the spot, drove 
his asses home, and then communicated his ‘discovery to one of his 
friends who was a miner. . . . In a few years both were rich men.’ 

But, to return to Geology.—At Leghor n, recently, a thick smoke was 
perceived to arise from the water in the new port, and it was feared 
that a vessel was on fire; it turned out, however, that it was occasioned 
by a submarine volcano, and the authorities deemed it advisable to 
remove at once the gunpowder magazine to a distance. We hope to 
receive more news of this by and by. 

In one of the recent meetings of the Academy of Sciences, at Paris, 
M. Marie Rouault called attention to what he supposed to be the 
remains of some vertebrate animals from the Silurian schists of 
St. Leonhard in Brittany. M. de Verneuil, having subsequently 
visited the locality, has obtained several of these fossils, called “ eels” 
by the quarrymen, and finds that they are merely pyritous casts of 


NOTES AND QUERIES. hd 


fucoidal bodies. On this visit he discovered that these Silurian slaty 
schists are underlaid by a Lingula-bearing sandstone, of probably the 
same age as the Potsdam sandstone of North Ameriea, and the 


Lingula-flags of Wales. 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 


CoMMUNICATIONS FROM CoLonists.—“ In a community so small, so occupied 
with business, and in general so destitute of all taste for science, as a colonial 
town, where there are no men who combine the leisure and means with the 
inclination to foster scientific inquiries, it is all up-hill work to the amateur in 
science. He has no one to sympathize with and assist him in his difficulties, nor 
to share his triumph in success; while, if engaged in professional duties, the 
lg regard the time spent in his scientific pursuits as worse than wasted. I 

ve always observed the public are more tolerant of cards or billiards than of 
Geology or Botany. The appreciation of our labours at home is the only reward 
we can look forward to. ‘he colonial public is profoundly ignorant of and 
indifferent to science. I wish much that some means could be devised by which 
such questions as those we wish to submit to special Geologists, could be answered 
by eminent men, without directly troubling them with letters, which I am quite 
sensible must be a great and unjustifiable tax on their valuable time. Many 
difficulties beset the early progress of the colonial Geologist in his science, which 
he has no means of getting over but by referring to Europe ; and he is often too 
straitened in means to afford to pay for an analysis. Some years ago, a lengthy 
dispute, as to whether a given rock was igneous or aqueous, was terminated by 
sending home a specimen of it, which was pronounced to be oxide of iron and 
quartz. In this case, certainly, the disputants ought to have settled their argu- 
ment by an appeal to the blowpipe; but there are many cases in which the 
authority of eminent gentlemen of the scientific Societies at home would clear up 
difficulties, and encourage to further exertions. As I said before, men at home 
work with hope that their labours will lead to distinction ; here we have none to 
appreciate our researches. Now, apropos of the trouble, on the one hand, to 
eminent men of science, of questions on Geology and Mineralogy, and on the 
other desirableness of smoothing difficulties to tyros in science, by appeal to 
authorities at home, I should be glad to know if there be any way of asking these 
questions without unnecessary trouble and inconvenience to those whose time is of 
so much value to themselves and to the scientific world in general. If not, and 
if any plan could be devised for instituting a corresponding secretary through 
whom information could be obtained, I am sure there must be many who, in 
common with myself, would be most happy to contribute towards the expenses 
attending such an institution. I fear such a suggestion may appear presump- 
tuous from so obscure a collector as myself; but I have so long wished to hear of 
fossils, &c., I have sent home (some ten years at least), and the information could, 
perhaps, have been given so easily by some members of the Geological or other such 
Society, that I have often wished for some such means of asking a question or two. 
One forgets and loses interest in specimens after lapse of years —AN ANTIPODEAN 
Coxonist.”—It¢ is with sincere pleasure that we put our pages at the disposal of 
our countrymen in far distant lands: and the attention which we have already offered 
to give, and, in very numerous cases have given, to the specimens forwarded to us 
from our correspondents in the British Isles, we will, with equal readiness, extend 
to those forwarded us from any region, however remote, which the adventurous 
traveller or geologist might chance to visit or to reside in. We think, moreover, 
that this magazine would prove a valuable source for obtaining such knowledge and 


38 THE GEOLOGIST. 


information as our colcnial correspondent desires, through the facility with which 
questions could thus be brought before hundreds of readers, and a greater amount 
of instruction would, by these means, be received than in ordinary course could be 
expected from any specially appointed secretary or other officer. At all events, we 
lay ourselves open for receipt of foreign or colonial communications, and for the 
examination and notice of such foreign and colonial fossils and specimens of rocks 
and minerals, &c., as may be transmitted to us carriage-free, holding such speci- 
mens at the direction of the proprietors, or disposing of the same in any inexpen- 
sive manner. 

PROTEST AGAINST THE USE OF INITIALS BY COoRRESPONDENTS.—“I eagerly 
look for the GroLoeist as the first of each month comes round ; and I heartily 
wish it success. To me, however, and I doubt not to more of your readers, the 
interest and usefulness of the work is lessened by the number of minor communi- 
cations which appear under anonymous signatures. Periodicals of this class effect 
one most important purpose—that of making known the ‘ whereabouts’ of local 
workers in Geology, and thereby enabling persons to come into mutual communi- 
cation who might otherwise never have heard of one another. But the system of 
initiel-signature shuts the door against all this. To take a case in point ;—one of 
your early numbers contains a communication from a Correspondent at Harwich, 
writing for some local mformation, but having appended to it simply his initials. 
Now, I am particularly interested in the Geology of Harwich, and most anxious 
for correspondents in that district. Had the writer in this case given his name, 
I dare say I could have been of service to him, and most likely he in return might 
have helped me. When I became, in 1837, proprietor of Mr. Loudon’s well 
known Magazine of Natural History, I found no difficulty in abolishing the initial 
system, except in certain cases ; for every now and thén there may be reasonable 
grounds for writing incog. Of the inconvenience which may result from it, 
the case of your Bristol correspondent, Mr. Higgins, who offered to exchange 
inferior Oolite Fossils, is a notable example. Epwarp CHARLESWoRTH, York.”— 
While we agree with Mr. Charlesworth as to the desirableness of correspondents 
writing under their proper names, we also think it would not be right of us to 
insist upon this point. Many of the questions in our “ Notes and Queries” 
department are without doubt very modestly asked, and yet, while they are really 
highly useful to other students and beginners in the science, they are not uncom- 
monly of such a simple character that many who ask them would be unwilling to 
put them publicly in their own names. ‘To our principal articles the names of the 
writers are always put, unless we are expressly enjoined not to print them. We think, 
however, that our correspondents should enclose their cards with these anonymous 
communications, that we might individually, in our capacity of Editor, be enabled, 
with the concurrence of the respective parties, to place them in communication 
with each other where desirable. It seems to us, moreover, that when geologists, 
as in Mr. Charlesworth’s case, desire further communication with any particular 
correspondent writing anonymously, or under an initial, they might intimate their 
wishes in another number of this Magazine, or offer certain services, as was so 
kindly done by Mr. Sanders of Bristol, in reply to W.8. (Vol. I. p. 161). We desire to 
make this journal as useful as possible ; but the number of communications we 
receive, of an anonymous character, evidently attests the existence of a feeling of 
a very general character. In respect to the ‘‘ Notes” themselves, we concur to the 
fullest extent in the real advantage of the author's name being attached; the 
fact of a note being printed at all in this journal suffices to acknowledge its worth, 
and the suppression of the name of the person responsible for the fact stated is not 
just to Science. 

PuysicaAL GEoLocy or WEARDALE.—“ DEAR Str,—I am living on the Car- 
boniferous Formation, in a narrow valley cut down from the Millstone-grit to the 
Basalt, the depth of the valley being several hundred feet ; and, as I am a most 
ardent admirer of Geology—in which science, however, I am only a tyro—I have 
been led away often into a train of speculations seeking for a solution as to the 
character of the forces that excavated this channel. I soon perceived that water 
was the only agent ; but how was it employed? Was it by the present stream, 
by oceanic currents during submersion, or by the abrasion of waves when the sea 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 39 


stood at a higher level than at present, or by all these agencies at different epochs 
collectively ? It appears pretty evident that this locality was submerged during 
the Glacial Epoch, as I find in several places a great thickness of blue clay, inter- 
mixed with smooth, water-worn, and striated boulders. The river, which runs in 
a south-easterly direction, would be unfavourable for the deposition of sediment 
during the drift-period; and such I find to be the case; in fact, the currents 
coming from the north would tend to wear the channel deeper ; whereas, in the 
case of the rivulets that run into the river at right angles to its course, there is a 
large deposit of clay and boulders on their north or sheltered sides. I also send you 
some specimens broken from a block of Scotch Granite, as I suppose it to be, which 
I picked up in this district. The boulder weighs several pounds, and, if I am 
correct, must have been floated hither on an ice-raft from Scotland, when our fine 
romantic dale was covered with water! We have no Granite like this in the north 
of England that I know of; Shap Fell Granite being of a very different kind. 
Such are my opinions ; and such are my queries ; I now ask your assistance and 
advice. I think your answers to the above would much interest many readers of 
the Grotocist beside myself—Dear Sir, yours truly, J. Exisrotr.—Weardale, 
Durham.”—Our correspondent’s inquiries are legitimate and well directed ; and 
we hope that some day everybody will be sufficiently enlightened to trouble them- 
selves with similar questions as to the physical features of the localities where 
they live, and in time sufficiently conversant with the principles of Geology from 
their very school-days, to recognize the chief reasons for the contours and structure 
of the hills and valleys around them. The valleys have usually originated in 
cracks or faults in the strata, consequent on some more or less extensive general 
crust-movement of the area when beneath the sea. As the ground rose, the 
action of the waves of the advancing shore-line widened the fissure, sometimes 
sweeping away the débris, and sometimes leaving it as gravel and sand; and 
made it a creek, estuary, or bay—with perhaps an extensive system of minor 
fissures forming drainage-valleys leading into it. Subsequently, when the land 
was at a still higher level, the streams and rivers followed this hollow, excavating 
channels in the higher parts of the valleys, but filling up the lower parts with new 
gravel, sand, and silt. ‘The rain and other atmospheric agents have also ceaselessly 
worked to modify the sides of the valleys. The application of this theory of the 
formation and modification of valleys to individual instances must be left to local 
experience. Doubtless our correspondent is correct as to the ice-carriage of the 
granitic boulder (a Granite with black mica). 

THE GxEonoaists’ Assocration.—There has been felt, for some time, much 
need of a common means of intercommunication among those who, while not 
devoting their lives to the pursuit, yet take an active interest in the facts and 
teachings of Geology. The ‘‘ Geological Society” is too far advanced in the strict 
course of scientific method and treatment to be found available by the increasing 
numbers of those who desire modestly to seek mutual help as learners, but shrink 
from the assumption of ranking themselves among the illustrious professors and 
masters in the science. T'o meet this want, a number of gentlemen have organized 
themselves into a Geologists’ Association, having for its special purpose the pro- 
viding those means of intercommunication and mutual help. It is proposed to 
hold regular meetings ; to form a museum of typical specimens; to afford facilities 
for the collection and exchange of specimens, and for rectifying doubtfully named 
ones ; to communicate information as to the best methods of search, localities, 
dc. which the experience of members may enable them to interchange ; and, in 
general, to enable the practical student in Geology to find a congenial place where 
doubts may be stated and experience exchanged,—and so the pursuit of this 
interesting and invaluable branch of inquiry be made at once pleasanter, and freed 
from some of the difficulties which now attend the pursuit of it both by individuals 
and localized institutions. The Association will embrace members both in town 
and country ; its objects and usefulness being equally available by those in either, 
with the exception, in the latter case, of the general opportunities of personal 
attendance at the meetings. The subscriptions have been fixed purposely, and. 
with deliberate consideration, at a rate which will exclude none from the benefits 
it can give. The subscription for town members is ten shillings a-year ; for country 


40 . THE GEOLOGIST. 


members, five shillings a-year. All members will be entitled to copies of whatever 
printed minutes of the proceedings of the Association are issued. The first meet- 
ing of the Association for business, will be held on an early day in January, which 
will be duly announced to subscribers, and when an inaugural address will be 
delivered by the Chairman. 

CuHaLk Sponces or YoRKSHTRE.—‘‘ S1r,—I think a paper, accompanied by 
sketches, of the sponges from the chalk of Flamborough Head, would be very accept- 
able to many of your readers. I do not find them described in any of the popular 
books, although probably they are to be found figured in some of the works on 
Yorkshire.—Yours, &c., X. Y.” 

Mammatran Remains NEAR Wetis.—“‘ Sir,—Seeing in one of your maga- 
zines of this year a request that Geologists would furnish you with the localities 
where the remains of mammals have been observed in the provinces, I beg to 
inform your readers that I found several teeth of Rhinoceros and of Elephants on 
the side of the Mendip Hills, about two miles from the city of Wells, and close to 
the celebrated Wokey Hole cavern; they were about fifteen feet below the surface, 
in a conglomerate resting on the dolomite limestone.—Yours, &., FRANcis 
Drake, Leicester.” 

Manner oF curring Frums or Srientte.—(See Vol. I. p. 444.)—** Good, large 
crystals of selenite can be split into lamine of uniform thickness with a penknife ; 
but much care is required, and many failures occur. This is the method I have 
always employed for my own purposes, with sufficient success.—H. C. Sorsy.” 

Mrinerat-Vetns.—(See Vol I. p. 450.)—“‘ If a portion of limestone be placed in 
the solution of any salt of the peroxide of iron, or a salt of the protoxide exposed 
to the air, a deposit of the peroxide of iron is formed on the limestone. No such 
effect is produced by a fragment of sandstone ; and, in ‘some cases, at all events, 
this will, I think, explain what your correspondent refers to.—H. C. Sorsy.” 

MInERAL-VEINS IN LIMESTONES AND SANDSTONES.— DEAR Srr,—In reply to 
the very candid request of your correspondent, I beg to say, that the examples 
which have led me to arrive at the conclusion that mineral-veins, in general, 
contain more iron in limestone than in siliceous strata, are those afforded in the 
lead-mining district of the north of England ; more particularly in that part of it 
comprising Alston Moor, Allandale, and Weardale. The lead-bearing strata in 
these localities are of the mountain-limestone series, and consist of alternating 
members of calcareous, siliceous, and argillaceous characters. _ Interstratified with 
these beds is one of basalt, locally called the great whin-sill, and of considerable 
thickness, amounting in some places to 30 or 40 fathoms, or even more. Higher 
up in the series is another of the same nature, which may be observed in the Wear 
Valley between Stanhope and Kastgate, but this seems to be of very limited extent. 
The great whin-sill lies at a considerable depth below the surface in Weardale, 
nevertheless, it has been sunk through at Pasture Grove mine, where a very 

roductive vein is being worked. It has also been penetrated at Slit mine, near 
estgate. The workings of these two mines above and below the water-drainage 
lay open a very considerable thickness of strata. Owing to the rise of the beds in 
a westerly direction, the same sills which have to be sunk into in Weardale are 
accessible by adits at Alston Moor. The thickness of strata from the upper 
surface of the great whin-sill to the top of the lead-measures is about 180 fathoms. 
In this space are included 10 beds of limestone, 27 of sandstone, 29 of plate, 3 of 
an argillo-siliceous nature, and 5 of sulphureous coal: the aggregate thickness of 
each set being as follows, namely, limestone 179 ft., sandstone 345 ft., plate 414 ft., 
argillo-siliceous beds 147 ft., and coal 5 ft. Although these strata do not maintain 
a perfect uniformity of thickness throughout, yet, the above may be taken as 
approximating to accuracy sufticiently for the present purpose. The limestones and 
sandstones are the chief metalliferous strata, and, in the above section, the thick- 
ness of the former to that of the latter is as 1 to 1:91, without including the sili- 
ceous in the argillo-siliceous beds. The argillaceous strata are seldom productive 
of lead-ore, except in some veins which carry a rider, or vein-stone, where they are 
said to be mineralized. Dividing the lead-measures which lie above the whin-sill 
into three divisions, the middle is the richest and most extensively worked. From 
long experience in working these mines, it has been noted as a fact, that the veins 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 44 


are wider in limestone than in siliceous strata. By acquired information of the 
numerous examples at Alston Moor in Cumberland, at the two Allendales in 
Northumberland, and at Weardale in Durham, coupled with my own observations, 
I do not hesitate to say that the quantity of iron in veins in siliceous strata is but 
small in comparison to the quantity in the same veins where they cut through 
limestone. Not only is this the case in the localities quoted, but in the adjoining 
mines of Teesdale the veins also seem to be of a more ferruginous nature in the 
limestone than in the sandstone. The most noticeable stratum is that designated 
the ‘ great limestone.’ Nearly three fathoms from the top of this limestone is an 
argillaceous bed, called the ‘black-bed,’ about a foot thick. In three places of 
the ‘great limestone,’ some veins mineralize for several fathoms horizontally. 
These horizontal mineralizations are designated ‘flats.’ The distanee from the 
top flat, which occurs about four feet below the ‘ black bed,’ is near two fathoms, 
and from the middle flat to the lower one rather more than two fathoms. The heights 
of these flats and their distances from the vein-fissure, which mineralizes them, 
vary considerably, and seem to be much influenced by the proximity of metalliferous 
‘strings’ and of other vems. In some cases where there is a complication made 
by numerous crossings of veins, the flats will unite and form one mineral mass 
through the compact body of the limestone nearly up to the ‘ black-bed.’ Ores of iron 
and lead are the chief metallic deposits. In Weardale a company is now working 
the lead-ore veins for iron, in the flats and at the intersections. The iron is 
obtained both by mining and from open cuttings ; the latter affording favourable 
opportunities for observation, and such is the extent of the workings that hundreds 
of tons are sent away daily to thé blast-furnaces. A siliceous bed lies close to the 
bottom of the limestone and other two not far above it ; the barrenness of these in 
ferruginous matter contrasts strongly with the repletion of such matter in the 
limestone. It may be remarked that these siliceous beds above the limestone have 
yielded in the veins small quantities of crystallized carbonate of iron. The iron is 
also scanty in the veins in those siliceous strata more remote from the limestone. 
I am aware that veins in granite and siliceous schists do contain a considerable 
portion of iron, yet, I am disposed to think that the same veins might hold more 
m limestone, if such were present. In testing the soundness of the query, it is 
but fair to take veins cutting through limestone and siliceous strata, and, noting 
the thickness of each to draw thence a comparison with the contained quantities 
ef iron. If the above examples are not satisfactorily sufficient for the solution of 
the question, perhaps other local observers, who have had experience of such 
phenomena, would be willing to give their testimony and evidence. Your cor- 
respondent states, that the presence of iron materially influences the productive- 
ness of other valuable ores. The limestone which has just been described as 
being rich in iron in the veins and flats, has also been exceedingly prolific of lead- 
ore.—Yours, &c., J. C.” 

Iaevanopon REeMAINs AT ATHERFIELD, IstE oF Wicut.— The remains of an 
Iguanodon have been discovered high up in the Lower Greensand deposits of 
Atherfield,—namely, in the sands of Cliff End. The whole of the skull with teeth 
was found; but, owing to the friable state of the remains, the manner in 
which they were imbedded, and the impatience and unskilfulness of the finders, 
they were got out piecemeal ; many of the teeth had- been sold before I heard of 
the discovery. I have, however, secured about a dozen, as also some fragments 
of the jaws and skull. The remainder of the skeleton is in the possession of the 
discoverer.—Yours, &c. Mark W. Norman, Ventnor.” 

Dura Den.—YeEttow SanpstonE AND Fossit Frsuus.—The Rev. Dr. Ander- 
son, of Newburgh, has again been in this celebrated locality, now of world-wide 
fame, and tells us he has seen more fishes taken out of the solid rock than he ever 
had an opportunity of seeing in any drag-net at any one time from the waters of 
the teeming ocean. A few workmen were engaged, and in the course of a day or 
two there were laid on the green sward of this lovely dell upwards of five hundred 
fossil fishes, raised from their marble sarcophagi—in which they have been interred 
for ages—all bright and fresh as the living things of yesterday. One of the slabs, 
about five feet square, contained nearly a hundred specimens projecting in bold 
- relief from the surface, most of them without a scale displaced, or an organ dis- 


43 THE GEOLOGIST. 


turbed. The fishes on another slab, upwards of fifty, were literally glistening and- 


sparkling in their vivid armiture of bones (for the scales of these olden fishes are. 


all true bone); and one of them in its full, plump, rounded form, looked as 
tempting as any Isaac Walton could desiderate in the choicest salmon of our 
modern rivers. This peculiarity in the Dura Den fossils is the more remarkable 
and noticeable, because in all our other quarries, as Clashbennie, Parkhill, Coupar- 
Angus, Cromarty, and elsewhere, their scales are of a dirty chalky whiteness, 
without tint or enamel. Strange, too, that they not only lie here in clusters and 
detached groups, but are confined within the range of a single stratum in at least 
several hundred feet of visible rock. No fragment of skeleton, bone, or scale, is 
discoverable anywhere throughout the mass, save in this one thin division. Specu- 
lation here for the savans who shall meet at Aberdeen next year. What the 
cause of the preservation of the enamel, of its bright tint, and above all, of the 
limitation of the fossil-bed ? Many other curious and interesting questions will 
suggest themselves. Some of the slabs were taken out entire and unbroken, and 
are now safely deposited in the museum-rooms of Dura House ; and the unrivalled 
collection there brought together, in these and in former researches, will hence- 
forth form a subject for admiration and instruction to the curious and learned in 
geological science. The collection is all the more valuable, from the circumstance 
that the fish-bed is nearly run out, or thins and dips inconveniently under the 
great mass of superincumbent rock. The specimens obtained consist of several 
species of Holoptychius, Dipterus, Platygnathus, and the Glypticus Dalgleisianus 
(named in honour of the Dalgleish family, at the British Association in Edinburgh, 
1850). A splendid specimen has been forwarded to Sir Roderick Murchison for 
the Museum of Economic Geology ; and it is to be hoped that the noble collection 
at Dura House, unsurpassed in richness, variety, and preservation, will find its 
way to some national depository of Science as a memorial of the finest fossil-ground 
of the true Scottish Old Red Sandstone. 

Anonymous Communications.—‘‘ With respect to the ‘ Notes and Queries’ in 
the Grotoaist, I would suggest, that, considering the subjects and object of that 
division of your valuable magazine, it would be very desirable for writers to give 
their names and addresses in full—I remain, dear Sir, yours truly, J. H. WaxKeE- 
FIELD, Highgate.” 

CRUSTACEANS OF OLD Rep Sanpstony.—< Srr,—One of the strata of this 
neighbourhood, apparently the basis of the Old Red. Sandstone, is charged with 
abundant remains of the Pterygotus, or allied Crustaceans. Unfortunately, when 
entombed, the remains must have been in a fragmentary state, although they are, 
or at least their impressions, now beautifully preserved mm the stone. I have once 
met with a nearly complete specimen, about a foot in length, but im every other 
instance portions only of these creatures have been found—such as the rings of the 
abdomen, the jaw-feet, and in one instance the prehensile limb. The sculpturing 
of the rings is often very distinct, but puzzling from its intricacy. I trust this 
note will be inserted in your valuable magazine, and will catch the eye of some 
experienced paleontologist, who may kindly tell us if the different species are to be 
distinguished by their ornamentation, or if this merely varies in the same species 
according to its period of growth; or, perhaps—for this explanation has also 
suggested itself—if the different divisions of the body, such as the thorax, seg- 
ments, and limbs, are likely to be variously sculptured. Far as we are here from 
all sources of information and comparison with specimens in museums, you will 
readily understand how valuable some hints on this matter would be.—Yours 
truly, H. M., Craig, Montrose.” 

R. A. C. Trinc.—The specimen received is Corbula globosa, from a septarium of 
the London Clay. ; 

KE. Sr. Ausyy.—The fragment of a fossil received, belonged to a large bivalve- 
shell of the Upper Chalk, the Znoceramus Cuviert. The specimens of this species, 
from their large size, and comparative thinness of shell, were particularly lable to 
be broken up; and are everywhere found in the state of fragments, as noticed by 
our correspondent. 

Live Froas.—‘‘ Sin,—I observe, in your August number of the Grotoertst, 


the publication of my communication about the Dundonald Frog, and your . 


pene eden teas 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 43 


remarks on the subject. The solution you give is just what I expected, and was 
prepared for; but even with it I think some other questions arise, which I trouble 
you with, as they strike me as important. Before however doing so, I may 
describe, to the best of my ability, the rock, of which I now have a specimen. It 
is a conglomeratic sandy mass, abounding in fossil remains of vegetable matter, 
and very hard. The frog, which I think I did not describe previously, is small 
and attenuated. The head is about double the size of the body, and has a beard 
attached. The eyes are large, and mouth also considerable. It is unlike any frog 
I have ever seen ; but perhaps its deformity may be accounted for by the fact of 
its being cooped up in such a confined space, and being denied fresh food and air, 
as would have allowed it to increase in size, and assume its natural dimensions. 

Ist. Accepting, then, your assurance that it was a recent one,—by which I pre- 
sume you mean of existing species, can any probable guess be made as to its 
longevity, or how long it has been the tenant of the domicile it was found in ? 

2d. How long could it have continued to live where it was? I think this 
question, with the former, bears much upon the subject ; because, if it could have 
existed 100, 50, or even 10 years in such a cavity, what in all the world is there 
to prevent it doing so for ‘myriads of years, which you consider not only 1m- 
prebable, but almost impossible ? 

3d. If the frog was at all increasing in size (for I presume that, if it was 
generated in the cavity, it was growing hourly), when it became too large for the 
cavity, would it have become a part of the stratum, and appeared as a fossil ? 

4th. The rock is to all appearance quite solid ; and, supposing that had a prac- 
tised and experienced geologist, on examination of the spot where the frog was 
found, pronounced it free from ‘ cutters,’ or such fissures as could have admitted 
spawn or air, would such a stratum be sufliciently porous to admit water enough 
to give the animal such a continuous supply of fresh oxygen, as was necessary 
for its existence ; or did it exist on the oxygen in the cavity alone ? 

5th. Does not a perpetual change go on in all strata? and, as years roll on, 
would not the cavity have become virtually hermetically sealed ? and, if so, would 
the frog have continued in life ? 

6th. Why, when it breathed atmospheric air, did it die at once ? 
ae Where and how was the cavity first formed, and was it probably larger at 

st ! 

Hoping you will excuse these queries,—Your obedient Servant, R. WarDLAW 
Ramssy, Whitehill, 16th November, 1858.” 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 


GroLoaicaL Socirty or Lonpon, December 1st, 1858.—The following commu- 
nication was read :— 

“On the Geological Structure of the North of Scotland and the Orkney and 
Shetland Islands.” Part IJ. By Sir R. I. Murchison, F.R.S., V.P.G.S. 

In a paper read during the last Session (see ‘‘ Abstracts,” No. 10), the author 
described the general succession of rocks in the Northern Highlands, as observed. 
by Mr. Peach and himself, aided by the researches of some other geologists. 

The rocks were described in their ascending order, as first, a fundamental gneiss 
traversed by granite-veins at Cape Wrath ; secondly, a red or chocolate-coloured 
sandstone and conglomerate, of great thickness, and regarded by the author as of 
Cambrian age ; thirdly, sueceeding unconformably, is a series of quartzite, with 
intercalated limestone, both of them often highly crystalline,—from the limestone 
Mr. C. Peach had succeeded in obtaining ‘near Durness,” several fossils, shown 
to be of Lower Silurian age; fourthly, micaceous schists and flagstones occupying 
a wide extent of country to the east of Loch Hriboll, described as being of younger 
age than the foregoing, and older than the Old Red Sandstone series which 


44 THE GEOLOGIST. 


occupies the North-eastern Highlands and a great portion of the eastern coast of 


Scotland ; fifthly, the Old Red series, arranged by the author into three divisions, 
the middle being the Caithness flags. 

In the past autumn Sir Roderick, feeling that several points required stricter 
examination, revisited the country already described, extending his researches both 
east and west, and to the most northernly point of the Shetlands. 

In this tour he not only confirmed his views previously announced with regard 
to the succession of the older rocks, but examined the structure of the Orkneys 
and Shetlands, more clearly defining the relations and physical characters of the 
beds there composing the Old Red series. 

‘The present memoir comprised the details of these later observations ; and Sir 
Roderick acknowledged the aid he had derived from Mr. Peach (who accompanied 
him throughout the journey), Mr. John Miller, Rev. Mr. Gordon and others ; and 
he referred to the previous memoirs of Mr. Cunningham and Hugh Miller on 
Sutherland, &c., and Dr. Hibbert on the Shetland Islands. 

The principle pomts dwelt upon in this paper were— 

1. The evidence obtained at various points, that the Lower Silurian limestone 
is intercalated in quartz-rock (east of Loch Eriboll, Assynt, &c.). 

2. That the Durness limestone lies in a basin supported by quartz-rock on the 
east as well as on the west. 

3. That certain igneous rocks connected with the Durness trough are pro- 
truded near Smo, which had not before been noticed. 

4, On this occasion corroborative evidence was adduced of the conformable 
superposition of the micaceous schists or gneissose flagstones to the quartzite 
series, the succession being visible at intervals in all the intermediate country 
between Loch Eriboll and Ledmore, and the passage upwards from the quartzites 
and their associated limestones into the schists and micaceous flags bemg both 
clear and persistent, with some local interruptions only of igneous rocks. 

5. That the protrusion of porphyry, hypersthene, greenstone, &c. is not peculiar 
to any one line, but occurs in the purple or Cambrian sandstone, in the overlying 
Silurian limestone of Durness, and again in the still higher micaceous flagstones ; 
and that the latter, when intruded upon by granite, much resemble the old gneiss. 

6. With regard to the Old Red series of the east coast, Sir Roderick pointed 
out the extension of the middle set of deposits, namely, the Caithness flags,— 
their great thickness in Caithness compared with their development in the south, 
—and their range over the Orkneys into the Shetlands, where they also thin out, 
putting on a somewhat different lithological character, and where the Old Red 
series is chiefly represented by sandstones, the upper part containing plants. He 
dwelt upon the great value of the Caithness flags as paving-stones, their extraordi- 
nary durability beg due to a certain admixture of lime and bitumen (the latter 
derived from fossil fishes) with silica and alumina, whilst in some parts they con- 
tain bitumen enough to render them of economic value. The author next pointed 
out the passage of the Caithness flags upwards into light-coloured sandstones, 
which eventually form the great headlands of Dunnet and Hoy, where such over- 
lying sandstones cannot be of less thickness than 1,200 to 1,500 feet. 

With regard to the micaceous rocks of the north-east of Scotland and the Shet- 
land Isles, they are, according to the author, portions of the series which is younger 
than the fossiliferous Lower Silurian rocks of the west of Sutherland,—the so- 
called gneiss of the Sutors of Cromarty belonging, in Sir Roderick’s opinion, to the 
micaceous-flag series of eastern Ross-shire; and the gneissic rock extending 
southwards to Flowerburn, Kinordy, and Rosemarkie, near Fortrose, is regarded 
by him as a member of that series, altered by the intrusion of granitic and fels- 
pathic rocks. 

The paper was illustrated by a large series of rocks and fossils collected during 
the author’s last tour, and by geological maps, and coloured views and sections. 

December 15, 1858.—Prof. J. Phillips, President, in the Chair. 

The following communications were read :— 

1. “On the Succession of Rocks in the Northern Highlands.” By John Miller, 
Esq. Communicated by Sir R. I. Murchison, V.P.G.S8. 

Mr. Miller in this communication explained the history of our knowledge of the 


aeementiiand 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 45 


geology of this district ; and having given in detail an examination that he made 
of the coast last autumn, he drew particular attention to the faithful and compre- 
hensive descriptions of the Old Red district by Sedgwick and Murchison in former 
years, and showed that his own observations quite coincide with the results of Sir 
Roderick Murchison’s late correlation of the Gneissic, Cambrian, Silurian, and Old 
Red strata of the coasts of Sutherland, Ross-shire, and Caithness. 

In conclusion, Mr. Miller pointed out that the Durness Limestone and the 
Fossiliferous beds of Caithness were still open fields for careful and energetic 
explorers. 

>. ‘“On the Geological Structure of the North of Scotland. Part III. The 
Sandstones of Morayshire, containing Reptilian Remains shown to belong to the 
Uppermost Division of the Old Red Sandstone.” By Sir Roderick I. Murchison, 
Ban S., );C..,- V-P:G.8., &e. 

Referring to his previous memoir for an account of the triple division of the Old 
Red Sandstone of Caithness and the Orkney Islands, the author showed how the 
chief member of the group in those tracts diminished in its range southwards into 
Ross-shire, and how, when traceable through Inverness and Nairn, it was scarcely 
to be recognised in Morayshire, but reappeared with its characteristic ichthyolites 
in Banffshire (Dipple, Tynet, and Gamrie). 

He then prefaced his description of the ascending order of the strata belonging 
to this group in Morayshire by a sketch of the successive labours of geologists in 
that tract ; pointing out how in 1528 the sandstones and cornstones of this tract 
had been shown by Professor Sedgwick and himself to constitute, together with 
the inferior Red Sandstone and Conglomerate, one natural geological assemblage ; 
that in 1839 the late Dr. Malcomeson made the important additional discovery of 
fossil fishes, in conjunction with Lady Gordon Cumming, and also read a valuable 
memoir on the structure of the tract, before the Geological Society, of which, to 
his, the author’s regret, an abstract only had been published. (Proc. Geol. Soc. 
vol. iii. p. 141.) 

Sir Roderick revisited the district in the autumn of 1840, and made sections in 
the environs of Forres and Elgin. Subsequently, Mr. P. Duff, of Elgin, published 
a “‘ Sketch of the Geology of Moray,” with illustrative plates of fossil fishes, sec- 
tions, and a geological map by Mr. John Martin ; and afterwards Mr. Alexander 
Robertson threw much light upon the structure of the district, particularly as 
regarded deposits younger than those under consideration. 

All these writers, as well as Sedgwick and himself, had grouped the yellow and 
whitish-yellow sandstones of Elgin with the Old Red Sandstone; but the discovery 
in them of the curious small reptile, the Telerpeton Elginense, described by Mantell 
in 1851, from a specimen in Mr. P. Duff’s collection, first occasioned doubts to 
arise respecting the age of the deposit. Still the sections of Capt. Brickenden, 
who sent that reptile up to London, proved that it had been found in a sandstone 
which dipped under ‘‘ Cornstone,” and which passed downwards into the Old Red 
series. Capt. Brickenden also sent to London natural impressions of footprints of 
an apparently reptilian animal in a slab of a similar sandstone,-from the coast- 
ridge extending from Burgh Head to Lossiemouth (Cummingston). 

Witioneh adhering to his original view respecting the age of the sandstones, Sir 
R. Murchison could not avoid having misgivings and doubts, in common with 
many geologists, on account of the high grade of reptile to which the Telerpeton 
belonged, and hence he revisited the tract, examining the critical points, in 
company with his friend the Rev. G. Gordon, to whose zealous labours he owned 
himself to be greatly indebted. 

In looking through the collections in the public museum of Elgin and of Mr. P. 
Duff, he was much struck with the appearance of several undescribed fossils, 
apparently belonging to Reptiles, which, by the liberality of their possessors, were, 
at his request, sent up for inspection to the Museum of Practical Geology. He 
was also much astonished at the state of preservation of a large bone (ischium), 
apparently belonging to a reptile, found by Mr. Martin in the same sandstone- 
quarries of Lossiemouth, in which the scales, or scutes, of the Stagonolepis 
(described as belonging to a fish by Agassiz) had been found. On visiting these 
quarries, Mr. G. Gordon and himself fortunately discovered other bones of the 
same animal ; and these having been compared with the remains in the Elgin col- 


46 THE GEOLOGIST. 


lections, have enabled Professor Huxley to decide that, with the exception of the 
Telerpeton, all these casts, scales, and bones belong to the Reptile Stagonolepis 
Robertsonit. 

Sir Roderick having visited the quarries in the coast-ridge, from which slabs 
with impressions of reptilian footmarks had long been obtained, induced Mr. G. 
Gordon to transmit a variety of these, which are now in the Museum of Practical 
Geology ; and some of which were exhibited at the meeting. 

After reviewing the whole succession of strata from the edge of the crystalline 
rocks in the interior to the bold cliffs on the sea-coast, the author has satisfied 
himself that the reptile-bearing sandstones must be considered to form the Upper- 
most portion of the Old Red Sandstone, or Devonian group ; the following being 
among the chief reasons for his adherence to this view. 

ist. That these sandstones have everywhere the same strike and dip as the 
inferior red sandstones containing Holoptychii and other Old Red Ichthyolites ; 
there being a perfect conformity between the two rocks, and a gradual passage 
from the one into the other. 2dly. That the yellow and light colours of the upper 
band are seen in natural section to occur and alternate with red and green sand- 
stones, marls, and conglomerates low down in the ichthyolitic series. 3dly. That, 
whilst the concretionary limestones called ‘‘ Cornstones”’ are seen amidst some of 
the lowest red and green conglomerates, they reappear in a younger and broader 
zone at Elgin, and re-occur above the 'Telerpeton-sandstone of Spynie Hill, and 
above the Stagonolepis-sandstone of Lossiemouth ; thus binding the whole into 
one natural physical group. 4thly. That, whilst the small patches of so-called 
““ Wealden,” or Oolitic strata, described by Mr. Robertson and others as occurring 
in this district, are wholly uncomformable to, and rest upon, the eroded surfaces 
of all the rocks under consideration, so it was shown that none of the Oolitic or 
Liassic rocks of the opposite side of the Moray Frith, or those of Brora, Dunrobin, 
Ethie, &c., which are charged with Oolitic and Liassic remains, resemble the 
reptiliferous sandstones and ‘‘ Cornstones” of Elgin or their repetitions in the 
coast-ridge extending from Burgh Head to Lossiemouth. 

Fully aware of the great difficulty of determining the exact boundary line 
between the Uppermost Devonian and Lowest Carboniferous strata, and knowing 
that they pass into each other in many countries, the author stated that no one 
could dogmatically assert that the reptile-bearing sandstones might not, by future 
researches, be proved to form the commencement of the younger era. 

Sir Roderick concluded by stating, that the conversion of the Stagonolepis into a 
reptile.of high organization, but of nondescript character, did not interfere with 
his long-cherished opinion—founded on acknowledged facts—as to the progressive 
succession of great classes of animals, and that, inasmuch as the earliest Trilobite 
of the invertebrate Lower Silurian era was as wonderfully organized as any living 
Crustacean, so it did not unsettle his belief to find that the earliest reptiles yet 
es the Stagonolepis and Telerpeton, pertained to a high order of that 
class. 

(The memoir was illustrated by geologically-coloured charts of the Admiralty’s 
Hydrographic Survey of the Coast, extending from the Orkney Islands to Banff- 
shire (which, in the want of any accurate maps, fortunately gives the outlines of 
the coast and a few miles inland), and by transverse sections showing the succes- 
sion and relations of the strata, as well as numerous organic remains from the 
collecttons of Mr. P. Duff, Mr. Gordon, the Elgin Museum, the Museum of 
Practical Geology, and the Geological Society’s Museum. ] 

3. “On the Stagonolepis Robertsonii of the Elgin Sandstones ; and on the Foot- 
marks in the Sandstones of Cummingston.” By Thomas H. Huxley, F.R.S., 
F.G.S., Prof. of Natural History, Government School of Mines. 

The unquestionable remains of Stagonolepis Robertsonii, which have hitherto 
been obtained, consist partly of bones and dermal scutes, and partly of the natural 
casts of such parts. ‘The former have been obtained only at Lossiemouth, and are 
comparatively few in number; the numerous natural casts, on the other hand, 
have all been procured at the Findrassie Quarry, in which no bones or scutes in 
their original condition have been discovered. 

The considerable series of remains exhibited to the Society did not embrace all 
those which had been subjected to examination, but contained only a selection of 


a oe 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. AT 


those more characteristic parts upon which the conclusions of the author of the 
paper, respecting the structure and affinities of Stagonolepis, are based. 

‘They were,—1. Dermal scutes; 2. Vertebre; 3. Ribs; 4. Bones of the ex- 
tremities ; 5. Bones of the pectoral arch ; and 6. A natural cast of a mandible with 
teeth. The dermal scutes are all characterized by an anterior smooth facet, over- 
lapped by the preceding scute, and by the peculiar sculpture of their outer surface, 
which exhibits deep, distinct, round, or oval pits, so arranged as to appear to 
radiate from a common centre. Of these scutes there are two kinds, the flat and 
angulated. By a careful comparison with the dermal armour of ancient and 
modern crocodilian reptiles, it was shown that every peculiarity of the scutes of 
Stagonolepis could fmd its parallel in those of Crocodilus or Teleosauaus ; the flat 
scutes resembling the ventral armour of the latter; the angulated scutes the 
dorsal armour of the former genus. 

An unexpected verification of the justice of this determination was furnished by 
a natural cast of a considerable portion of the caudal region of Stagonolepis, con- 
sisting of no less than seven vertebree, enclosed within the corresponding series of 
dermal scutes. Of these, the dorsal set were angulated ; the ventral, flat. 

It would appear that the anterior dorsal scutes attained a very considerable 
thickness, while the more posterior scutes were widest—attaining more than five 
inches in breadth in some instances. The vertebre described were all studied 
from natural casts, and belonged to the caudal, sacral, and anterior dorsal series. 
These vertebre are, in their leading features, similar to those of Teleosaurians ; 
the obliquity of the articular faces of the centra, so characteristic of the vertebrz 
of Stagonolepis, being, as the author of the paper pointed out, a very common 
character of Teleosaurian, and even of modern Crocodilian, vertebrae. Of the 
sacral vertebree, only a natural cast of the posterior face of the second had been 
obtained ; but 1t was sufficient to demonstrate the wholly crocodilian characters of 
this region in Stagonolepis. 

The dorsal vertebree present a remarkable peculiarity in the strong upward, 
outward, and backward inclination of the transverse processes, and in the size of 
the facet for the head of the rib. The vertebree thus acquires a Dinosaurian 
character ; but no great weight was attached to this circumstance, as the amount 
of upward inclination of the transverse processes of the anterior dorsal vertebrze 
varies greatly in both Crocodilia and Enaliosauria. 

The ribs have well-marked and distinct capitula and tubercula ; and the scapula 
is extremely like that of a crocodile. The femur, though somewhat thick in pro- 
portion to its length, and though its articular extremities present such a peculiarly 
eroded appearance as to lead to the belief that they were covered with thick car- 
tilaginous epiphyses, is also completely crocodilian in its characters. 

The natural cast of the mandible is remarkable for the great length and sub- 
cylindrical contour of the teeth, the apices of which are slightly recurved. The 
surface of the tooth is marked by numerous close-set longitudinal grooves, which 
all terminate at a short distance from the smooth apex. It would appear that the 
teeth contained large pulp-cavities, and that each was set in a deep and distinct 
alveolus. Notwithstanding their special peculiarities, these teeth might in many 
respects be compared with those of the Teleosauria. 

A metatarsal or metacarpal bone, reproduced from a natural cast, was shown to 
be similar to that of a crocodile, but so much shorter in proportion to its thickness 
as to indicate an altogether shorter and broader foot. ‘he cast of an ungual 
phalanx, on the other hand, proves that Stagonolepis had long and taper claws. 

Thus far the resemblances with the Crocodilia are, on the whole, very close ; 
but the characters of a coracoid obtained from Lossiemouth, separate Stagonolepis 
from all known recent and fossil Crocoditia. It is, in fact, a lacertian coracoid, 
very similar to that of Hyleosaurus. 

In summing up the evidence thus brought forward as to the affinities of Stagono- 
lepis, the author, after comparing it with the oldest known Reptilia, expressed his 
opinion that the peculiar characters of this ancient reptile separate it as widely 
from the mesozoic Reptilia hitherto discovered, as these are separated from the 
cainozoic members of the same group,—in fact, it widely diverges from all known 
recent and fossil forms, and throws no clear light on the age of the deposit in 
which it occurs, : 


48 THE GEOLOGIST. 


The footsteps from the Cummingston quarries were next described. The 
largest yet seen by the author are eight or nine inches long, but the majority are 
much smaller. Prof. Huxley expressed his opinion that all the tracks which he 
had seen were referable to variously-sized individuals of one and the same species 
of reptile ; and he described at length the only perfect impressions he had observed, 
the one of a fore-, the other of a hind-foot. The impression of the fore-foot, pre- 
sented a broad, oval palmar depression, ending in five digits, of which the imner- 
most, representing the thumb, was very broad and short. Each of the outer digits 
was terminated by a long and tapering claw, and there were clear traces of a web- 
like membrane uniting these digits as far forwards as the bases of the ungual 
phalanges. ‘he innermost digit or thumb is directed inwards, as well as forwards, 
and appears to have been fnrnished with a thick, short, and much curved nail. 

The impression of the hind-foot is smaller than that of the fore-foot, to which, 
however, it has a general resemblance. It exhibits only four digits, all termi- 
nating in taper claws and united by a web. ‘There are indications of a rudimentary 
outer toe. In one track, where the impression of the fore-foot measured three 
inches, the stride was twelve inches. 

The impressions might very well have been made by such an animal as Stago- 
nolepis, with the ungual phalanges of which, indeed, the claw-marks of the foot- 
steps present a close resemblance, while the shortness and breadth of the palmar 
and plantar impressions harmonize very well with the proportions of the metatarsal 
or metacarpal bone. 

In the course of his remarks, the author took occasion to express his great 
obligations to Mr. Patrick Duff and the Rev. George Gordon for their zealous and 
most efficient aid, without which it would have been quite impossible for him to 
lay so complete a case before the Society. 

[This paper was illustrated by original sketches, and by a fine series of tracks 
from Cummingston and of natural and artificial casts and models of the remains 
of the Stagonolepis (including the specimen originally figured), from the collections 
of Mr. P. Duff, the Rev. G. Gordon, the Museum of Practical Geology, &c.] 

4. “On Fossil Footprints in the Old Red Sandstone, at Cummingston.” By 
S. H. Beckles, Esq. F.G.S. 

Mr. Beckles, during a late tour through the Highlands, examined the Sandstone- 
quarries at Covesea, near Elgin ; and having exposed and removed several square 
yards of the Sandstone-slabs bearing fossil footprints at this place, has seut a 
large collection of them to London, but has not yet had the opportunity of study- 
ing them in detail. Mr. Beccles says that he has secured several varieties of foot- 
steps, differing in size and form, and in the number of the claws, which vary 
apparently from two to five. One footprint, of a circular shape, measured fifteen 
inches in breadth. Some of the smaller footprints are evidently formed by young 
individuals of the same species that made some of the larger marks. Some of the 
prints have been left, in the author’s opinion, by web-footed animals. 

Most of the surface-planes of the rock, at ditterent levels, bear footmarks. The 
majority of the tracks, Mr. Beckles says, are uniserial, the double (or quadrupedal) 
series being exceptional. 

Mr. Beckles noticed also impressions of rain-prints well-marked on some of the 
surface-planes, and indicating the direction of the wind blowing at the time of the 
rain-fall. 

GroLocists’ AssocraTron.—A meeting was held at No. 2, Upper Wellington- 
street, Strand, on Friday evening, the 17th December, 1858, for the purpose of 
organizing a new society to promote the study of Geology, and its allied sciences. 

The means proposed are the holding of periodical meetings for reading and dis- 
cussing papers, and the exhibition of specimens, arrangements for facilitating 
the exchange of specimens between distant members, the formation of a typical 
collection of fossils suited to the wants of students, the establishment of a library 
of reference, and the delivery of short courses of lectures. 

It was announced, in the course of the proceedings, that 120 applications for 
membership had been already received. 

The first meeting for actual work will take place early in January, when an in- 
plein dines will be delivered by the President, and more detailed plans will 

e stated. 


THE GEOLOGIST. 


FEBRUARY, 1859. 


(ON ROCKS; THEIR CHEMICAL AND MINERAL COM- 
POSITION, AND PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS. 


By H. C. Satmon, Esq. Plymouth. 
(Continued from Vol. I. page 420.) 


2. On the various chemical and mineral constituents of rocks, and thewr 


general relations. 


IX. Aww rocks are necessarily composed of minerals,—that is, of 
certain “substances which, wherever found, present respectively 
nearly the same forms and physical characters, and are generally 
composed of nearly the same chemical constituents.°* A rock may 
consist of one single mineral, in which case it is called a simple rock ; 
or it may be made up of an aggregation of several different minerals, 
when it is called a mixed rock. Crystalline limestone, which consists 
exclusively of one mineral, calcite, may be given as a familiar example 
of a simple rock, and granite, made up of an intimate aggregation of 
three distinct minerals, felspar, quartz, and mica, of a mixed rock. 

Rocks being thus made up of minerals, it will be necessary for us 
to consider briefly the composition and classification of the latter. 
They are divided by mineralogists into species, and these species are 
again grouped together according to various systems of classification. 

* Phillips’s Mineralogy, edited by Brooke and Miller. ‘A mineral species is a 
natural inorganic body, possessing a definite chemical composition, and assuming 
a regular determinate form or series of forms. There are, however, certain 


limitations with which the above definition must be understood. »_N ICOL’S 
Mineralogy. 


VOL. II. E 


50 THE GEOLOGIST. 


The division into species is, in the case of most minerals, natural and 
obvious; but here, as in the animate kingdoms, the difficulty of 
drawing distinct lines between species increases as our knowledge 
extends. Indeed it must be admitted that the line of demarcation 
between many allied species is often drawn more from empirical and 
practical considerations than upon any recognisable scientific prin- 
ciple. But if we meet with difficulties in the establishment of species, 
there is yet greater confusion when we attempt to group these into a 
systematic classification, and the leading mineralogists differ com- 
pletely as to the principles upon which it should be carried out. 
Some insist that they should be grouped solely according to their 
external forms ; some, according to their chemical composition alone ; 
while others prefer an intermediate principle compounded of both. 
The chemical classification is that adopted in our standard English 
Mineralogy,* and is the one which we shall follow here, as bearing 
more nearly upon that higher portion of our subject, the investigation 
of the chemical genesis of rocks. 

X. In dealing with the chemical character of minerals and rocks, 
I must assume an elementary knowledge of chemistry on the part of 
my readers. I take for granted that they are aware that all matter, 
cognisable to us, consists of some one or more of the sixty-two 
elementary bodies, or elements, each possessed of certain distinctive 
physical properties, and combining together according to certain 
laws; and that these compounds are distinguished by certain names 
which indicate either their physical properties or their combining 
proportions. Those who haye not this knowledge will find it neces- 
sary to acquire it, which can be done from any elementary treatise on 
chemistry. Mr. Jukes’ recently published anual of Geology contains 
an introductory chapter on chemical mineralogy, by Dr. W. K. 
Sullivan, to which every student would do well to refer. 

These sixty and odd elements are distributed with the widest 
inequality. One, oxygen, occurs so abundantly as to make up at least 
three-fourths of the terraqueous globe, and some others occur so fre- 
queutly, and in such large quantities, as to form a notable proportion 


_ ™ Phillips’s, before referred to. Professor Nicol, in his Manual of Mineralogy, 
Just quoted, has some important remarks on the classification of minerals. (See 
chap. iv. p. 99.) He does not adopt the chemical arrangement. 


I 
: 
4 
J 
‘ 


SALMON—ON ROCKS. Rl 


of the earth’s crust ; while many again are found so seldorn, that their. 
discovery in considerable quantities is of great commercial importance, 
and some are so rare as to make even small specimens often of con- 
siderable value. Z'welve only, or less than one-fifth of the whole, occur 
frequently, or in abundance, in the rocks at the surface of the earth. 

XI. If the elements are distributed with such great inequality, so 
are minerals likewise. Mineralogists describe about 700 mineral 
species, but of these comparatively few occur frequently, or still fewer 
abundantly. On examining rock-formations, we soon find that they 
are made up, in an enormous proportion, of some few mineral species 
and varieties, which are met with so abundantly as to justify their 
being considered as essential parts of the earth’s crust, while the great 
body of mineral species are more or less subordinate. But there is 
another distinction to be drawn between minerals, besides their greater 
or less abundance. Some minerals, which occur in comparatively 
considerable quantities, are almost always found in veins, and rarely or 
never mixed in rocks as a constituent ingredient. These we call 
vein-forming minerals ; and although some of them occur frequently 
and abundantly, and are of great geological importance, yet, as they 
do not form the constituents of rocks, to the consideration of which 
these papers are exclusively devoted, they do not now come within 
our scope. In contradistinction to these minerals, which we find only 
in veins, we term those minerals which we have already referred to as 
occurring so frequently and abundantly in rocks, vock-forming minerals. 
But besides these rock-forming minerals occurring in great quantity, 
there are others which, although they are not frequently met with, 
and are only abundant in some unfrequently occurring rocks, and are 
sometimes even never abundant, yet form an essential though minor 
constituent of rocks. These we must also class in the category of 
rock-forming minerals ; and we shall consequently notice them here, 
although they may, on the whole, be far less abundant than many 
minerals which we exclude, because, existing almost entirely in veins, 
they do not belong to our present subject. 

XII. I have already stated that there are only twelve elements 
which occur in abundance in rocks—or perhaps I should rather say 
in the minerals which make up rocks. In considering, however, the 
chemical nature of the rock-forming minerals, it will be necessary to 

E 2 


Dy, THE GEOLOGIST. 


increase this number to seventeen; the five additional elements, 
although not occurring abundantly compared with the others, being 
yet essential and characteristic chemical constituents of many rock- 
forming minerals. The following is a list of these seventeen elements, 
with their chemical symbols affixed :— 


f. Oxygen .<. O1 6) Hluormes — Bor Miaenesmum. Mie 
2. Hydrogen. . HL Feosiicony 29427812 Barras (bag 
3.) Carbon «.(+i«, 0. \508.; Boron. 4.25 «B.S Potassimm: aeake 
4. Sulphur... ,S.|), 9. Alumimium . Aly 1) Sodmmis Na: 
o, Chiorme > ©. CL |) 10. Walcrum: ~ =. Cao, Miran 2 nie 
L6cdronv. °2) 5S eBeal ie Maneanesewa ee Nine 


XIII. These seventeen elements, combined in the most various 
proportions, make up the entire mass of rocks, excepting some rare 
and exceptionable species,—and also excepting, of course, their con- 
taining veins. As fifteen of them, however, always occur in rocks in 
certain definite binary combinations,—for instance, oxygen combines 
with fourteen of them to form the most abundant rock constituents,— 
it will simplify our view of the general chemical nature of rocks and 
their minerals, if we regard these important binary compounds directly. 
I have therefore compiled the following table of twenty-one substances 
(two elements, and nineteen binary compounds) which entirely make up 
the constituents of rocks, either as minerals themselves, or as forming 
the chemical components of minerals. To the ordinary chemical 
symbols, I have appended the abbreviated symbols generally used by 
mineralogists, and which will be adopted for the future in these papers. 
In this mode of notation, the double atom of any element is indicated 
by a lime drawn through the sign of a single atom; the atoms of 
oxygen are marked by dots over the sign of the other elements, and 
those of sulphur similarly by accents. 


SALMON—ON ROCKS. 5S. 


List oF ELEMENTS AND BinARY COMPOUNDS, EITHER BEING THEMSELVES 
Rock-ForMING MINERALS, OR FORMING CONSTITUENTS OF Rock- 
FORMING MINERALS. 


Those marked with an asterisk (*) are minerals,—that is, occur naturally ; those 
with a double asterisk (**), abundantly. The others form the chemical consti- 
tuents of minerals, but are not minerals themselves. 


Abbreviated 


Seber eae 
Z 
aie Pee Bespoke Pica os C C 
z 2 OSS oe S Ss 

ie 3 
NEC cs HO H 
fee Abeminn .,. . .- | Avo? Al 
5. Lime. Re Letras a eS CaO Ca 
Se tiaetoss st 3 | MgO Mg 
7. Baryta es \ BaO Ba 
8. Potash $8) 8 KO K 

‘ Seda. a he Ss NaO Na 

& | 10. Lithia ON eke eae = LiO Li 

Bape eilicic Acid... . S104 itocaki 

8 12. Carbonic Acid . Bees | Me CO? C 

| 13. Sulphuric Acid. . a So* S 

3S: 14. *Boracic Acid . ele | BO? B 

Fo | 15. **Sesqui-oxide Iron . . : ke?0? Fe 
ieee roroxide Tron. “.° .. | 3 } FeO Fe 
17. *Sesqui-oxide Manganese S Mn20? Mn 
18. Protoxide Manganese. . | MnO Mn 
19. **Chloride Sodium PGS" NOD? Nee) 
20. *Fluoride Calcium ee Ee =F CaFl CaFl 
21. *Bi-Sulphide Iron . Sie a sa 


| Carbonic and Sulphuric acids also occur naturally in volcanic regions, in the 
| form of gases. Lime, Magnesia, and Baryta are also called Alcaline Earths. 


XIV. Of the elementary bodies it therefore appears that only two 
_—carbon and sulphur—are found as minerals in any considerable 
quantity. In composition they are unimportant in rocks, except in 


_ Of the binary compounds also there are proportionately few which, 
| directly as minerals, have an important share in the formation of the 


d+ THE GEOLOGIST. 


earth’s crust; the greater quantity occur in rock-forming minerals, in 
chemical combination with each other, forming compounds of a higher 
order. Those binary compounds which are met with in quantity as 
minerals, are water’, silicic acid as silica, sesqui-oxrde of ron as hematite, 
and chloride of sodiwm as rock-salt. Those substances will be referred 
to more fully hereafter, in considering them as minerals. We 
also find alumina, magnesia, boracic acid, sesqui-oxide of manganese, 
fluoride of calcium, and bi-sulphide of iron, as the minerals corundum, 
periclase, sassoline, braunite, fluor, and pyrite. The first occurs in a 
small rock-formation, as emery ; the three following are rare and un- 
important ; but the two latter are rock-forming minerals, though not 
very abundant. 

It remains for us now to consider the combinations of these binary 
compounds among themselves. Water plays an important part in 
combination, forming an essential and considerable constituent of 
many rock-forming minerals, as gypsum, chlorite, and serpentine. 
The first three earths, alumina, lime, and magnesia, in combination 
with sedecic, carbonic, and sulphuric acids, form an important portion 
of the earth’s crust : the combinations of baryta with the acids are 
comparatively trifling. The first two alcalies—potash and soda—also 
occur abundantly in wide-spread minerals ; /¢¢hva is much rarer. 

The first three acids are also of the greatest importance ; particu- 
larly silicec acid, which, in a free state, as quartz, or in chemical 
combination with the earths and alcalies, it is estimated, alone con- 
stitutes forty-five per cent. of the earth’s mineral crust. Carbonic acid, 
although far inferior to the last-named acid, also enters as a main 
constituent of wide-spread mountain-masses. Sulphuric acid is also 
an important rock-constituent: boraciec acid is unimportant as to 
quantity. 

— The oxides of tron and manganese—the protoxides of which only 
exist in combination—form an essential constituent of many wide- 
spread rock-forming minerals. Chloride of sodium, fluoride of calcium, 
and bi-sulphide of won, are not regarded as entering into combinations. 

XV. The general conclusions we arrive at regarding the chemistry 
of the rock-forming minerals is this: with the exception of the nine 
following minerals, which are either elements or binary com- 
pounds, viz.— | 


SALMON—ON ROCKS. ps 


(1.) Carbon, (6.) Hematite (Sesqui-Oxide or Per- 
(2.) Sulphur, Oxide of Iron), 
3.) Water, (7.) Lock Salt (Chloride of Sodium), 
4.) Corundum (Alumina), (8.) Fluor (Fluoride of Calcium), 
(5.) Silica Quartz (Silicie Acid), (9.) Pyrite (Bi-Sulphide of Iron), 
all the other rock-forming minerals are essentially either— 
I. Silicates, III. Sulphates, or 
II. Carbonates, IV. Borates ; 


that is, combinations of silicic acid, carbonic acid, sulphuric acid, or 
boracic acid, with the earths, alcalies, and oxides given in the table in 
XIII. Of these, as already stated, the silicates are by far the most 
abundant; the carbonates come next; then the sulphates: the 
borates are insignificant. In examining in detail into the minerals 
formed by each of these acids, it will be convenient to reverse the . 
order given above, and first dispose of the least important. We shall, 
consequently, take them in the following order :—borates, sulphates, 
carbonates, silicates. 

XVI. Borates, SULPHATES, CARBONATES.—The only essential borate 
which we find as a rock-forming mineral—and it only rarely—is 
Boracite (Mg? B*), a borate of magnesia. But boracic acid also occurs 
as an essential constituent of the important mineral Zourmaline, 
averaging about 9 per cent. 

The only sulphates forming rock-minerals are those of Lime and 
Baryta. Anhydrite (CaS) and Gypsum (Ca S + H?) are respectively 
an anhydrous, and a hydrous sulphate of lime. Gypsum is a most 
abundant rock, occurring in many sedimentary formations. Saryte 
(Ba S), or heavy-spar, is a sulphate of Baryta; it is a rare ingredient 
in rocks, and indeed is more a vein-forming than a rock-forming 
mineral. 

The rock-forming carbonates are those of Lime, Magnesia, and Iron. 
The first, in the form of Calcite (Ca C), carbonate of lime, is the base 
of all limestones and chalks, and is the most abundant of any mineral 
not being a silicate. Magnesite (Mg C), a carbonate of magnesia, is 
neither an abundant nor important mineral in its pure state ; but in 
combination with carbonate of lime, it forms the mineral Dolomite 
(Ca & Mg }, or bitter-spar, which is the base of the large formation 
of magnesian limestone. Carbonate of iron, Chalybite (Fe C), ig not. 


56 THE GEOLOGIST. 


an abundant rock-mineral, although it is a considerable ingredient in 
some rock formations. 

Summing up these minerals, and arranging them in their order of 
importance, we find that all the carbonates, sulphates, and borates 
only produce the eight following rock-forming minerals ; and even of 
these, five are unimportant in quantity :— 


(1.) Calcite (Carbonate of Lime). (5.) Anhkydrite(Sulphate of Lime). 

(2.) Magnesite (Carbonate of Mag- (6.) Gypsum (Hydrated Sulphate 
nesia). of Lime). 

(3.) Chalybite (Carbonate of Iron). (7.) Baryte (Sulphate of Baryta). 

(4.) Dolomite (Carbonate of Lime (8.) Boracite (Borate of Magnesia). 
and Magnesia). 

Hence, with the exception of these eight minerals, and the nine 
minerals already enumerated, formed of elements and binary com- 
pounds, in all 17, the whole of the other rock-forming minerals are 
selicates. 

XVII. Srr1cates.—The principal constituents of all rocks, with the 
exception of Limestones, Magnesian Limestones, and Gypsums, are 
silicated minerals. Indeed, the crystalline rocks, and many sedi- 
mentary strata which constitute by far the greater part of the known 
surface of the earth, consist chiefly of silicates; and therefore a 
knowledge of their chemical character becomes of the greatest 
importance.* 

Silicates may be either simple silicates, or compound silicates. A 
simple silicate is a combination of the acid with one single base, un- 
combined with any other ; a compound silicate is a compound between 
the acid and two or more bases combined. 

XVIII. Simple Silicates—The simple silicates are of much less 
geological importance than the compound, as they occur much less 
frequently. Of the earths, we have simple silicates of Alumina, 
Lime, and Magnesia, but not of Baryta. The anhydrous silicates of 
_ Alumina, such as Andalusite and Kyanite (Al Si), are by no means abun- 
dant minerals ; indeed they are less so than the simple hydrous 
silicates, such as Kaolin (Al Si + H?), which are more important, inas- 
much as they form the base of all clays which have resulted from 
the decomposition of ancient felspathic rocks. The simple silicates 


* Bischof, ii. 82. 


SALMON—ON ROCKS. ya 


of lime, such as Wollastonite (Ca Si), are likewise unimportant. Of 
the simple silicates, those of Magnesia, such as Steatite (Mg Si) and 
Talc, are the only ones which occur in abundance, and form important 
constituents of large rock-masses. Silicates of the alcalies do not 
occur uncombined as minerals, although combined with the earthy 
bases they constitute a large part of the most frequently occurring 
silicated minerals: this arises from their great solubility. Simple 
silicates of the oxides of iron and manganese are, however, met with, 
although not in any abundance. Persilicate of iron has a light ochre 
colour, but the protosilicate is green. The mineral Glauconite, or 
green-earth, is essentially a silicate of protoxide of iron; granules of 
it are frequently abundant in chalk, tertiary, and other strata. Simple 
silicates of manganese also occur, but in trifling quantities; most of 
them are hydrated. 

XIX. Compound Silicates—The vast mass of minerals are made up 
of compound silicates. Among the bases which are found most fre- 
quently and abundantly in this class of minerals, Alumina is by far 
the most important. Ina large number of them—and these among 
the most important—it is the prevalent base, and of the whole 
number of compound silicates there are comparatively few in which 
it is wholly absent. Next to Alumina, the alcaline earths, Lime and 
Magnesia, and the alcalies, Potash and Soda, are the most abundant 
bases in this class of silicates. Lithia is comparatively rare, and 
Baryta occurs in such trifling proportions as not to be worth our 
consideration here. The silicates of tron and Manganese are also 
important constituents of compound silicates ; they are usually the 
protoxides of these metals. ‘The compound silicates are consequently 
made up of various combinations of the silicates of 


1. Alumina. 4, Potash. 7. Proto (per) Oxide Iron. 
2. Lime. 5. Soda. 8. Proto (per) Oxide Manganese. 
3, Magnesia. 6. Lithia, 


XX. The following synopsis of the most important simple and 
compound silicated minerals will give a general idea of the chemical 
relations of this important and complicated class of rock-con- 
stituents :— 


Or 
(oA) 


THE GEOLOGIST. 


SIMPLE SILICATES OF 


ALUMINA . 


LIME 


MAGNESIA . 


DAD oper e 


. Andalusite or Chiastolite. 
. Kyanite. 
. Kaolin. 
. Wollastonite. 

. Datolite and Apophyllite. 


Hydrated. 


Zeolites. 


Talc. Generally some Fe. 


. Steatite. ditto. 
. Serpentine. 


Hydrated. Mg often largely 
replaced by Fe. 


CoMPUUND SILICATES OF - 


ALUMINA AND LIME 


ALUMINA AND MAGNESIA 
ALUMINA AND PoTAsH 


ALUMINA AND SoDA 


ALUMINA AND LITHIA 


ALUMINA AND PER-oxIDE [RON 


Atumina, Lime, Anp Sopa. 


ALUMINA, Sopa, AND PoTAsH. 


Atumina, Limp, anp Iron. 
Atumina, Lime, Maennsi, 
AND [Ron . be Eeacss 


AutumiIna, Maenesra, & Iron. 


s): 


10. 


Lil 


a2: 
_ Orthoclase. 
. Leucite. 
. Harmotome 


28. 


30. 


. Albite. 


. Sodalite. 


Wernerite, or Scapolite. Part of Ca gene- 
rally replaced by Na, K. 

Anorthite. Felspar species; part of Ca 
generally replaced by Mg, K, Na. 

Stilbite or Desmine, Heulandite, Leonhardite, 
Scolezite or calcareous Mesotype, Chaba- 
site (often with Na), Lawmonite, Prehnite 
(often with Fe). All zeolites. 

Soapstone. Hydrated ; generally with Fe. 

Common, or Potash Felspar. 

A Felspar species. 

or Baryta-Harmotome, with 

silicate of Ba. A zeolite. 

Soda Felspar, a small portion of 

Na usually replaced by Ca, K. 

Combmed with Na Cl (Chloride 

of Sodium). 


. Mesotype or Natrolite,and Analcime. Zeolites. 
. Petalite. 


Lithia Felspar; often contains 


Na. 


. Spodumene, or Triphane. A Felspar species ; ; 


often with Na. 


. Stawrolite. 


. Bole. Hydrated ; allied to Kaolin, and the 
bases of clays. 
. Oligoclase. A Felspar species. 
. Labradorite. ditto. 
5. Andesine. ditto. . 
. Epistilbite, Mesolite, Thomsonite, and Comp- 
tonite. “eolites. 
. Sanidine or Adularia. Glassy Felspar. 
Ryacolite. A Felspar species. 
. Nepheline. ditto. 
Epidote. 
- Garnet. The mineral is very variable in its 


composition, and has many varieties. The 


proportions of A , Ca, and the two oxides 
ot Iron vary oreatly. It often contains 
1VinN. 


. Idocrase or Vesuvian. 
. Cordierite. 


TATE—ON THE GHOLOGY OF BEADNELL. a9 


Atumina, Macnesia, & Iron. 34. Ripidolite. 


35. Chlorite. 
Atumina, Maanusta,[Ron,aAnpd 36. Biotite or Magnesia-Mica. 
PovraAsH. . . . - . +--+ 37. Pinite. Altered Cordierite, some Mg re- 
placed by K. 


38. Tourmaline. A mineral of various and com- 
plicated chemical constitution. Contains 


Na with K, also about 9 per cent. of 

Boracic acid, and 3 per cent. of Fluorine. 
Atumtna, Iron, AND Potasu. 39. Potash-Mica. Has sometimes Mn. 
Atumina, Iron, Portasu, 40. Lepidolite, or Lithia-Mica. Also Hydro- 


Litaia, AND MANGANESE . fluoric acid. oe 
Maenusta, Lime, anp Prorox- 41. Hornblende. Often some Al. 
ROGUE M Nein xt. . » .- 42. Augite. ditto. 
43. Diallage. Generally some A, also H and 
Mn. hi 
44, Hypersthene. Generally Al and Mn. 
Maenesra AND IRon. . . . 45. Olivine. 


46. Bronzite. Some H. 


THE GEOLOGY OF BEADNELL, IN THE COUNTY OF 
NORTHUMBERLAND, WITH A DESCRIPTION OF SOME 
ANNELIDS OF THE CARBONIFEROUS FORMATION. 


By Grorce Tats, Esq. F.G:S. 


Read before the Berwickshire Naturalists Club, at Beadnell, in May, 1858. 


A sEction along the coast from Ebbs Nook to Annstead Bay, of 
nearly one and a half miles in length, exhibits a fine series of rocks 
belonging to the Mountain Limestone Formation, Thick sandstones 
and limestones, shales with ironstone, and coal-searns are intercalated 
with each other ; and these strata are traversed by a lead-vein and a 
basaltic dyke. As we wander along the shore, we meet with evidences 
of sea-deposits in the limestones and calcareous shales, wherein are 
embedded many corals and mollusks; the sandstones, shales, and coal 
afford relics of the vegetation of the Carboniferous Era; some slaty 
sandstones give distinct indications of ancient shallow seas and coast- 
lines, whereon the waves broke gently and over which worms crawled ; 
while the basaltic dyke tells of the play of internal forces, rending 
asunder the vast mass of stratified rocks, and pouring molten lava 
into the fissures. 


60 THE GEOLOGIST. 


The general dip of the strata, about 15°, is south-east, and as we 
proceed northward we pass over the lower beds in succession. There 
are a few dislocations and faults, and in some parts the limestones are 
thrown into wave-like ridges and hollows ; but the contortions are not 
so remarkable as at Howick, Holy Island, and Scremerston. As the 
greater proportion of the middle group of the mountain-limestone 
rocks is seen here, the following section will be instructive, giving, as 
it does, the strata in detail from the highest at Ebbs Nook, down to 
the lowest which have been reached by pit-sinkings in the neighbour- 
hood. It has been made out by repeated examinations of the coast, 
collated with information derived from pit-sinkings, which has been 
kindly supplied to me by my friend, Mr. William Wilson, the intelli- 
gent manager of the Shilbottle Colliery. The lower strata from 
No. 68 downward are taken entirely from pit-sections. 


SECTION. 
ft. in. | beds, annelids in flaggy 
1. Ebbs Nook Magnesian lime- beds . . 24 0 
stone, containing Productus _ 14. Shale with ironstone-nodules 15 0 
giganteus, Spirifer lineatus, 15. Limestone, generally blue: 
Cheetetes septosus, Lithostro- —the basaltic dyke cuts 
tion basaltiforme, Syringo- through these beds near 
pora ramulosa, &e. . . 30 0 the shore. ve seqieaeane tO 
2. Red, flaggy sandstone, ripple LG. .Coal = 06 
marked 40 | 17. Grey shales with ironstone- 
3. Shale, reddish at top, darker nodules: »5 4... eed Sted OO 
and carbonaceous in lower 18. Blue shales Ao a eae ag | 
beds Sy se 2050 149) Grey slatyisand snanene 5 0 
4-. Coal ~..s 3 bites dye ole DOG Ee Coal (stony coal)—this is very 
5. Fire-clay and shale (Oe nearly in the same position 
6. Flaggysandstones,micaceous in the series as the fine 
along the lamine ; with ““Shilbottle-seam” . 10 
borings ofannelids?. . . 300 | 21. Slaty sandstones 8 0 
7. Shale . . 50] 22. Blue slates : 7 0 
8. Sandstones with ripple- 23. Slaty sandstones and shales 
marks, false-bedding, and —some beds are ripple- 
worm-casts and trails . . 40 0 marked, and the vein of 
OS ONALES: kis eeu Galena is seen crossing the 
10. Limestones, generally blue : sandstone STIG 
some beds dun, weathering | 24. Shales . ; 1050 
buif; a calcareous shale, 25. Limestone, dark : 6 0 
2 ft. 6 in. is interstratified : 26. Grey slaty sandstones and 
—Productus giganteus, Au- shales. . 27 0 
lophyllum fungites, &c. .28 0 | 27. Caleareous shale ; swith many 
11. Coal mixed with shale . . 06 | fossils 30 
12. Arenaceous shale 10 | 28. Limestones much contorted : 
13. Sandstones, some blotched the upper beds impure, but 
and red, others flagey ; the middle and lower make 


Stigmaria ficotdes I upper | good lime. These beds were 


feet. 


TATE—ON 


worked here until lately ; 
and also at North Sunder- 
land, where they are brought 
in thr ough the undulations 
and faults of the strata. 


They are very fossiliferous. 24 
29. Coal . 0 
30. Fire-clay and shales . . . 10 
31. Sandstone, upper beds slaty. 30 
32. Carbonaceous shales with 
ironstone-nodules - 10 
33. Limestone, dun and impure 
—Productus giganteus . . 4 
34. Carbonaceous shales . . . 12 
35. Coal (“ Beadnell-coal”’). Va- 
ries in thickness from 2 ft. 
6 in. to 6 ft.; the average 
about . 3 
36. Sandstones and slaty sand- 
stones with a la ae 
num . : : Fi 
ai. Goals’. > 
38. Grey slaty and flag Bey sand- 
stones .. a 
39. Shales . ; Car ite! 
40. Grey slaty sandstone. . . 6 
41. Shales . , 0 
42. ee some of the beds 
ee 38 
43. ney shales . Nae 
-44, Limestone . . 2 FZ 
45. Grey slaty sandstones. . . 6 
46. Fire-clay and shales . 30 
47. Coal (stone-close-coal) . . . 1 
48. Grey slaty sandstone . 10 
meeeemepnaIe, . . ww. CO 
50. Slaty sandstone. . -. 10 
51. Dark shale 18 
52. Limestone ee ae! 
Ces OO 


oo =) oon oe 


=) 


rROOCCCOoOROCOAROCSO ooc oe O° 


THE GEOLOGY 


54, 


a> 
— 


OF BEADNELL. 


Grey sandstones and jay 
sandstones . aver 

Limestone 

Coal (‘‘ Swinhoe ‘coal? ) 

Sandstones 

Grey shale : 

White sandstone 

Blue shale 

Limestone, impure 

GGalk onc ta sepcptas 

Fire-clay and shales . . . 

Coal (‘‘ Fleetham coal,” of 
Sood, QUaNLY)) ws a gl 

Sandstones ew 

Blue shales 

Sandstone 

Limestone Rae 

Coal 0 

Slaty sandstones and shales. 

Coal . nee 

Fire-clay . 

Limestone, light- coloured 

Coal, mixed with sandstone. 

Shales and slaty sandstone . 

Limestone, impure 

Chali a. er : 

Sandstones 

Slaty sandstone 

Blue shale 

Hard stone ; 

Sandstone, coarse, white . 

Blue shale Ai 

Coal, good 

Slaty sandstones 

Coal (‘‘ main coal’’) 

Fire-clay . : 

Blue shale 

Limestone 


Total 


we bb 
PODANW OTH US 


i) 
CoROOCCCS ownroozmrorooe 


_ 
LW on) 
=) (=) 


bo oO Ur 


tN = 
PHATE NUURASONN KH 


heoescoenoacococqcesS 


1,493 10 


There are in this section fourteen different limestones, varying in 
thickness from 2 to 30 feet, and having an aggregate thickness of 171 


Most of them are of a bluish colour and yield good lime ; many 


fossils characteristic of the mountain-limestone formation occur, espe- 


cially in the thicker sills and in the calcareous shales connected with 
them. The main limestone, No. 28, is the most fossiliferous ; and the 
following list, though far from complete, will show how rich it is in 
organic remains : — 


FISH. 


A few remains of fish appear, viz.— 
Megalichthys Hibberti, Ag. (scales, of a 


quadrate form, one inch across. ) 


Cladodus mirabilis, Ag. (teeth). 
Cochliodus magnus, Ag. (teeth). 


CRUSTACEA. 


Grifithides Farnensis, Tate. 


octopticatus, Sow. 
Edmondia sulcata, Phil. 
Sanguinolites tridinoides, McCoy. 
—— transversa, Port. 


Naticopsis plicistria, Phil. 
Loxonema rugifera, ’Phil. 
Euomphalus carbonarius, Sow. 
Pleurotomaria decipiens, McCoy. 


62 THE GEOLOGIST. 
MOLLUSCA. | Spirtfer trigonalis, Mart. 
Orthoceras sulcatum, Flem. Le ee lea ae 
Goldfussianum, Kon. | ———— lineaius, Mart. 
| 


atomaria, Phil. +  variabilis, "McCoy. 
Platyschisma helicoides, Sow. | Aviculo-pectendocens, McCoy. 
Bellerophon Urii, ¥ lem. | 
Orthis resupinata, Mart. | BRYOZOA. 


Michelini, Kon. Fenestella plebeia, McCoy. 
Strophomena crenistria, Phil. oma ae Teas 


Productus Martini, Sow. undulata, Phil. 
punctatus, Mart. 
scabriculus, Mart. 
spinulosus, Sow. 
———-— fimbriatus, Sow. 


Glauconome pluma, Phil. 
Sulcoretepora parallela, Phil. 


latissimus, Sow. CORALS. 
Flemingii, Sow. Aulophyllum fungites, Flem. 
semireticulatus, Mart. Lithodendron irregulare, Phil. 
Chonetes sordida, Sow. Stenopora tumida, Phil. 
Dalmaniana, Kon. Favosites par asitica, Phil. 


— gibberula, McCoy. 


— serialis, Port. 


The calcareous shale is remarkably full of fossils ; indeed it is 
almost entirely formed of Productus Flemingit and Spirifer trigonalis. 
Being exposed to the weathering influence of the tide, which washes 
away the softer matrix, the fossils stand out in bold relief, and fine 
specimens of the Productus can be obtained, showing beautifully the 
curious internal structure of the shell. 

The limestone which forms the bold headland of Ebbs Nook is, 
however, the most interesting of the group, from its peculiar orga- 
nisms, its mineral composition, and picturesque appearance. It is 30 
feet in thickness ; and, being very hard, resists more effectively than 
the other rocks the destructive action of the sea. Resting, however, 
on a soft shale which is easily broken up and washed away by the 
tides, this superincumbent limestone is deprived of support, and from 
time to time large masses tumble down from the cliff. It now forms 
a narrow point running out into the sea for about one quarter of 
a mile; but the tides and high seas are still working away the lower 
and softer beds which connect this promontory with the land, and in 
the course of a few centuries it will become an island on the flow of 
every tide. ‘This limestone is of a buff colour and generally of a 
crystalline structure. It is a magnesian limestone, being composed of 
carbonate of magnesia and carbonate of lime. Besides containing 


| 


TATE—ON THE GEOLOGY OF BEADNELL. 63 


Productus giganteus and other commoner mountain-limestone fossils, it 
abounds with large masses of the corals Lithostrotion basaltiforme and 
Cheetetes septosus; and occasionally we find Syringopora ramulosa, 
which is a rare coral in the Northumberland beds. These distinctive 
organisms are excellent guides in tracing the range of this “sill.” 
Northward I have found it at Holy Island, and southward I have 
traced it to Spittleford, near Embleton, and to Dunstan, Craster, and 
Shilbottle ; thence in a south-west direction to Whittle, Newton-on- 
the-Moor, Framlington, and across the Coquet to Ward’s Hill and 
Rothley. It should be noticed that the magnesian character of this 
limestone is a local phenomenon, seemingly in some way arising from 
the proximity of basalt ; in several parts of its range, as at Shilbottle 
and Framlington, it is a comparatively pure carbonate of lime. 

There are eighteen different coal-seams in the section ; most of them 
thin and of an inferior quality ; only two exceeding 2 feet in thick- 
ness; their aggregate thickness being only 24 feet 4 inches. That 
which is called the ‘‘ Beadnell-coal” (No. 35) has been worked both 
for domestic use and for lime-burning. It is of variable thickness, 
seldom less than 2 feet 6 inches, and generally about 3 feet ; but on 
Mrs. Taylor’s estate it has been found as much as 6 feet thick, and of 
a better quality than in other localities. It lies there, however, below 
the sea-level ; and as the sea some time ago broke into a neighbouring 
colliery, due precautions would be necessary to prevent a similar 
irruption, in the event of this more valuable portion being worked for 
the use of the district. 

The sandstones and shales associated with the coal-seams contain 
relics of the vegetation of the Carboniferous Era; Stigmaria ficoides 
appear abundantly in these beds, with a few Sigillariz. One interesting 
specimen of Sigillaria, laid bare in quarrying the sandstone in 1853, 
deserves a more particular notice; although but a fragment, it was 
six feet in height, two feet two inches in diameter at the lower end, 
and one foot nine inches at the higher. It stood perpendicular to the 
strata, which dip 15° south-east, and its inclination to the horizon was 
75°. The lower extremity terminated abruptly on the surface of slaty 
sandstone beds, but the outcrop of the rock in which it was embedded 
prevented our knowing how far upward it extended. Over its surface 
was a thin carbonaceous coating, being the bark converted into coal ; 


64 THE GEOLOGIST. 


but the interior was replaced with sandstone, retaining no structure, 

but bearing, however, the rude flutings which distinguish the casts of 
Sigillarize: it appeared to belong to the species Stgillaria organum. 

The sandstone in which it stood consists of several beds; the lines of 
stratification distinctly passing through the fossil, and curving more 

or less downward on all sides towards it. No roots could be observed 

attached to this tree ; yet from its position at right angles to the 

strata, and the peculiarity of the stratification, I think it originally 

grew onthe spot. Indeed, there seems to me little doubt that most 

of the coal-seams, even in northern Northumberland, have been formed, 
of plants and trees which grew, during the Carboniferous Era, in the 

district now occupied by the coal-beds ; the under-clay usually beneath 

each coal-seam having been the surface-soil on which they grew, it is 

now found more or less traversed by the Stigmaria ficoides,—the roots 

of Sigillariz,—the trunks of which have largely contributed to the 

formation of the coal. As this fossil tree is frequently to be seen in 

Northumberland, it may add to the interest of these notes to give the 

following description from my “ Fossil Flora of the Eastern Borders.” 

“The structure of the Sigillariz differs widely from that of any living 
plant ; it is, however, essentially acrogenous ; and the nearest analogue 

to those majestic trees of other times is the Lycopod or lowly-creeping 

club-moss ; yet the radial arrangement of the woody tissue and the 

presence of medullary rays and a sheath bring them into a distant re- 

lationship to exogenous vegetation. Brongniart considers them allied 

both to the Lycopod and to the Cycas; they form, therefore, a con- 

necting link between orders which stand far apart in existing nature. 

Composed chiefly of cellular tissue, the Sigillarizs were extremely suc- 

culent ; they grew in swamps and marshes, their long and numerous 

roots and rootlets (Stigmaria) forming an entangled mass and per- 

meating the mud in all directions, in a manner similar to that of the 

living water-lily in shallow lakes and pools. The roots sometimes ex- 

hibited a crucial arrangement, uniting into four main portions, sepa- 

rated from each other by deep channels and forming a dome, from the 

summit of which the furrowed and scarred stems, clothed in the upper 
parts with a long, narrow, and pendent foliage, rose to the height of 
nearly 100 feet.” * 


* Tate's “‘ Fossil Flora of the Mountain Limestone Formation,” in Dr. John- 
ston’s ‘‘ Botany of the Eastern Borders,” p. 299. 


é 


TATE—ON THE GEOLOGY OF BEADNELL. 65 


Other conditions of the Carboniferous Era are made known by 
several of the sandstones, which present ripple-marks, oblique lamina- 
tion, and fossil worms and worm-tracks, indicating ancient beaches and 
the action of waves and currents. When deposits are made in com- 
paratively tranquil water, the planes of the several beds are pretty 
nearly parallel to each other ; but some sandstones exhibiting in mass 
this ordinary stratification have also included in them thin layers or 
stratula, which are inclined sometimes highly to the plane of the 
principal bed ; of this oblique lamination, or, as it is frequently called, 
Jalse-bedding, there are many examples in the “ Beadnell-sandstones.” 
Both ripple-marks and false-bedding result from the action of waves 
and currents; the former being produced by the gentle motion of 
waves, and the latter by stronger currents. After the recession of 
the tide, furrows and ridges may be seen on sandy and muddy coasts ; 
these are similar in form and arrangement to those left impressed by 
ancient waves on the “ Beadnell-sandstones,” in which they are beau- 
tifully distinct ; some of them are large, measuring six inches from one 


_ ridge to the other, and they usually trend from east by south to west 


by north. As the line in which a current moves is at right angles to 
the direction of such marks, the ancient currents which rolled over the 
Beadnell coast must have come either from the north or the south. 

Mr. H. C. Sorby has attempted to determine the direction whence 
currents came by observations on the dip of the stratula, as he con- 
siders the direction to be the opposite to this dip in relation to the 
plane of true bedding ; and he concludes from a series of observations, 
that the drifting current which formed the carboniferous sandstone- 
beds of the southern part of the coast of Northumberland came from 
north 9° east.* The “ Beadnell-beds,” however, do not not lead to any 
such general conclusion, for I found in the same stratum, and within 
a distance of not many yards, that the stratula in one place dipped 
from 40° to 70° to the north, and in another place at similar angles to 
the south-west by south. Probably this bed had been formed by the 
action of strong eddies and counter currents, which piled up the 
drifted sand with considerable irregularity. 

Most curious and instructive are the fossil worms and their tracks 
which occur in several layers of flaggy and ripple-marked sandstones 
* Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society for 1852, p. 232. 

VOL. II. F 


66 THE GEOLOGIST. 


a little northward of Ebbs Nook. They are seen also in other sand- 
stone beds of the section, as well as in other localities in Northum- 
berland. Though similar annelids are not unfrequent in Paleozoic 
rocks, they have been but seldom noticed. Species from the Silurian 
rocks have been described by Sir R. Murchison in his great work the 
“ Silurian System,” by Professor McCoy in Sedgwick’s “ Synopsis of the 
Classification of British Palaeozoic Rocks,” and by Mr. J. W. Salter in 
the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society. Few distinct descrip- 
tions have been given of such forms in the Carboniferous formation ; 
the only notices I know of are contained in a paper by Mr. E. W. 
Binney, “On some Traits and Holes formed in rocks of the Carbo- 
niferous Strata ;” * and in an excellent popular “ Account of a large 
fossil, marine worm, occurring in the Mountain-limestone district in 
Wensleydale, Yorkshire,” by Mr. Edw. Wood, ¥.¢.8.¢ Mr. W. Lee 
also refers to annelid-borings, in a paper on what he calls “ Fossil 
Footprints in the Carboniferous system.” + Having carefully examined 
the annelids in the Mountain-limestone formation of Northumberland, 
I am able to distinguish four distinct forms ; two of them are refer- 
able to Crassopodia (McCoy), a genus which has been found in Silurian 
beds, and which may be thus defined :—Body long ; formed of exces- 
sively short, numerous, wide segments, from which arise very long, 
delicate, crowded cirri forming a broad dense fringe on each side, com- 
pletely concealing the feet. These annelids appear to belong to the 
order Dorsibranchiata of Cuvier, and are allied to the nereides which 
now inhabit our coast. These latter are marine worms which creep 
in a serpentine manner, and even swim by successive undulations of 
their bodies or by agitating their appendages. 


orAssoPpoprAa EMBLETONIA § (Tate). Plate IT. figs. 1, 2. 


Length unknown (upwards of two feet) ; width one inch ; thickness 
not exceeding four lines ; width of body five lines ; articulations three 
lines apart ; cirri about four lines long, crowded, there being twenty- 
four in the space of one inch. There is no appearance of a head ; the 

* Memoirs of the Manchester Philosophical Society, vol. x. p. 181. 

+ The Naturalist, Nos. I. and II. pp. 14 and 41. 

+ Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society, vol. ix. p. 409. 


§ I have named this after my esteemed friend, Mr. R. C. Embleton, the accom- 
plished Secretary of our Club. 


be aamampteie ee a a Ma he eagle —a 


TATE—ON THE GEOLOGY OF BEADNELL. 67 


width and characters are the same throughout the entire length ; it 
occurs in large rounded loops from half an inch to more than three 
inches apart. 

Having found sections showing the interior of this curious fossil, I 
have been able to determine the width of the body, and the distance 
of the articulations from each other. 

This is the most widely distributed of the carboniferous annelids ; 
it occurs in sandstones of the mountain-limestone at Beadnell, Scre- 
merston, Howick, Haltwhistle,* and also in flagey beds of the millstone- 
grit at Berlin Carr, between Alnmouth and the Coquet. 

Fig. 1.—Upper surface ; the keel-like centre is that portion of the body not 
covered with cirri. 


Fig. 2—Section showing the articulations of the body ; a, intestinal canal : 
b, muscular layer and articulations ; c, space occupied by cirri. 


crASSOPODIA MEDIA (TaTE). Plate II. figs, 3, 4. 


Length considerable (upwards of three feet, nine inches); usual 
width about four lines ; some specimens are only three lines, others as 
much as six lines wide; thickness three lines; width of body two 
lines ; length of cirri one line and a half, twenty of them in the space 
of one inch ; the width and thickness continue the same throughout 
the entire length. 

It occurs in irregular loops and long undulations which occasionally 
cross each other, and is quite distinct from the C. Hmbletoma, being 
much smaller and much thicker in proportion to its size ; the cirri are 
less crowded and the foldings are more tortuous and irregular. 

Tt occurs in sandstone at Beadnell, abundantly at North Sunder- 
land, at Newton-on-the-Moor, and at Howick. 


Fig. 3.—Upper surface. 
Fig. 4.—Section showing the cirri and a cast of the body. 


Nemertites (McLeay).—A Genus which has been described from 
the Silurian formation ; it is thus defined :—Body very long, linear, » 
slender, of nearly uniform thickness throughout, without distinct 
articulations. 


* On the Irthing, near Combe Crag. 


68 THE GEOLOGIST. 


NEMERTITES UNDULATA (TaTE). Plate IT. fig. 5. 


Length unknown (upwards of nine inches), body round, half a line 
in diameter, usually in loop-folds from a quarter “fo half an inch 
apart ; neither articulations nor cirri are observable. 

This species is generally found where fossil worms appear; it - 
occurs in sandstone at Beadnell, North Sunderland, Howick, and 
Haltwhistle. 


Fig. 5.—Nemertites undulata, accompanied with borings of other annelids ; 
this species also is figured on the slab, fig. 6. 


E1onz (Tarr).—This annelid, very different from every other, 
occurs in considerable abundance at Howick, in a thick flaggy sand- 
stone which holds a similar relative position in the mountain-lime- 
stone series to some of the sandstone-beds at Beadnell. This fossil, 
too, is associated with the same species of worms as are found at 
Beadnell. It has characters so remarkably distinct that F have pro- 
yisionally given it a generic as well as a specific name. 


EIONE MONILIFORMIS (TaTE). Plate IT. fig. 6. 


Length unknown (upwards of three feet) ; body rounded, lower 
surface and sides moderately convex, smooth, upper annulated, 
diameter six lines ; articulations consisting of bead-shaped rings on 
the upper surface, distinctly separated from each other by a deep 
sulcation, the length of each articulation being five lines ; it occurs in 
long undulations. Some individuals are a little larger and others 
a little smaller than the size stated ; but each preserves the size and 
character throughout the entire length. I have been unable to detect 
any internal structure, or to observe sete, cirri, or appendages. 

This very peculiar fossil worm may be referred to Cuvier’s order 
Abranchiata. Destitute of sete and cirri, it resembles the Hirudo 
or leech, and probably, like the Lumbricus or earth-worm, it respired 
by the entire surface of the skin and not by special organs ; it would 
progress by the contraction and extension of the subcutaneous mus- 
cular stratum. ; 

It is found at Howick, Scremerston, and Haltwhistle in Northum- 
berland, and I believe also in Yorkshire. 

Besides the forms now described, there are other casts and trails at . 


TATE—ON THE GEOLOGY OF BEADNELL. 69 


Beadnell. Some seem to be the burrows or casts of annelids, passing 
either perpendicularly or obliquely through several layers of rock, the 
upper surface of the layers being pitted and the under projecting. 
These casts or burrows are about two lines in diameter, and are so 
crowded together in some rocks both at Beadnell and Kirkwhelpington, 
as to give the stone a pock-marked appearance. Meandering furrows 
about one line in width, with a ridge in the centre, are probably the 
trails of an annelid: they occur also at Howick, North Sunderland, 
and Haltwhistle. It has been suggested that these were tracks made 
by small crustaceans, but the absence of all remains of the hard shell 
renders this opinion doubtful, and more extended observations on 
these borings and trails, and on the other markings associated with 
them, are required before the true characters can be distinctly 
determined. 

As confirmatory of the marine conditions of the rocks in which the 
ripple-marks and annelids are found, I may add, that the flagg 
sandstone containing annelids at Howick has in some of the layers 
Bellerophon, Huomphalus, Murchisonia, and Pleuwrotomaria, shells un- 
doubtedly of marine origin. 

The group of facts now noticed gives us a partial glimpse into a far 
distant era. The Beadnell flaggy beds expose to our view an ancient 
coast-line : we hear the waves breaking on the shore ; we perceive 
currents rolling along masses of sand ; the tide recedes, and ripple- 
marks, long ridges and furrows, sharp and distinct, appear ; there, 
too, are seen worms, some of large size, crawling over the surface or 
burrowing in the sand. Marks left by the sea are often fugitive,— 
the impressions made by one tide are obliterated by another; but 
here they are preserved ; the sand and mud are hardened, it may be, 
by a warm sun breaking forth and baking the surface before the 
return of the tide; other deposits have covered over the markings, 
and buried up and preserved the organic forms; and now, when 
these rocks are laid bare and examined, they reveal to us that the 
same physical laws operated during the Carboniferous Era as at the 
present time, and that, though the aspects of vegetation were wonder- 
fully different, and organic life specifically distinct, yet the animals of 
‘the period were formed according to the same types, and were subject 
to like conditions as those now existing. 


70 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Before leaving the stratified rocks, allusion may be made to the 
illustration they afford of changes of physical condition and of oscil- 
lations of level. Taking the coal in connexion with the limestone, 
there is evidence of not less than fourteen changes of level ; as many 
times, during the period when these rocks were being deposited, the 
district was clothed with an abundant and marvellous vegetation, 
—as many times were there alternations of swamps and lakes, of 
estuaries and lagoons, and of seas sometimes profound, though gene- 
rally of moderate depth. 

A little northward of the basaltic dyke, a narrow crack or fissure of 
the sandstone contains galena or sulphuret of lead. It runs across 
the strata from south by east to north by west ; and a branch from it 
forks off to the north-north-west. The vein seems too small to be 
worked with advantage. Its position gives probability to the theory 
that the igneous agency which forced upward the basalt produced also, 


by sublimation, the ore which is found in the vein. 

When viewed from the shore near to Dunstan Square, this basaltic 
dyke, even to one unacquainted with geological principles, is a 
striking and interesting object. It rises perpendicularly through the 
stratified rocks, and runs in a direct line from west 85° south to east 
85° north. Its width is twenty-five feet, contracting seaward to 
twenty feet. It stands in some parts ten feet above the strata, and 
appears like a wall rudely piled up by Cyclopean builders; and, 
although in other parts it is broken down by the waves, its course can 
be distinctly traced for a considerable distance into the sea. The 
basalt is of the usual composition, augite and felspar ; but it is finer 
grained than the larger masses at Ratcheugh and the Farne Islands. 
The adjacent strata are very slightly altered in position ; but their 
structural characters are changed. Coal for some distance from it is 
valueless ; limestone near it will not burn into lime; and shale and 
sandstone are indurated. At the point of contact, sandstones, shales, 
and limestones are much jointed and fissured, and assume the external 
form of basalt; on the other hand, the basalt itself becomes cal- 
careous and siliceous. This transference of qualities and the struc- 
tural changes superinduced are the results of the igneous agency 
which, by its upward pressure, rent asunder the vast mass of stratified 
rocks, and then poured the molten basalt into the fissures. 


71 


THE GEOLOGY OF HOOK POINT. 
By Professor R. Harkness, F.R.S. F.G.S. 
(Continued from page 32.) 


THE paleontology or the study of the fossils of Hook Head is, if it 
be possible, even more interesting than its physical geology. As soon 
as ever we cross over the sandstones, and ascend into the higher strata 
of the Carboniferous series proper, we reach a domain abounding with 
animal life. Almost immediately above the sandstones which afford the 
remains of the fossil plants, we reach a zone having a distinct mineral 
character. This zone consists of a black shale, a substance which was 
originally black mud deposited by the sea, and this black shale is an 
important member of the great Carboniferous series of the south of 
Treland. At Hook, it is a very degraded form of that member of the 
Irish carboniferous series known under the name of “ carboniferous 
slate.” In this locality it has a thickness of only a few yards, but west- 
ward from Hook the carboniferous slate increases in thickness, until we 
find it in the county of Cork, separating the sandstone strata below from 
the lower portion of the carboniferous limestone above, by an interval, 
in some instances, reaching to about 4,000 feet. At ILook, this ancient 
muddy sea-bottom seems to have existed for a shorter time than 
towards the westward, and was succeeded by a sea containing a con- 
siderable portion of lime in its waters. 

The limestone which succeeds the black shale at Hook is not of so 
pure a character as that which forms the general great mass of the 
Lower Limestone of Ireland. It is largely impregnated with mud, and 
seems to have resulted from nearly the same physical conditions as the 
inferior black shale, differing only from the latter in containing a 
greater amount of lime. The black shale and the limestone equally 
afford fossils, and they show us to what an extent animal life abounded 
in the seas during this early geological period. All geologists con- 
versant with Carboniferous fossils are not only aware to what an ex- 
tent many of the forms of life of this period abound in this locality, 
but likewise know the perfection of the Hook organisms. Among 
zoophytes—those plant-like animals which, in external form, nearly 


72 THE GEOLOGIST. 


approach to vegetables, but which in their portions possessing the 
power of sensation have the simplest animal orgauization—we find the 
Astreopora, with its slightly convex surface covered over with stellate 
pores, the former abode of the numerous-headed animal which con- 
structed the strong fabric forming its habitation. Here, too, occurs 
the Aulopora, with its chain-like form, spreading itself over the sur- 
faces of shells, and studded on its upper side with numerous aper- 
tures from whence issued the heads of its occupant. The Michelina, 
with its surface covered with depressed stars, arranged in an hexagonal 
form like an antique pavement, here, too, makes its appearance in 
considerable abundance; Stenopora, with its branching form and rugose 
surface, here also occurs; and among them also we find Zaphrentis, 
which, when broken perpendicularly, exhibits a structure like a series of 
small funnels piled one upon another in its interior. 

Hook Head is, however, more famous for its Crinoids—those ancient 
stem-like stone-lilies endowed with animal organization, and which 
flourished in such great abundance in many of the paleozoic seas ; 
numberless fragments of these forms occur, for the most part in the 
state of fragments of stems; sometimes in the form of the cup- 
plates, and instances are not uncommon of almost perfect specimens 
being found. 

One of the forms of crinoids, Actinocrinus, makes its appearance 
generally in the condition of detached plates ; sometimes we have the 
cup in a state of perfection showing the base composed of its three 
pieces of quadrangular form, surmounted by numerous hexagonal 
plates, and terminated by arms which’ branch in a dichotomous 
manner. Cyathocrinus, too, occurs here, with its cup-base composed 
of five pieces supporting five other larger plates, which form the 
principal mass of the cup, and the base from whence the arms 
emanated. Platycrinus also abounds, with its base composed of three 
plates, surmounted by five larger pieces, which immediately support 
the base from whence the dichotomous ones arise.  Potertocrinus, 
with its five basal pieces, and its five subradial fragments, and long 
branching arms, here is met with. hodocrinus also is seen, with its 
numerous plates beautifully fitted together, and looking, in some 
species, like a rugose seed studded over with tubercles. It frequently 
happens that here we meet with an individual crinoid in which the 


HARKNESS—THE GEOLOGY OF HOOK POINT. 73 


stem, cup, arms, and thin net-like membranes retain all their original 
perfection, and they appear as if they had been suddenly enveloped 
in some rapid deposition of mud, while they were resting from their 
labours and digesting the food which their membraneous extremities 
had caught. In some instances the stems are in such a condition as 
to allow us to judge of the arrangement of the joints composing 
them, as also of their flexibility. The surfaces of some of the strata 
are covered by these stems, and sometimes the stems have such a 
sinuous and convoluted aspect as to lead to the conclusion 
that these crinoids covering the bottom of the carboniferous 
sea, moved about under every influence of wave and current, as 
trees do on land when a breeze is powerful enough to shake them. 
Hook Point is equally celebrated for the remains of that tribe 
of animals which is known under the name of Bryozoa, and 
which in their interral structure have great affinity to animals 
constructing and inhabiting bivalve-shells. Among these we have 
Diastopora, a parasite, which lived and built its habitation on other 
Bryozoa, forming a small patch of calcareous matter, having cells with 
semicircular apertures pointing outwards. G'lauconome—one form of 
which presents a feather-like aspect, having a central shaft, from 
whence issue numerous obliquely placed bars, running together 
regularly, and leaving interspaces of an oval form, the bars having 
on one side a row of pores along each margin—is seen in considerable 
profusion. Polypora, a net-like form, having its under surface devoid 
of pores, but with the upper surface covered with several rows of cells 
on each of the upright bars, also appears at Hook Point. The form 
of Bryozoa which occurs in the greatest profusion and perfection is 
Fenestella. Several distinct species here make their appearance, and 
in some cases the limestones appear to be almost altogether made up 
of this form. It has a window-like aspect when magnified ; but, seen 
without the aid of the microscope, has somewhat of a net-like 
structure ; its under surface, like the Bryozoa generally, is devoid of 
pores ; but the thicker upright bars have commonly a finely striated 
surface. The upper side of the bars is usually marked by a central, 
well-exhibited keel, and on the outer side of this are the numerous 
pores from whence the heads of the animal inhabiting the Fenestella 
issued. ‘The thin ecross-bars which serve to connect the thicker pore- 


74 THE GEOLOGIST. 


bearing portions, have no pores on them, and they form, by their 
junctions with the thicker bars, a series of quadrangular interspaces, 
which give to this form the aspect from whence it derives its name. 
These ancient Bryozoa, or Sea-mats (Polyzoa of some authors), seem 
to have been strewn over the bottom of the carboniferous sea in this 
locality in such profusion that they now constitute by far the largest 
portion of the organic remains of the limestone of Hook Point. 

Several forms of shells are met with among the fossils of Hook 
Point, but these are by no means so abundant as the Bryozoa ; neither 
do they occur in such profusion as in many other localities of the 
Carboniferous Formation, as this is developed in other parts of Ireland, 
or in some of the areas of Great Britain where these deposits appear. 

There is one circumstance in connexion with the fossils which occur 
in the limestone of Hook of much importance,—this is the fine state 
- of perfection in which they are seen. The Bryozoa stand out in 
beautiful relief from the mass of the dark-coloured matrix which 
contains them. The calcareous habitations of these ancient occupants 
of a former sea have a white bleached-like aspect, which contrasts 
strongly with the dark limestone, and adds much to the interest of 
these ancient remains. The soft nature of the imbedding matrix is 
the origin of this beauty and perfection of the fossils. The clayey 
limestone yields easily to the influence of the sea, and portions become 
decomposed and separated from the organisms which are contained 
therein, allowing these latter to present themselves in a state of high 
relief, and affording to the paleontologist opportunities of obtaining a 
knowledge not only of the dwellings, but also of the bodies, of the 
creatures which fashioned these stony abodes. 

These antique records of an early epoch in our earth's history, from 
whence we obtain a knowledge of some of the creatures which have 
enjoyed “their little all of life” in seas of ancient times, speak to us 
of periods so long and so remote, that the mind fails even to grasp the 
amount of time consumed during their existence as species upon our 
planet. Man measures his periods by motion ; he counts his days, 
and months, and years by the revolution of his earth and those celes- 
tial bodies which are the companions of his world in “ heavens with 
hollowness.” Days, and months, and years rolled by in periods long 
antecedent to man’s advent upon this earth: the sun gilded the 


BEVAN—ON THE ANTHRACITE-COAL, 75 


rippling waves of ocean as he rose from his eastern couch, and purpled 
the sea as he sank behind its western waves: the silvery light of the 
crescent moon danced on the wandering surface of the waters, and the 
tremulous sea, “ meek as a slave before his lord,” silently followed the 
bidding of night’s pale queen in this far-off geological epoch ;—but sun 
and moon are alike silent when we question them as to the times and 
seasons at which these “sea-mats” of the Carboniferous Period were 
living things sporting in their beams. Motion entirely fails to convey 
to us any knowledge concerning geological epochs. These epochs are 
written only in the lives of species ; and how long conditions suitable 
for forms of life obtained, is still a question of which even the elements 
for calculation are not yet arrived at. 


ON THE ANTHRACITE-COAL OF SOUTH WALES. 
By Dr. J. P. Bevan, F.G.S. 


THERE is probably no mineral, of all the many that contribute to 
England’s commercial greatness, which is so varied in kind, chemical 
composition, and appearance, as coal; and an interesting volume 
might be written on the different forms under which it is extracted 
from the earth, under the names of brown-coal, eulm, cannel-coal, 
bituminous coal, anthracite, and the like. Next to the bituminous 
coals of Great Britain, the most important are the anthracites or 
stone-coals ; and of these I propose to give a short sketch, especially 
as relates to their development in the coal-basin of South Wales. Of 
their importance commercially there can be no doubt : for, on referring 
to the “Mining Records” published during last year, I find that 
960,500 tons were raised in this basin alone, for the purpose of sup- 
plying 18 blast-furnaces in the counties of Brecon, Glamorgan, and 
Caermarthen. 

The peculiarities of anthracite have been known for a very long 
time ; for even old Leland speaks thus of it :— 

“At Llanelthle, a village of Kidwelli Lordship, a vi miles from 
Kidwelli, the Inhabitans digge coles, elles scant in Kidwelli Land. 
Ther be ii manner of thes coles—Ring-coles for smith be blowid and 
waterid—Stone-coles be sometime waterid, but never blowen; for 


76 THE GEOLOGIST. 


blowing extinguishit them—So that Vendrith Vawr coles be stone- 
coles—Llanethle coles Ring-Coles.” 

Again, in 1595, Thomas Owen, the antiquary and historian of 
Pembrokeshire, writes concerning it :— 

“ Tt is called stone-cole for the hardness thereof, and is burned in 
chimnies and grates of iron; and, being once kindled, giveth a greater 
heate than lighte, and delighteth to burn in dark places. It servith 
alsoe for smithes to work with, though not soe well as the other kindes 
of cole, called the running cole, for that, when it first kindleth, it 
melteth and runneth as wax, and groweth into one clodde ; whereas 
this stone-cole burneth aparte and never clyngeth together. This 
kind of cole is not noysome for the smoke, nor nothing so loathsome 
for the smell, as the ring-cole is, whose smoke annoyeth all thinges 
near it, as fyne linen, men’s handes that warm themselves by it ; but 
this stone-cole yieldeth in a manner noe smoke after it is kindled, and 
is soe pure that fine camerick and lawne is usually dried by it without 
any stayn or blemish, and is a most proved good dryer of malt, therein 
passing woode, ferne, or strawe. ‘This cole, for the rare properties 
thereof, was carried out of this countrie to the citie of London, to the 
late Lord Treasurer Burley, by gentlemen of experience, to show how 
far that excelled the same of Newcastell wherewith the citie of London 
is served; and I think, if the passage were not soe tedious, there 
would be great use of it.”” Thus spake Mr. Owen, who was evidently 
an observant man, and far ahead of his time. 

The distribution of the anthracite in the South Wales basin is 
unequal, there being no actual line of demarcation between it and 
the bituminous coal; but, on the contrary, a change so gradual that 
it is difficult to fix the precise spot where the anthracite tendency 
first shows itself. This peculiarity is not limited to this district, but 
is observed also in the coal-field of Donetz in South Russia, as also 
in the Pennsylvanian field. The north crop of the South Wales 
basin (which, by the way, is more of the shape of an elongated trough 
than of a basin) extends from the Blorenge Mountain, near Blanafou, 
to the Caermarthenshire coast at Kidwelly ; a distance of between 
sixty and seventy miles, the latter half of which gradually curves 
southward to meet the south crop at the narrow end of the trough. 
At Blanafou, where the measures turn the corner from Pontypool, the 


BEVAN—ON THE ANTHRACITE-COAL. 77 


coals are wholly bituminous, as they are also at Clydach, Nantyglo, 
Blaina, Beaufort, Ebbwvale, Tredegar, and Sirhowy, all iron-works 
supplied by these north crop or lower-measure coals. The next work 
to Tredegar is, however, Rhymney (ten miles or so from Blanafou), 
which is divided by the river of the same name into Rhymney proper, 
and Bute on the Glamorganshire side. Why I am particular in 
specifying this is, because at Bute appears the first evidence of an 
anthracite tendency in the coal, although but slightly marked. The 
next valley, or that of the Taff, contains Merthyr Dowlais and 
Cyfartha, where the bituminous or coking quality is still decreasing, 
and the anthracite takes its place. Further westward, at Hirwain, 
the tendency is about equal to that of the Cyfartha coal, although the 
latter is superior for melting purposes, explained by Mr. Mushet by 
the mode in which the anthracite material exists,—that of the 
Cyfartha coal being diffused and penetrated by a bituminous cement, 
while that of Hirwain is in distinct leaves. At Onlwyn, nine miles 
from Hirwain, the seams are altogether anthracitous, as they are also 
at Ystradgunlais in the Strausen Valley, Cvm Amman, and the whole 
of the Caermarthenshire north crop, until we reach the sea at Kid- 
welly, where are situated the “ Vendraeth Vawr,” or “stone-coles” of 
old Leland. 

For a long time, the principal use of anthracite was for melting, 
for which process it was always available, and for which it is still 
employed ; indeed, there is a seam of coal worked in Cwm Amman, the 
“Big Vein,” which is almost exclusively used for this branch of trade, 
which consumes 50,000 tons of anthracite annually. But as regards the 
iron manufacture, it was looked upon as rather a nuisance than other- 
wise ; for, so far from conducing to good combustion, it almost put 
the fire out, and thus was worse than useless. In 1837, however, 
a Mr. Crane set up a furnace at Ystradgunlais in the Strausen Valley, 
and endeavoured unsuccessfully to make iron with this coal. He 
then tried the experiment of mixing anthracite with bituminous coal 
from other districts, by the help of which he succeeded in smelting 
she iron, though not profitably, as the expense of bringing other coals 
would not allow of competition with works where everything was on 
she spot. But one evening, when he was sitting by his fireside, he 
observed that a lump of anthracite, instead of catching the flame and 


es cee 


78 THE GEOLOGIST. 


burning up readily, actually deadened it, and by slow degrees was 
putting it out. Hesawat once the utter uselessness of cold anthracite 
in the furnace, and proposed to heat it preparatory to using it in the 
blast. Fortunately for the district, he was entirely successful; and 
thus opened up a fresh portion of South Wales to commercial enter- 
prise. There is, however, one drawback still about it, and that is, 
the slowness with which the iron is turned out, in comparison with 
the iron of the bituminous works ; a cause which operates somewhat 
detrimentally, when we consider the great extent of competition in 
the trade. 

The chemical features of anthracite may be summed up in a very few 
words. As compared with bituminous coal, its great difference is in 
containing much more carbon and less volatile matters. I add an 
analysis made by Dr. Schafhaeutl, which was published in the 
“Transactions of the Royal Institute of South Wales” for 1840. It 
is as follows :— 


Carbon.) erg cei Sika aller s a) eee ar 
Ely droQemy marc. 0 e Maeuaee tie aces ae aoe 
Oxygen’, oo. kane) pee ee eee 
A010 ee Sey tenner ge eae Ae et I uo 
Sultans. Git” AR MER ea, saa iee ee ey 
AUNT Re See ees mem 
Sulphur with traces of Iron. . . . 0.09 

100.00 

Density: i siete stp ied eee cae eee eee eo 


In the following tabulated columns I have appended a short 
analysis * of the coals in their westward course along the north crop, 
showing the gradual increase of the anthracitous matter. 


Tabular Columns showing the Increase of Anthracite to the Westward. 


In 100 parts. In 100 parts. 

Bitu- Bitu- 
Carbon. minous Carbon. minous 
1. Blanafou— Matter. | 3. Nantyglo— Matter. 
Three Quarter Coal . 65.63 31.25 Rlhid’ =. 3. ane CLSE hee 
Droydeg. . . . . 65.55 28.95 Three Quarter. . . 82.65 15.10 
Meadow Vein. . . 72.00 26.00 Bydellog: . » es 77.34 LSS 
OldiCoall se <i456 fD.21 222.29 Qld Coal. 9.-. .. .°785-. Sigs 

2. Clydach— 4, Ebbwvale— 

Hilid Coal . . . . 76.58 20.80 Bllid .<. “Joe 6238. thas 
Big Vein. . . . 73.42 24.58 Three Quarter. . . 80.25 17.00 
Three Quarter. . . 72.70 25.30 Bio’ Vein, e . OL SY dae 
Bydellog or Droydeg. 72.13 21.87 Bydellog;. ..). :f~ 12.88 ° 1688 
Nard sVveininn saiarcteieOom Lavoe Yard Vein. . . . 81.04 15.83 
Old Coal. '= \ .. 77.657 18.95 Old Coals: 2. °.). 79.28/716-22 


* Selected from those made by Mr. Mushet. 


BEVAN—ON THE ANTHRACITE-COAL. 79 


In 100 parts. In 100 parts. 
Bitu- ate Bitu- 
5. Rhymney— ee Mater: Cyfartha, cont.— PEE sk nat ter 
Bio Vem os . . §2.33 13.17 Cwm-mwyn. . . . 8887 9.00 
Ras-las or Bydellog . 82.79 12.96 Crom-y-gls . . . . 89.29 6.58 
Yard Vem. ... «80.92 16:20 Gelly-des, 14. 94-86 > 6.14 
Four Foot Coal . . 80.15 15.10 Pia ye pelle 
Red Coal eae ysis NOE 12.75 F Big Vein: ois) oe se SOs. 7.18 
6. Sales Four Foot Coal . . 90.26 7.86 
ewe =). - 85.00 11:87) 9 onium d Ne ws 
aie f yn and Neath Valley 

tee Boe ae. sees ou Highteen Foot Coal. 91.43 6.24 
Asin Gani a amar aera Nine Foot Coal . . 93.12 5.22 

Little Ven. . . . 86.90 11.72 | 10. Swansea Valley— 
7. Cufartho— Big Vem. 3... 92-59° - 5:61 
; fe Wein 90.28 7.97 Brass Vein. . . . 92.46 6.04 
area esta 90 Black Vein. . . . 93.14 5.36 


The next point is rather a qucstio vexata, viz. the causes which have 
produced anthracite. Many geologists consider the causes to be 
purely chemical, and that they are in action at the present time,— 
causes involving the existence of an immense internal heat, which is 


_ gradually changing the whole basin. Dr. Schafhaeutl considered that 


the anthracite was altogether a distinct and separate formation ; that 
it never was bituminous, but that it derived its distinctive features 
from a different chemical composition of the original vegetable 
matter. I cannot myself agree with either of these theories ; nor do 
I consider that the cause of the change was chemical, or that it is 


_ still in progress. With the second hypothesis I still less agree ; for 
under the seams of anthracite-coal we find the same underclays as 
_ underlie the bituminous seams, proving, at all events, that the same 
conditions of soil and growth existed in one as the other ; added to 
_ which, I have frequently found in the anthracite fossil plants identical 
| with those of the bituminous coal, the only difference being that the 
_ former appear to have been subjected to greater heat. 


The facts, too, which I have stated about the gradual commencement 
_at Rhymney, and the subsequent increase of the anthracitic condition, 
do not seem to be compatible with the totally distinct chemical opera- 


tions. It is generally stated that the proximity of trap-rocks, &ec. is 
_a common cause of the change to anthracite. In the South Wales 


basin there are no visible trap-rocks (except in Pembrokeshire, where 
| they have nothing to do with the present question), but, nevertheless, 


: I cannot help imagining that the changes have been caused by trap- 


80 THE GEOLOGIST. 


rocks far below the surface, which have never appeared ; and that the 
gradual disappearance of the anthracitic tendency has been simply the 
diminishing distance from the heat which has caused the change. The 
question may beasked, Why are only the “ North Crop coals” anthra- 
citic, while the “ Upper Measure coals,” which are worked only a few 
miles distant, are bituminous? For instance, at Trimsacau, near 
Kidwelly, the coals are stone-coals, while at Llanelly, only six miles 
distant, the coals (upper measure) are bituminous. I consider the 
reason to be that the changes were subsequent to the deposition of 
the lower measures and prior to the upper ones; for we must not 
forget the vast geologic times that passed between the formation of 
the upper and the lower measures, during the deposition of the 
immense thickness of Pennant rock. According to this notion, the 
anthracitic change was all completed before the deposition of the 
upper measures. If the change were going on now, I cannot under- 
stand how the upper measures, which are so near the seat of change, 
can escape the same effects. In addition to what I have stated, I may 
add that in all the accounts of anthracitic coal-fields which I have 
looked through, whether belonging to the old coal-period or to the 
secondary eras, | have observed that disturbances and the presence 
of igneous rocks are described as existing in the great majority. 


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE: 
By Dr. T. L. Pareson oF Paris. 


Shifting Sand-hills of the Mediterranean—Sand-hills or Dunes on the 
Coast of Flanders—Encroachment of the Sea— Vegetation of the Dunes 
—Subterraneous Noises—Crystalline forms of Anglesite—Analysis of a 
Meteorite—M inerals in Aerolites—Meteoric Stones and their relations 
to Geology—The Volcano in the Island of Bourbon —Temperature of 
the Karth’s crust at inconsiderable depths—Activity of Mount Vesuvius 
— Harthquakes in Turkey —Submarine Volcano near Leghorn— 
Erratum: Iron-alum. 


Tue learned Geologist of Montpelier, M. Marcel de Serres, has just 
communicated to the Paris Academy of Sciences the following facts 
concerning the dunes, or shifting sand-hills, of the French Medi- 
terranean coasts. These sands are first thrown upon the shore by 
the sea; when dry, they are carried inward by the winds, to the 


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE, 81 


distance of several kilométres, covering fields and vineyards to the 
depth of two or three feet, suffocating vegetation, and transforming 
the richest cultivation into a desert waste. 

The only effectual means of counteracting this evil is to plant 
tamarisks along the coast, so as to form a barrier. But instances are 
frequent where neither plantations nor walls have been sufficient to 


_ prevent the sands from covering roads and fields. Last August two 


houses, several storeys high, about a mile from Agde (Hérault), were 


completely buried under the sands. The houses happened to be unin- 
_habited at the time, so that no lives were lost; fortunately also a 


north wind succeeded to the opposite one which had brought the sand, 


_ and blew it away again. 


M. Marcel de Serres, in studying this phenomenon, has observed 


that these shifting sands form two distinct zones: the first, con- 
_ Sisting of very fine sand, contains very few shells or scarcely any organic 


matter; the second contains a large proportion of shells, rounded 


shingle, and fragments of rock. This second zone remains near the 
coast, whilst the former one is carried inland, as before stated. Not- 
| withstanding their disastrous effects, these sands, when mixed with 


rich mould, make an excellent soil for growing vines. 

In a former number of THE GEoLocisT we intimated that we would 
return again to the geology of the Belgian shores. ‘The short note of 
M. Marcel de Serres furnishes us with the occasion of adding a few 
more remarks on the sand-hills of the coast of Flanders. These too, 
in spite of the influence of vegetation, have encroached upon the land 
to a considerable extent, and gradually progress each year a little 
towards the interior. It is a well-known fact that the town of 
Ostend originated in a little village, or rather in a few fishermen’s 
huts, built behind the dunes, which protected them from the strong 
winds, but at the present day Ostend stands out into the sea. It 
holds its ground, although the town is considerably below high-tide 
level, by means of a magnificent pier, built of the black limestone of 
Tournay, and constantly kept in good repair. In other localities 
upon the Flemish coast the sea has encroached dangerously ; for 
instance, in the Dutch village of Scheveningue some of the buildings 
are washed by the waves.* 

The only means of impeding the sand-hills in their destructive 
progress consists in promoting the growth of certain plants on the 
dunes. ‘Three or four plants are particularly beneficial in this respect, 
as regards the coast of Flanders ; and botanical remarks upon this 
coast will be likewise applicable to the sandy portions of the English 
shores. They are certain grasses, especially Liymus arenarius (Upright 
Sea Lyme-grass) and Arundo arenaia (Sea Reed), the long creeping 
roots, or rather rhizomes of which bind the sand together, furnish it~ 


* With respect to these remarkable changes, consult the valuable work of MM. 
Belpaire, entitled :—De la plaine maritime depuis Boulogne jusqwau Danemark, 
oe per MM. Antoine et Alphonse Belpaire. Anvers, chez Max. Kornicker.— 


VOL. II, G 


82 THE GEOLOGIST. 


with organic matter, and continually send forth young vigorous 
shoots. To these may be added Zriticum junceum, T. loliaceum, 
Hordeum maritimum, Poa maritima, P. bulbosa, and Rottbollia in- 
curvata, the last a beautiful and rather rare grass, which becomes 
towards autumn of a deep yellow colour, gradually blending into 
a bright crimson ; besides these are certain species of Salsola, Beta, 
Galium, &c. among the dicotyledons which flourish upon the dunes or 
near the sea, especially where there is mud as well as sand. To them 
we must add two ligneous plants, which contribute more than any 
others to fix the movable sand of the dunes we speak of ; the one is 
a stunted willow, Salix cenerea (or a variety), with ash-coloured leaves ; 
the other, a remarkable plant, called the Sea-buckthorn (Hippophea 
rhamnoides), is a thorny shrub, some four or five feet high, bearing a 
bright orange-coloured berry, like that of the holly. 

Some of these, and many other plants which we cannot mention 
here,* might be cultivated with advantage on the sand-hills. Indeed, 
such has long been my conviction, and in 1855 I intimated to the 
Belgian Government that the cultivation of maize or Indian corn, for its 
starch, in the more fertile parts of the dunes of Flanders, might meet 
with success.t Some years ago I called attention { also to this fact, 
that, if we consider a soil composed of pure clay, another of limestone 
or chalk, and a third of sand, it will be found that of these three, the 
one composed of pure sand is the most favourable to the development 
of vegetables. But the sand of the Flemish dunes is not quite pure ; 
it is mixed up with a considerable quantity of débris of sheils, the 
fragments of calcareous matter being reduced to the size of the grains 
of sand ; it reposes upon a sort of marl,—the well-known Argile grise 
d Ostende, which in some places lies bare upon the sea-shore ; so that 
with a little trouble the movable sand-hills might be converted into 
a fixed and fertile soil, containing all the necessary elements,—sand, 
carbonate of lime, clay, organic matter, salts, &c. Add to this the 
purity of the maritime air, the presence of minute quantities of salt$ 
and iodide of sodium || in the sand, or, at least, this iodide is found in 
the plants of the dunes, though some say it has never been discovered 
in the sand on which they grow, and we shall not be so astonished at 
the remarkable fertility which some of the more favoured spots of these 
sand-hills present to us. 

* Amongst others a peculiar species of “Old Man)’ (Artemisia maritima), 
Sweet-briar, some species of Solanum, Viola, Lotus, Linum, Daucus, &e. 

+ See my Mémoire sur la Fécule et les substances qui peuvent la remplacer dans 
?Industrie. Bruxelles, 1855-6, J. B. Tircher. 

t Journal de la Société des Sciences Médicales et Naturelles de Bruczelles. 
Oct. 1854. 

§ On the uses of salt in agriculture, see an excellent prize essay by my friend 
Dr. Max. De Saive, of Brussels, founder of the Veterinary School of Medicine 
at Liége, entitled ‘‘ Mémoire sur les usages du sel en Agriculture,’ and to which the 
Brussels Academy awarded their gold medal some years ago.—T. L. P. 

|| A curious experiment was made some time since by M. Blengini, upon 
the effects of iodine and bromine on vegetation. Some seeds were found to 
germinate with astonishing rapidity if they were sprinkled over with a slight 
quantity of a solution of iodine, or iodide of sodium.—T. L. P. 


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 83 


In one of the late numbers of the Zunes appeared a letter 
(Nov. 9, 1858), written by a variety of the species Anonymus 
incognitus. The writer declares that his attention has frequently 
been called to certain low, sullen, subterranean sounds, which he has 

likewise heard himself, on the coast of Wales (Cardiganshire). These 
sounds resemble the report of distant artillery. I notice this, as I have 
likewise heard similar noises on the coast of Flanders, whilst reposing, 
during a bright summer’s day, on the dunes near Ostend. The 
sounds, which J had heard before, and attributed to distant cannon, 
I noticed again last summer, when they were pretty nearly of the 
} same intensity as formerly, and resembled the low sullen reports of 
very distant artillery ; but none was at that time active in Belgium, 
;and we have no reasons to suppose that the noise arose from guns 
sat sea. 
| In connexion with this, I find in a little work lately published,* 
a chapter called “ Sounds from the Sea,” commencing thus :—“In the 
‘west coast of England a particular hollow noise on the sea-coast is 
known always to foretell the approach of a very heavy storm.” Now, 
‘unluckily, I do not happen to recollect if any storm or bad weather 
followed closely upon the sounds I heard on the coast of Flanders. 
| I believe not, nor does the writer in the Z%imes allude to any such 
) circumstance. 

In the year 1844 the Polytechnic Society of Cornwall published 
a report, in which the writer says :—“ In Mount’s Bay, and probably 
\in all places similarly situated, there is often heard inland, at a certain 
distance from the shore, a peculiar hollow, murmuring sound, locally 
(termed ‘ the calling of the sea,’ which, if proceeding from a direction 
| different from that of the wind, is almost always followed by a change 
-of wind, generally within twelve hours. .... It is heard sometimes at 
/a distance of several miles, although on the shore from which it 
proceeds the sea may not be louder than usual..... This sound must 
-not be confounded with that arising from a ‘ ground-sea,’ which is the 
well-known agitation along the shore occasioned by a distant storm ; 
.... for this latter noise propagates itself in every direction, and 
chiefly in that of the wind, whereas the ‘ calling’ is heard only in one 
‘direction, and usually contrary to the wind.” The writer of this 
/ report believes the noise to depend upon “a certain condition of the 
atmosphere,” regards it as a forerunner of certain changes in the 
) weather, and calls it “a very common but not generally known” 
| phenomenon. 
That the noise last spoken of is the same as that described by the 
_ writer in the umes, and that which I have myself heard two or three 
_ times on the coast of Flanders, there can be little doubt ; but as to its 
_eause I am perfectly ignorant, nor am I inclined to attribute it to 
| “certain conditions of the atmosphere.” It may probably have some 
_ connexion with the rumbling subterraneous noise so frequent during 


ae 


| 
| * M’Phun’s “ Weather Indicator,” dedicated to Prof. Nichol. Glasgow, 1857. 
Gg 2 


84 THE GEOLOGIST. 


earthquake phenomena ; and these latter frequently appear to exercise 
a certain influence upon the weather.* 

M. Von Lang has recently made known to the Imperial Academy 
of Sciences at Vienna the great variety of crystalline forms that 
sulphate of lead (Anglesite) is capable of taking in nature. Although 
isomorphous with sulphate of baryta (Larytine) and sulphate of 
strontia (Celestine), Anglesite possesses a far greater variety of forms 
than either of these two minerals. M. Von Lang, taking advantage 
of the immense number of samples of Anglesite existing in the Vienna 
collections, has written upon this substance a considerable monograph. 
The number of different crystals (all derivable from one type) of 
which he has measured the angles, amounts to more than 150. 

M. Buckeisen, a pupil of M. Wohler, the distinguished professor of 
chemistry at the University of Gottingen, has analysed a meteoric 
stone which fell on the night between the 10th and 11th of October, 
1857, not far from Ohaba, a village situated near Kalsbourg, in 
Austria. This stone has been placed by Dr. Hoérnes in the collection 
of the Imperial Institute of Geology at Vienna. It was seen to fall 
by a Greek priest, Nicolas Maldowan, about midnight on the 10th of 
October: the noise which accompanied its descent was like a loud 
clap of thunder. It fell with the quickness of lightning, and sank 
some distance into the ground at a spot covered with moss. Its 
weight is about 30 lbs. ; its specific gravity 3.11, and it has a 
pyramidal shape. On being broken, it showed (by the aid of a 
magnifying glass), in the fractured part, crystalline grains of olivine, 
of metallic iron, and of magnetic oxide of iron. From M. Buckeisen’s 


* With respect to sounds resembling artillery, the utmost caution should be 
used, from the distance at which guns can occasionally be heard. I have distinctly 
heard the practice-firing at Woolwich from the downs behind Folkestone; and at 
that town the salutes from the forts at Boulogne, thirty-two miles off, are per- 
fectly audible. I remember hearing, while walking on Dover pier, the low rumble 
of the bombardment of Antwerp by the French in 1832, the distance of which, in 
a straight line, I should think must be something like one hundred and thirty miles. 
The sounds of ships’ guns are very like those described in the above article, and are 
audible for long distances, and the large calibre of the cannon now used increases 
very greatly the range of sound. 

While I was sketching in Hythe church, two or three years since, the per- 
cussion of the evening guns of some men-of-war lying off Sandgate clattered the 
panes of glass in the windows of that fabric, which stands on a lhmestone-hill, and 
is of early English architecture, based on Norman foundations, and in good 
repair. These remarks are not made with a desire to invalidate the stated 
nature of the sounds alluded to by Dr. Phipson, and the authorities he quotes, but 
with the view to show the imperative necessity of the utmost caution in the 
observation of such phenomena. 

The peculiar hollow booming of the waves on the sea-shore before a storm is 
too palpable to escape notice, and is generally, as far as I recollect, accompanied 
by a remarkable stillness, or rather silence, if I may express it, to distinguish it 
from any ideas of atmospheric motion,—a stillness in which the noises of various 
objects are unusually perfect and distinct. 

The breaking of the waves when heard from behind an obstruction, such as a 
wall, bank, hill, or street, is sometimes not unlike the sound of guns.—Ep. 
GEOLOGIST. 


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 85 


~ analysis it appears to consist principally of olivine, augite, a mineral 
- analogous to Felspar, pure iron, and su phuret of iron. 

The first discovery of minerals in meteoric stones, or aérolites, is 
due, we believe, to Gustav Rose and Professor Rammelsberg. This 
eminent German chemist has endeavoured to show in a memoir, pub- 
lished in Poggendorff’s Annalen (1x. 130), that the residuum which 
remains insoluble after aérolites have been boiled in acid consists of 
a mixture of minerals such as are generally found in volcanic rocks on 
the surface of the earth. Thus, for instance, the rocky parts of the 
meteoric stone which fell at Chateau-Renard (Provence), and which 
_ was analysed by Dufrénoy, consists of a mixture of albite and amphi- 

bolite ; and in the aérolites which fell at Blausko and at Chantonnay, 
a mixture of amphibolite and labradorite was discovered. 

According to Gustav Rose* (Poggend. Ann. for 1825, 173 and 192), 
a meteoric stone found at Juvenas (Département de l Ardéche) is com- 
posed of a finely granular tissue of olivine, augite, and labradorite, 
blended together so as to resemble dolerite. Berzelius and Rammels- 
berg affirm that in the well-known Siberian mass of meteoric iron, 
investigated by Pallas, the olivine only differs from common olivine 
by the absence of nickel, which is replaced by oxide of tin. As 
meteoric olivine, like our basalt, contains from forty-seven to forty- 
nine per cent. of magnesia, constituting, according to Berzelius, almost 
the half of the earthy constituents of meteoric stones, we cannot be 
surprised at the great quantity of silicate of magnesia found in these 
cosmical bodies.t A meteoric stone may be grey, earthy, or metallic 
inside ; but its outside is invariably covered by a black shiny crust or 
rind, a few tenths of a line in thickness. This peculiarity at once 
characterizes an aérolite. The black crust is doubtlessly produced by 
a fusion of the elements of the meteorite ; but, as Humboldt has 
justly remarked, the greatest heat of our porcelain ovens would be 
insufficient to produce anything similar to the crust of meteoric 
stones, the interiors of which remain wholly unchanged. 

Whilst some aérolites contain as much as ninety-six per cent. of 
iron, others will be found to contain barely two per cent. The inde- 
fatigabie researches of Berzelius have shown that fifteen elements may 
be sought for with success in meteoric stones. They are : iron, nickel, 
cobait, manganese, chromium, copper, arsenic, zinc, potassium, sodium, 
sulphur, phosphorus, carbon, silicium, and magnesium. To these we 
may add tin and calcium, from what has been already stated above. 

Olbers has remarked that it is a curious, but hitherto unregarded 
fact, that while shells, &c. are found in secondary and tertiary for- 
mations, no fossil meteoric stones have as yet been discovered. “ May 
we conclude from this circumstance,” says he, “that previous to the 
present and last modification of the eafth’s surface no meteoric stones 


* See also Rammelsberg, Handworterbuch der Mineralogie (first supplement, 
1843, p. 102). 

+ Berzelius, Jahresber. vol. XV. 217 and 231 ; also Humboldt, Cosmos, vol. I. 
p- 119 et seq. 


a 


86 THE GEOLOGIST. 


fell on it, although at the present time it appears probable that 700 
fall annually ?”” To which Humboldt has replied, that problematical 
nickeliferous masses of native iron have been found in northern Asia, 
at the gold-washing establishment of Petropawlowsk, eighty miles 
south-east of Kusnezk, imbedded thirty-one feet in the ground ; and 
more recently in the Western Carpathians (the mountain-chain of 
Magura, at Szlaniez), in both of which cases they are remarkably like 
meteoric stones.* 

The Governor of the Island of Réunion (Bourbon), in a despatch of 
the 8th December last, says :—‘‘ The volcano of this island is now in 
full eruption. Since last week a torrent of burning lava has been 
seen flowing towards the sea, and all communication with the Arron- 
dissement du Vent has been cut off ; the lava having crossed the high 
road for an extent of 400 yards, and to the depth of from nine to 
twelve feet.” The flow of lava reached the sea on the 9th. This 
voleano of Bourbon is the most active of all those existing in the 
southern hemisphere, between the west coast of New Holland and the 
east coast of America. The greater part of the island, particularly the 
western portion and the interior, is basaltic. Recent veins of basalt, 
with little admixture of olivine, run through the older rock, which 
abounds in olivine ; beds of lignite are also enclosed in the hasalt. 

The summit of the volcano of Bourbon, which Hubert describes as 
emitting nearly every year two streams of lava, which frequently 
extend to the sea, is eight thousand feet high. It exhibits several 
cones of eruption, which have received distinct names, and which 
alternately send forth eruptions. Hruptions from the summit are 
not frequent. The lavas contain glassy felspar, and are therefore 
rather trachytic than basaltic. The ashes frequently contain olivine 
in long fine threads, like that produced by the volcano of Owhyhee. 
A violent eruption of these glassy threads, covering the whole island of 
Bourbon, occurred in the year 1821.7 | 

M. Fleurion, professor in one of the Imperial Schools of Agriculture, 
announces to the Paris Academy of Sciences, that, having noted for 
some time past the variations of temperature in the air, and at a 
depth of two métres beneath the surface of the soil, he has found by 
comparing them, that the temperature of the earth at this depth is 
invariably higher by two-tenths than that of the air at the surface. 
It is probable that a slip of the pen has caused the author to write 
down two-tenths instead of one-tenth. For, taking two métres to be 
(in round numbers) equal to six feet, and admitting an increase of one 
degree Fahr. for every fifty-four feet (English) in depth, we have: 

SA itn Olt = a Mahe =m 

Sire ool! 

ere dy ai 0.111, or =4. 


* Mr. HE. W. Binney has described the occurrence of three probably meteoric 
stones in the coal-measures of Lancashire. — Zransact. Inter. Philos. Soc. of 
Manchester, vol. [X.—Ep. Grou. 

+ For an account of a recent discovery of gold in the island of Bourbon, see 
my article in THE Groxoaist for March, 1858.—T. L 


tet. PO 


Pa 
FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 87 


The temperature of the earth, at a depth of six feet, should then, if 
the general law of increase of heat be observed, range only one-tenth 
higher than that observed at the surface of the soil, and not two-tenths, 
as stated above. It is a curious fact that points situated on the same 
vertical line, at an inconsiderable depth within the interior of the 
earth, experience at very different times the maximum and minimum 
of atmospheric temperature. Thus, Quetelet affirms, in the Bulletin 
de VAcadémie de Bruxelles, for 1836, that daily variations of tem- 
perature are not perceptible at depths of about four feet below the 
surface ; and at Brussels, the highest temperature was not indicated 
until the 10th December, on a thermometer which had been sunk to a 

depth of more than twenty-five feet, whilst the lowest temperature 
was observed on the 15th of June. Professor Forbes, from experi- 
ments made at a depth of twenty-four feet in the basaltic trap of 
Calton Hill, near Edinburgh, obtained similar results: the maximum 
of heat was not observed until the 8th of January. According to 
Arago, very small differences of temperature are perceptible at about 
thirty feet below the surface. The stratum of invariable temperature 
is, in the well-known Caves de l’Observatoire, at Paris, at a depth of 
eighty-six feet English. 

A letter from Naples informs us that “ Vesuvius is cracking and 
splitting ; the foot of the cone being pierced through and through by 
fumarolle, or little craters, which emit a considerable quantity of 
lava. . . . If this sort of work continue, the great cone, formed by 
the accumulation of substances thrown out by the volcano, will pro- 
bably fall in one of these days ; and the result will be a terrible catas- 
trophe, not for Naples, which lies comfortably at a certain distance, but 
for Resina and Portici, which lie at the foot of this formidable moun- 
tain.” It would certainly be a strange thing to see Vesuvius over- 
whelm these towns, built upon the very lava which smothered up 
Herculaneum. Professor Daubeny, of Oxford, the author of a well- 
known work on volcanos, is at present at Vesuvius. 

A terrible earthquake took place in Turkey, on the 28th November, 
principally at Touzla, in the district of Zvornie. Many houses fell, 
and the inhabitants, in spite of the cold weather, were obliged to quit 
their dwellings and encamp in the open fields. Another still more 
disastrous shock has nearly overthrown the town of Ergheni, in 
Albania. A number of houses and shops were completely destroyed, 
and many people killed. 

We have received some more news of the submarine volcano men- 
tioned in our last article. The French consul at Livorno (Leghorn) 
has communicated the fact to the Paris Academy of Sciences. Accord- 
ing to his account, flames and smoke were seen to issue from rocks 
which have taken the place of the ancient pier. All around the tem- 
perature of the sea is above boiling-point (100° Centigrade). It 
is evidently a volcanic phenomenon similar to that which caused the 
upheaval of the remarkable island called Julia, or Sabrina, not very 
far from the same place. 


88 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Erratum.—In my last article, in lieu of the note at foot of page 34, 
read,—‘‘ Most of the alum thus produced is no doubt iron-alum, we. it 
contains sulphate of iron, and no alumina.” Sulphate of peroxide of 
iron and sulphate of alumina, being isomorphous salts, can replace 
one another in their combinations without causing a change in the 
crystalline form of the product. Thus, if these two salts be dissolved, 
they cannot be separated by crystallization : every crystal will contain 
both. This is often a cause of great inconvenience; for, when 
common alum (sulphate of potash and alumina) be mixed with, or 
replaced by, iron-alum (sulphate of potash and iron), it cannot be 
employed in dyeing, calico-printing, &c. Now, this must be inevitably 
the case with the alum produced by the spontaneous combustion of 
the coal-beds of ? Aveyron, mentioned in our preceding article, from 
the decomposition of the iron-pyrites. 


REVIEWS. 


Siluria. The History of the Oldest Fossiliferous Rocks and their Foundations ; with 
a Brief Sketch of the Distribution of Gold over the Earth. By Sir R. I. Mur- 
cHison, &c. (Third Edition, including the ‘“ Silurian System.”) With Maps 
and many additional Illustrations. 1859. 8vo. London: Murray. 


Tnts long-expected book has at last appeared, and presents a result well worthy 
of the care and pains that have been evidently bestowed upon it ; and its handsome 
appearance prevents regret for any delay in its production. The printers, with 
good paper, clear type excellently printed, and the skill they have displayed in 
making the most of the numerous woodcuts with which it is illustrated, well 
merit the passing word of praise which the reviewer is licensed to give them. 

The chief attraction of the new edition (we object to style it ‘‘the third,” for 
the greater and original work, the ‘‘ Silurian System,” must then be regarded as 
the jist) is in its matter. Designed as the book is to give us the history of the 
most remote periods of organic life upon our planet, every new word of truth which 
the author has elicited in the four years since he last revised his former labours— 
from the thick and ponderous records of the wonderful rock-masses and mountainous 
regions of which the Silurian region offers the types—will be looked for and sought 
out with eager eyes and anxious expectation. As we look with intense interest 
upon every trace of the first existence of our race upon this planet, and prize the 
intrinsically worthless flint or stone beyond the cost of gold, because some unknown 
human hand has chipped it into barbarous shape of arrow-head or axe, so with still 
more wonder do we regard the rain-prints, the worm-tracks, and the creeping things 
of that ‘‘ long, long ago,” when life first, as far as the traces of it have yet been dis- 
tinctly observed, gave its great distinctive and marvellous feature to that world 
which ‘‘ was our cradle and which will be our grave,”’—the scene of all our loves, 
and hopes, and fears, our joys and sorrows,—linked to us by every tie of friendship 
and affection, and dear to us even in the days of sorrow and of tears. 

It is something in such an active and intelligent world to attain eminence—to 
reach that point from whence we can look back or down—to be able to say we 
have done good service, or that we have surpassed our fellows in the intellectual 
race,—and so well established is the veteran eminence of Sir Roderick Murchison 
that we may acknowledge it without flattery or adulation ; but, like as the poorer 
portion of humanity envy the good coat on every man’s back they see, so there are 
some smuler minds even in scientific circles who would attempt to detract from 


the fame which a long, active, and useful life has fairly earned ; and we are glad 


——— ean 


REVIEWS. 89 


that, by a full and generous acknowledgment of the well-known and valuable ser- 
vices of the late Rey. T. T. Lewis, of Aymesbury, the author of “ Siluria” has fput 
one oft-spoken point out of the reach of his detractors. 

““ Ce n’est pas avec des microscopes,” says De Saussure, “ quwil faut observer les 
montagnes ;” and it is not by local or limited observation alone that a grand 
system like the ‘‘ Silurian,” as it now stands, could have been worked out. 
Sir Roderick is as essentially a general in science as a Napoleon or Wellington 
was of troops ; and he could afford to. give away every title to originality of detail, 
and yet stand a pre-eminently great man. He would even thus have accomplished 
a generalization and grouping of a character so extended as to have been totally 
out of the reach of mere local workers, had they even possessed the talents of a 
Barrande. ; 

Sir Roderick has, however, been not only a successful generalizer, but also a 


close and keen inspector of facts, as his recent investigations and deductions 


regarding the crystalline strata of the north-western Highlands of Scotland and 
very many other instances would show; and hence his capability of judging of the 
value of those other labourers in the field of the earth’s ancient history who have 
put the stores of their accumulations at his command. 

We now pass to what the author of ‘“ Siluria” has done since the previous 
issue of his work. This is, indeed, briefly told in the preface to the book itself, 
and much of the most recently acquired matter is embodied in the introductory 
chapter. 

Te the first place, there is the most important section, exhibiting the lowest 
rocks in the British Isles as lying beneath all the oldest sedimentary and fossilife- 
rous rocks previously known, described in the opening pages and illustrated by 
the delicate coloured frontispiece of the ‘‘ hoary mountains” bounding Loch Assynt 


_ westward from Inchnadamft. 


The oldest gneiss of Scotland, particularly on the west side of Sutherland and 
Ross, is unconformably surmounted by mountain-masses of conglomerate and sand- 


| stone, formerly considered as Old Red Sandstone, but now demonstrated to be of 


Cambrian age, from the fact of their being overlaid by quartz-rock and crystalline 


| limestone, enclosing at Durness masses of unaltered rock, in which Mr. C. Peach, 


of Wick, has discovered Silurian fossils of the age of the lowest portion of the 


| Llandeilo beds. 


The identification of the Bala rocks and fossils with those of the Caradoc for- | 


) mation, and the determination of a passage-zone of rocks at Llandovery, connecting 
| the Lower and Upper Silurian strata, are also new features. 


The classification of the Devonian or Old Red Sandstone Formation has been 
improved, the Cephalaspis and Pteraspis zone being demonstrated to be the real 
base of this group, passing regularly and gradually downwards into the uppermost 
Silurian rock. Hence the Caithness flags and their extension into Ross and Moray 
are no longer to be‘considered as equivalents in age to that zone, but are referable 
to a middle zone or period. 

During a personal excursion last summer, Sir Roderick reassured himself that 
flagstones, such as those of Caithness, and containing similar fishes and plants, 
reposed near Kirkwall, in the Orkneys, upon a lower red sandstone, and are sur- 
mounted in several of the islands by another sandstone of a light yellowish colour. 
In Moray, in the presumed equivalent of this yellow series which there passes up 
into a fine white sandstone, during the past. year, most important discoveries of 
fossil reptilian remains have been made ; Mr. Patrick Duff and others, of Elgin, 
having obtained casts and bones of the Stagonolepis Robertsoni (of Agassiz), from 
which Professor Huxley has been enabled to establish the reptilian nature of this 
creature formerly supposed to be a, fish. 

Additional and more highly instructive specimens of foot-tracks from the Cum- 
mingstone quarries between Burgh Head and Lossie Mouth,—first made known 
through the writings and labours of Captain Brickenden and Mr.. Patrick Duff,— 
have shed additional light by the establishment of their relations to that extra- 


_ ordinary creature, the organization of which ranks so high as to cause many excel- 


lent geologists to suspect whether the strata in which its osseous remains, and its 


imprints, have been found, may not be possibly of Permian or Oolitic age ; but on 


90 THE GEOLOGIST. 


this point Sir Roderick expresses a strong conviction that their antiquity has been 
rightly stated. 

The information respecting the Permian strata has also been extended by the 
personal examination of Sir Roderick in Germany, and by materials derived from 
Gubbier, Geinitz, and Goppert. 

Throughout the work valuable contributions have been deduced from the labours 
and communications of De Verneuil, Barrande, Kjerulf, Von Keyserling, Schmidt, 
and others ; while several valuable ‘lables enrich this volume over its predecessor. 
Of these are especially to be noticed,—a disposition, in parallel vertical columns, 
of the Order and Dimensions of the Silurian Rocks of England and Wales, by 
Mr. Talbot Aveline; a Table of the Upper Palzeozoic Rocks, showing the Equi- 
valents of the Devonian, Carboniferous, and Permian Strata, in different parts of 
Europe; a general Tabular View of the North American Paleozoic Rocks, by 
Professor Ramsay ; an elaborate Table of the Vertical Range of all the described 
Silurian Fossils, by Professor Morris and Mr. Salter. Besides these valuable 
tables, numerous new sections and diagrams have been added ; indeed, the whole 
work ranks in the highest scale for the value and elaboration of its contents. 


Catalogue of Mr. Tennant’s Collection of British Fossils. 


Tuts catalogue of Mr. Tennant’s private collection exhibits the names of nearly 
all the ordinazy and typical fossils of the British rocks, and a limited number of 
copies have been printed on one side of the paper only, to allow.of their being cut 
up into labels. 

The bibliographic list appended to the catalogue is a useful and valuable 
addition, and ought to aid materially the sale of the work. In it are given the 
titles of the best works necessary for the instruction of the student, with curt and 
pertinent remarks in each case of their nature and character, and of the leading 
topics of their contents. 


Elementary Geological Diagrams. London: James Reynolds, 174, Strand. 


Mr. James Reynoxps, of 174, Strand, has long been known for the numerous 
diagrams of scientific subjects which he has published. 

He has now produced, under the editorship of Professor John Morris, whose 
name to the work should alone be a guarantee of its worth, a set of elementary 
Cees illustrating the first principles of the important and practical science of 

eology. 

ile series comprises an enlarged and improved general ideal ‘‘ Section of the 
Earth’s Crust,” based upon the original excellent diagram in Dr. Buckland’s famous 
“ Bridgwater Treatise ;” a valuable ‘‘ Table of the Order and Succession of the 
Stratified Rocks,” by Professor Morris, in which, however, we are sorry to find he 
continues the unfortunate misnomer of Coralline Crag for a deposit which contains 
no corals at all. If the object be to designate this bed by the nature of its most 
characteristic organic remains, the term bryozoan should be applied ; but it would 
be far better, in our opinion, to adopt the term Lower Crag for this deposit, and 
that of Upper for the Red Crag. ‘The other diagrams are, ‘“‘ Various Forms of 
Stratification ;” ‘‘ Section of the London Basin,” with springs and Artesian wells ; 
“‘ Carboniferous Group—Coal and Iron Strata ;” “‘ Section of a Copper Mine ;” 
“Interior of a Coal Mine.” Of these the illustrations of stratification might 
have been more carefully drawn, and the section of the London Basin is artificial 
and ‘highly exaggerated; but we would speak of the others in favourable 
terms, and we shall be glad to know that such efforts to teach the great truths of 
science by simple and inexpensive means meet with the patronage they deserve. 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 9] 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 


es 


Tue “CRACKERS” AND oTHER Fossitirrrous Noputes.—‘Srr,—I have 
perused the works of Mantell, Lyell, Ansted, and other standard authors on Geo- 
logy, besides having regular access, through a friend, to the Quarterly Journal of 
_ the Geological Society and to other miscellaneous works on the science ; but 

amongst them all I have not as yet been able to obtain the slightest clue that 
- would tend to solve the undermentioned geological phenomena; and, thinking 
that either yourself or some of your numerous readers could throw some light upon 
the subject, I take the liberty of asking space for that purpose in your really 
popular, and, on that account, valuable periodical. 

‘Tt is a fact patent to all geologists who have visited the Isle of Wight, that its 
cliffs on the southern coast exhibit some good sections of the Lower Greensand, 
probably the best in the kingdom, more especially those between Rocken End and 
Atherfield Point, where this series may be studied throughout its entire thickness 
from the Gault to the Wealden beds. 

“Tt is not, however, to the strata themselves that my remarks apply, but to 
the condition in which some of the organic remains are found in the lowermost 
portion termed the ‘ Crackers Rocks,’ * 

“In examining the excellent chart by Dr. Hilton, it will be seen that the 
‘ Crackers’ are composed of two layers of large nodules, one above the other, and 
about ten or eleven feet apart, embedded in a loose red sand. The uppermost are 
but little sought after by the experienced geologist, as they are very hard and 
tough, and the fossils they contain are very difficult to be separated from the 
matrix ; but the lower portion contains those splendid fossils which are world- 
famous. ‘The best place for the collector to search for the ‘ Cracker’ fossils is to 
begin a short distance to the eastward of the road made by the coastguard in the 
cliff, and then to travel westward as far as another path up the cliff, made by the 
fishermen, where the ‘ Cracker-rock’ runs out, and the next bed in the succession, 
the lower ‘ lobster-bed,’ appears. 

“* After a founder of the cliff, large nodules may be found with sometimes a few 
fossils on their outsides ; and these, when broken, sometimes disclose whole colo- 
nies of Gervillia anceps, with now and then Trigonia dedalea and an ammonite or 
two on the outside. The nodule itself is composed of a hard, compact, grey or 
bluish rock, enclosing other nodules or smooth sandy concretions, of a lightish- 
brown colour. ‘These can be easily extracted, and will be found to contain myriads 
of small fossils, such as Venus, Thetis, Rostellaria, Natica, Pteroceras, Ammonites, 
Crustacea, and numerous others, nearly all perfect. Hence I infer that, like those 
of the lias, they all met their death in a sudden manner. 

““Now the question to be solved is—How came these animals, of different 
genera and species, and consequently of dissimilar habits, so attracted together as 
to die and become entombed in one common grave? Were they all or any of 
them carrion-eaters ; and, if so, were they attracted together by abundance of food 
through the destruction of any one species of animal, or by mere chance? Or did 
such nodules once form part of the floor of a sea-bottom, that, being broken up, 
yielded these concretions to be washed into the strata where they now abound, 
and where, becoming thus embedded, the outer coating has subsequently formed 
around them? If this be the case, where are the equivalents now of such concre- 
tions? Besides, the cliff is chiefly composed of sand. 


* A local name, given them by the fishermen on account of the sea having excavated a sort of 
cavern in the cliffs, into which the waves enter, carrying with them a portion of air, which causes 
a concussion; hence the term, ‘‘ Crackers Rocks.” 


9Y THE GEOLOGIST. 


“In conclusion, I would remark that I have merely selected the cracker- 
nodules in illustration of the subject ; similar occurrence of concretions being 
repeated at intervals throughout the whole series of the Greensand strata, as at 
Blackgang and Cliff’s End. Also at Shanklin, in the nodules of ironstone, and in 
a greyish gritty sandstone, are many of the same kinds of fossils as at Atherfield, 
together with others not to be found in the ‘ Crackers.’ Therefore, as they have 
all died together, the question arises, Did they all live and feed together ?— 
Yours, &c., M. W. Norman.” 

CavcAstAN GroLoey.— Srr,—I have just read through with intense interest 
that best of monuments to a great and glorious spirit passed away, ‘The Testi- 
mony of the Rocks,’ by Hugh Miller; and in his eighth lecture, on the Noachian 
Deluge, where he so clearly proves ‘that season of judgment’ to have overtaken 
only tite then inhabited world, ‘the Low Steppe of the Caucasus,’ it occurred to 
me, that if this were the case (which I accept in full faith, as coming from such an 
authority), bones of those wondrous antediluvian giants might be found in that 
region, and there alone. Does no geologist care to make such a search? where, 
too, the hidden marvels must lie so near the surface, comparatively speaking, and 
where the discovery would set one more seal to the truths of his wondrous science. 
Yours, &., EH. E. Byna, Lymington.” 

The geology of the Caucasus and its vicinity is laid down ina handsome map 
by Koch, and has to some extent been worked out in detail by Koch, Abich, and 
others ; but mammalian remains appear to be rare in the superficial deposits, as 
far as observation has yet been made in that wild country, and no fossil human 
bones have been met with. M. Abich, of St. Petersburgh, is, we believe, now 
occupied in a large work on Caucasian geology. 

GEOLOGY oF SHAP DistRict.—‘“‘ Professor Phillips, in his ‘ Treatise on Geo- 
logy,’ when describing the erratic block group, says, ‘ that the line followed by the 
blocks from Shap through Lancashire, and northward to Carlisle, is in a great 
depression parallel to the fault of the Penine chain.’ 

“1. Do the strata dip from Shap into the vale of Eden, and then rise towards 
the Penine chain of mountains, so as to form a trough-formed depression? 2. Or 
do they dip from Shap to the western or down-thrown side of the Penine fault ; 
and then on the eastern, or upheave-side, dip away again to the eastward? 3. Is 
there a ridge of high ground from Orton by Ravenstonedale and Mallerstang Forest 
through this depression, and does its general altitude seem to be as high as the 
low part of the Penine chain on Stainmoor? 4. To what formations do the 
deposits which rest in the hollow from Carlisle to Kirby Lonsdale belong, and 
what is their nature ?—JoHn Curry.” 

1. The strata dip from Shap at a slight angle to the Craven fault, and then at 
an increased angle to Eden: towards the Penine fault and chain they rise again ; 
but the stratification is not very clear in its details to the east. 2. The beds still 
dip westwardly on the eastern side of the Penine fault ; but the strata are locally 
disturbed. 3. We are not personally acquainted with the physical and geological 
details in this district. A comparison of the Ordnance Survey and any good 
geological map will help the querist. 4. From Carlisle the New Red Sandstone 
reaches to about midway between Lazonby and Appleby ; the underlying Permian 
beds are then exposed as far as Brough and Kirby Stephen. The Mountain or 
Scar-limestone then succeeds to the south-east as far as Rav ensdale, where the old 
Silurian Schists are exposed. These extend to Kirby Lonsdale, with the excep- 
tion of some intervening patches of Mountain Limestone and Old Red Conglo- 
merate. 

MamMantaAn Remarns.—“‘Sir,—In turning over the pages of old topogra- 
phical books I often meet with notices of mammalian remains. If you think the 
extracts I have sent will serve any useful purpose in Mr. Prestwich’s inquiry, 
I shall be pleased to furnish you with more of them from time to time.—F. S. / 

“In the cutting of some works at Kau Brink (near King’s Lynn) in 1819, at 
the depth of twenty-two feet from the surface of the earth and in a bed of shingle, 
a quantity of various kinds of marine shells was found, and from thence was taken 


out a pair of beautiful antlers attached to the upper part of a skull, with every | 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 93 


tooth remaining in the socket in a perfect state, corresponding exactly with the 
ordinary description of the roebuck. Above the shingle, in a stratum of strong 
ooze about ten feet thick, quantities of alder roots and trees were found.”—Histo- 
rical Account of Wisbeach, by W. Watson, 1827, p. 58. ’ 

“Some labourers, in 1819, digging for gravel in Chatteris, at a place called 
Campole, about half a mile from the church, found, at the depth of full ten feet 
from the surface, part of the skeleton of an elephant in a fossil state. The most 
perfect part was the two upper grinders ; these, when found, were fixed in the Jaw- 
bones, which the men broke to come at the teeth. A short piece of tusk about 
three inches long, part of the skull, part of a leg-bone about fourteen inches long, 
with some fragments of the jawbone, were all that were discovered. One of the 
grinders weighed five pounds fourteen ounces. There were found in the same 
place some pieces of wood quite black and spongy. In 1827 these relics were in 
the possession of Mr. John Girdlestone.”—Op. cit. p. 578. ernie: 

“A very fine specimen of an Elk’s horn was dug up in the vicinity of West 
Water, in 1827.”— Op. cit. p. 578. 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 


GroLocicaL Society or Lonpon, January 5th, 1859.—The following commu- 
nications were read :— 


1. “On Fossil Plants from the Devonian Rocks of Gaspé, Canada.” By Dr. 
J. W. Dawson, F.G.S., Principal of McGill’s College, Montreal. 

The fplant-bearing rocks in the peninsula of Gaspé were first noticed by Sir 
W. E. Logan in 1843. To determine these fossil plants accurately, it was neces- 
sary to study them in place. With this view Dr. Dawson visited Gaspé last 
summer, and carefully examined the localities by the aid of the plans and sections 
of the Geological Survey of Canada. The strata referred to have a vertical thick- 
ness of 7,000 feet, as estimated by Sir W. Logan ; they rest on Upper Silurian 
rocks, and underlie the Carboniferous conglomerates ; and some beds contain Lower 
Devonian Brachiopods, &c. 

Among the vegetable remains determined by Dr. Dawson is a curious genus, 
termed by him Pstlophyton, which belonged to the Lycopsdiacee, and had minute 
adpressed leaves on slender dichotomously-branching stems, with circinate ver- 
nation, and springing from a horizontal rhizome, which had circular areoles with 
cylindrical rootlets. Some of the shales are matted with these rhizomes. Obscure 
traces of fructification are observable in cuneate clusters of bracts. The fragments 
of the different parts of this interesting plant might easily be mistaken for portions 
of other and very distinct plants, such as Karstenia, Halonia, Stigmaria, Schizo- 


| pteris, Trichomanites, Fucoids, &c. The author describes two species of Psilophyton, 


P. princeps and P. robustius, 

Dr. Dawson further described a new form of Lepidodendron (L. Gaspianum) ; 
also some specimens of Coniferous wood related to the Taxus (Prototaxites Logant), 
and some less clear forms belonging to Knorria, Poacites, &c. The author also 
noticed the occurrence of Hatomostraca (Beyrichia), Spirorbis, occasional fish- 
remains, some Brachiopods, and also rain-marks and ripple-marks in these 
Devonian beds. 

[Specimens of the Fossil Plants from Gaspé were exhibited in illustration of this 
paper. | 

2. “On some Points in Chemical Geology.” By T. Sterry Hunt, Esq., of the 
Geological Commission of Canada. (Communicated by Prof. A. C. Ramsay, F'.G.S.) 


§ I. Referring to his communications to other Societies, in which he had endea- 
voured to explain the theory of the transformation of sedimentary deposits into 


94 THE GEOLOGIST. 


crystalline rocks, and to the researches of Daubrée, Senarmont, and others, the 
author remarked, in the first place, that the problem of the generation, from the 
sands, clays, and earthy carbonates of sedimentary deposits, of the various siliceous 
minerals which make up the crystalline rocks, may be now regarded as solved ; and 
that we find the agent of the process to be water, holding in solution alkaline car- 
bonates and silicates, acting upon the heated strata. Under some circumstances, 
however—such as the presence of gypsum or magnesia—such anomalies might 
occur as are presented by the comparatively unaltered condition of some portions 
of the strata in metamorphic regions. 

§ I. Many crystalline rocks, formerly regarded as of plutonic origin, are now 
found to be represented among altered sedimentary strata ; and the chemical stu- 
dent in geology is now brought to the conclusion that metamorphic rocks, such as 
granite, diorite, dolomite, serpentine, and limestone, may, under certain con- 
ditions, appear as intrusive rocks. This is chiefly owing to the pasty or semi-fluid 
state which these rocks must have assumed at the time of their displacement. 

§ HL The author next remarked that the promulgated hypotheses relating to 
the origin of the two great groups of plutonic rocks—those with potash and much 
silica, and those with soda and less silica—are not satisfactory. 

§ IV. Mr. Hunt, considering that the water of the early palzeozoic ocean differed 
from that of the modern seas, in that it contained chlorides of calctum and mag- 
nesium to a far greater extent, especially the former, sulphates being present only 
in small amount, noticed that the replacement of the chloride of calcium by common 
salt involved the intervention of carbonate of soda and the formation of carbonate 
of lime ; and that the continual decomposition of alkaliferous silicates to form the 
vast masses of argillaceous sediments from the felspathic minerals of the earth’s 
crust, must have formed, and is still forming, alkaline carbonates which play a 
most important part in the chemistry of the seas. 

§ V. The study of the chemistry of mineral waters, in connexion with that of 
sedimentary rocks, leads the author to believe that the result of processes continu- 
ally going on in nature is to divide the silico-argillaceous rocks into two great 
classes ; the one characterized by an excess of silica, by the predominance of 
are and by the small amounts of lime, magnesia, and soda, and represented 

y the granites and trachytes ; while in the other class silica and potash are less 
abundant, and soda, lime, and magnesia prevail, giving rise (by metamorphism) to 
triclinic felspars and pyroxenes. The metamorphism and displacement of sedi- 
ments may thus, he observed, enable us to explain the origin of the different 
(eek TIL. plutonic rocks, without calling to our aid the ejections of a central fire. 

ee § TIL 

S$ VI. Te most ancient sediments, like those of modern times, were doubtless 
cunts of sands, clays, and limestones ; but, on the principles laid down in 
§§ IV. and V., the author shows that the chemical composition of the sediments 
in different geologic periods must have been gradually changing. Ilustrating his 
views by the condition of the Canadian rocks, Mr. Hunt observes that, on the 
large scale, in the more recent crystalline or metamorphic rocks, we find a less 
extensive development of soda-felspar, while orthoclase and mica, chlorite and 
epidote, and silicates of alumina, like chiastolite, Kyanite, and staurotide (which 
contain but little or no alkali, and are rare in the older rocks), become abundant. 
The decomposition, too, of the rocks is more slow now, because soda-silicates are 
less abundant, and because the proportion of carbonic acid in the air (an efficient 
aan a these changes) has been diminished by the formation of limestones 
and coal. 

§$ VIL The author accepts the views of Babbage and Herschel as to the internal 
heat of the earth rising through the stratified deposits, on account of the superficial 
accumulation of sediments, metamorphosing the rocks submitted to its action, 
causing earthquakes and volcanic irruptions by the evolution of gases and vapours 
from chemical reactions, and giving rise to disturbances of equilibrium over wide 
areas of elevation and subsidence. 

§ VIII My. Hunt observes that the structure of mountain-chains, both those _ 
due tothe uprise of metamorphosed rocks through tertiary and secondary deposits, 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. See. 


and those formed of older masses of sediment, contorted and altered, bears out the 
principles of § VII 

[A collection of the so-called “ Kelpies’ Feet,” from the micaceous flagstones of 
North Britain, from the Museum of Practical Geology and the Society’s Museum, 
were exhibited at this Meeting. | 


January 19, 1859.—The following communications were read :— 


1. “On the Gold-field of Ballaarat, Victoria.’ By H. Rosales, Esq. Commu- 
nicated by W. W. Smyth, Hsq., Sec. G. S. 

Mr. Rosales described the position of the quartz-lodes (the matrix of the gold) 
in the schists of the hill-ranges, from whence originate the numerous auriferous 
gullies, forming eventually several channels (charriages), and the different courses 
of the old gold-bearing streams, which gradually passing to lower levels, reach the 

great areas of basalt, under which they continue their hidden course. ‘To illus- 

- trate these points, the author prepared and sent a MS. map of the district from 
beyond Buninyong to Creswick, on which the granite, basalt, schists, and ‘quartz 
lodes were shown, as well as the gold-channels, gullies, runs, leads, &c., connected 

- with which 96 named spots or diggings were carefully indicated. 

2. ‘* Description of a New Species of Cephalaspis (C. Asterolepis) from the Old 
Red Sandstone of the neighbourhood of Ludlow.” By John Harley, Esq., Sub- 
dean, &c., King’s College. Communicated by Prof. Huxley, F.G.S. 

This new form of Cephalaspis (from Hopton Gate) is at least twice the size of 
CO. Lyellii, and is further characterized by the position, obliquity, and magnitude 
of the orbits. The space between the orbits is proportionally small, and the occi- 
pital crest very short. The outer enamel-layer is ornamented with tubercles, 
which, though somewhat variable, bear so close a resemblance to those covering 
the bony plates of Asterolepis, as to have suggested the specific name. The inner 
layer of the bony plate presents lacune and canaliculi resembling those of human 
bone ; and many of them, in the specimen described, are naturally injected with a 
transparent blood-red material, so distinctly and delicately, that in their minutest 

details the structure of canals not more than =,4,,5th of an inch in diameter is 

beautifully revealed. 
Mr. Harley also described a more perfect specimen of Cephalaspis Salweyi than 

' the one on which Sir P. Egerton not long since determined the species. It was 
found by Mr. Salwey at Hinstone near Bromyard. Associated with the C. Sal- 

 weyi, the author found a specimen of either a dermal plate or a tooth of a placoid 

fish, resembling some Silurian fossils called Ceelolepide by Pander. 


| 
| 
| Gxrotogists’ Assocration.—On Tuesday, the 11th Jan. instant, the First Ordi- 
/ nary Meeting of this Association was held in the Library of St. Martin’s Hall. 
| There were nearly 200 persons present. 

The proceedings commenced by the election of several new members, after which 
_ the President, Mr. Toulmin Smith, proceeded to deliver an inaugural address. 

In opening the subject, the President directed special attention to the importance 
of finding true facts ; he stated that it had been well observed that there are even 
)more false facts than there are false theories in the world. 

He remarked that Geology is a science which rests exclusively on a knowledge 
of the outer world, and can only exist as a science in the true interpretation of the 
facts which that world shows to us ; that there is no science which has been, and is, 
liable to be more hindered by false facts. There is none, therefore, in which the gather- 
‘Ing up of true facts, and the bringing them together as a common stock for the use 
of science, can be more needed. This being so, there appear to be good reasons 
for the work set to itself by the ‘‘ Geologists’ Association.” Beyond the mere 
advancement of the common stock of knowledge by means of association, it was to 
be hoped that the enterprise of this country might be materially helped by its 
labours, and that it, in return, would receive its reward ih being made the deposi- 
tory of many facts and observations, which, but for its existence, would remain 


96 THE GEOLOGIST. 


buried in the note-book. And, further, that by giving nght directions to those 
engaged in public and other extensive works, there would be good ground to hope 
that many facts tending to the verification of conclusions already drawn, and the 
settling of problems acknowledged to stand open, might be obtained ; and, perhaps, 
even the opening-up of fields which as yet have been but little, if at all, worked. 

Referring to some observations made by Mr. Salter, in a letter to the Editor of 
the Grotoaist, Mr. T. Smith said :—As to the collection of “‘ good facts,” we hope 
that at every meeting of the Association communications of observed facts will be 
made by members. The statement of these will appear in the printed minutes of 
our proceedings ; and these, being circulated among all our members, will convey 
to every quarter some of those means of comparison and suggestions for research 
a are what the local Geologist most needs, both to encourage and to enlighten 

im. 

Alluding to the success of the undertaking, it was stated that, within six weeks 
after the first conference on the subject, not less than 150 gentlemen, many of 
them well known in connexion with Geological Science, applied for membership. 

And, with a view to the perfect understanding of various objects which the 
Association proposed to follow, and the advautages it held out to its members, the 
President entered at some considerable length into the plans which had been laid 
down for promoting and facilitating the collection and exchange of fossils ; the 
formation of a collection of type-specimens which should serve, amongst other pur- 
poses, as a key to the larger national collections in this country, which from their 
extent and richness prove often a source of perplexity rather than of imstruction 
to the humble student. 

The formation of a collection of the character proposed is confessedly a matter 
of difficulty ; it is far easier to accumulate specimens in large numbers, than to 
bring together only such as shall be really useful ; but, observed Mr. Smith, be 
the difficulties to be encountered what they may, our hope is that we may be able 
by degrees to form a cabinet which shall be truly typical and always instructive. 
Whilst dwelling on this part of the subject, opportunity was taken to acknow- 
ledge the receipt of several promises of fossils illustrative of the principal 
formations. 

A vigorous protest was entered against the undue use of hard words in scientific 
language, on the ground that we, as Englishmen, possess a language more copious 
than the Greek or Latin, and one which is peculiarly adaptable for the compound- 
ing of words, and which, therefore, may be most readily moulded to the expression 
of new forms of fact and thought. 

This part of the address was followed by some very useful hints to collectors, 
and some interesting illustrations, to show the necessity of proceeding on sound 
principles and inductions before concluding upon mere appearances. ‘The President 
urged the importance of always recognising the fundamental Law of Unity which 
underlies all the phenomena of nature, as beimg absolutely necessary to right 
conclusions, both as to single facts and broad generalization on collections 
of facts. 

Mr. Smith concluded by urging the members to use their united efforts for the 
promotion of the common objects of the Association, beg convinced that if the 
mutual principle on which 1t was based was fully acted upon, its value would 
soon be felt, and all would be satisfied that the Association had not been formed 
in vain. 

Ae the Address was given, several fresh applications for membership were 
received. 

The next Meeting will be held in the Library of St. Martin’s Hall, on Tuesday 
evening, the 8th February, at 7 o’clock, when Dr. Hyde Clarke, and Mr. Rees, of 
Lucknow, have promised to read papers of great interest. 


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THE GEOLOGIST. 


MARCH, 1859. 


PALHONTOLOGICAL NOTES ON THE BRACHIOPODA. 
By THomas Davipson, Esq, F.R.S., F.G.S., ETc. 


No. 2. On the Families STROPHOMENIDA and PRODUCTID. 


In my last communication, I endeavoured to lay before the reader 
all the more important facts, already acquired, relative to the genera 
and sub-genera that are provided with spiral appendages for the 
support of the oral arms;* and at the same time I referred to 
several points which still required to be elucidated and explained 
before the subject could be considered to have been satisfactorily 
studied. 

In a note at the conclusion of that paper, allusion was made to a 
well-preserved internal cast of Cyrtina septosa, of which I now offer 
a representation, as it will show that the muscular impressions in the 
smaller or dorsal valve are similarly arranged to those of Spirifera, 
and that there does not exist in that valve any septa, as in Pen- 
tamerus ; the resemblance to the last-named genus being merely in 
the disposition of the median septum, and of the converging dental 
or rostral plates of the larger or ventral valve. 

I may likewise mention, before commencing the subject of the 
present communication, that, although the muscular impressions in 
the larger or ventral valve of Athyris or Spirigera are generally well 

* Tuer Guroxoctst, vol. i. p. 409. 1858. This paper has been translated into 


French by my friend Professor L. de Koninck, and will be published in the 
Transactions of the Royal Society of Liége, for 1859. 


VOL, Il. | H 


98 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Lign. 1.—Cast of Dorsal Vaive of Cyrtina septosa. 


a Adductor, or posterior occlusor, 
a’ Adductor, or anterior occlusor. 


Lign, 2.—Magnified Views of Casts of Athyris ambigua. 


a Adductor, or posterior occlusor.* a Adductor, or occlusor. 


Fig. 1. Internal cast of the dorsal valve. | Fig. 2. Internal cast of ventral valve. 
a’ Adductor, or anterior occlusor. ; 4 Cardinal, or divaricator. 


* In order to avoid further repetitions, I may mention once more that the 
muscles the function of which is. to open or separate the valves have recently been 
termed divaricators and accessory divaricators by Mr. Hancock ; and those the 
function of which is to act in the closing of the valves have been termed anterior 
and posterior occlusors by the same distinguished zoologist. The divaricators are 
those usually termed ‘‘ cardinal muscles” (‘‘ adductor brevis” of Owen ; ‘* muscles 


DAVIDSON—PALZONTOLOGICAL NOTES ON THE BRACHIOPODA. 99 


seen, and have been correctly represented and explained, those on the 
}interior surface of the smaller or dorsal valve are rarely discernible. 
The scars left by the adductor, or anterior occlusor, muscle were 
‘defined by Bouchard in Athyris concentrica ; but the impressions of 
‘the posterior pair could not be distinguished upon any of the 
“numerous valves in his possession ; although it is most probable, not 
to make use of the word “ certain,” that in this, as well as all other 
“species of the genus, the adductor or occlusor had a quadruple 
attachment to the ventral valve. 

_ Dr. Sandberger has represented the muscular impressions of both 
valves of Athyris or Spirigera undata ; but not in quite so precise a 
manner as could be desired, or as is really seen on some silicified 
internal casts of A. ambigua from the carboniferous limestones of 
Bakewell (Derbyshire), in the Museum of Practical Geology, and of 
which two enlarged illustrations are here appended (Lign. 2, figs. 1 
-and 2). 

I have also ascer- 
tained that the spiral 
| processes, and their in- 
‘termediate connecting 


i 


‘lamelle are in Athyris 


| ambigua similarly dis- 
posed to those of 4. 
pectinifera, of which we 


have already given an 


illustration in our pre- 
‘vious paper, so that 
: Lign. 3.——Interior of the Dorsal Valve of Athyris umbigua. 
there can exist scarcely 
any doubt that the 
same arrangement was common to all the species of the genus. 


Mindful of the popular character of THE Gxotoaist, it will be 


Restored from specimens in the Museum of Practical Geology. 


diducteurs”” of Gratiolet) ; while the accessory divaricators are better known by 
the name of ‘accessory cardinals” or “ cardinalis” of Owen. 

The ocelusor is the “ adductor” of the generality of authors ; the anterior occlusor 
being the “adductor longus anticus” of Owen ; the posterior occlusor, the “adductor 
longus posticus” of the same distinguished anatomist. _ 

The pedicle-muscles have been termed adjustors by Mr. Hancock, under the 
belief that they move the shell upon its peduncle, and adjust it ; while the 
“ capsularis ” of Owen, is Hancock’s peduncular muscle. 

H 2 


100 THE GEOLOGIST. 


my endeavour to make this article as explicit and intelligible as 
the subject will permit; for in paleontology it is not always possible 
to avoid having recourse to certain technicalities when one is desirous 
of conveying precise information upon special subjects. The reader 
‘will, however, experience but little difficulty, if he will cast his eye 
over the accompanying figures, which have been drawn with all 
possible accuracy, so as to make up for any deficiencies that may 
exist in the descriptions. 

The families. STRopHoMENIDa (Orthide of some authors) and 
Propuctip& have been the subject of long and patient research ; and, 
although much progress has been made towards their elucidation, 
I am not yet entirely satisfied that the differential characters 
specified by authors are in every case of sufficient importance or 
value to warrant the many divisions at present provisionally esta- 
blished. . 

Every geologist and the generality of collectors are acquainted 
with the external shape of some species of Orthis, Strophomene, and 
Producte ; but since the days of Dalman, Rafinesque, and James 
Sowerby, these old genera have been much subdivided, and others 
have been discovered, which, by presenting certain intermediate 
characters, have proved the natural connexion which exists between 
the two families. It cannot be expected that paleontologists, however 
diligent and learned, should be able all at once to arrive at a just and 
satisfactory appreciation of the value of certain groups of extinct 
animals ; but what does more injury to science, and retards its pro- 
gress, 18 the precipitation with which new genera are sometimes pro- 
posed ;* and it should always be remembered that, although it is 
necessary and right to separate what is dissimilar, one cannot be 
too careful and cautious, while determining whether the differences 
observed are constant and of more than specific importance. 


* In the last page of the German edition of my “ General Introduction” 
(Vienna, 1856), Professor Suess has appended a list of no less than 160 generic 
names, under which the known species of Brachiopoda had been located up to the 
year 1856! And since that period, several others have been proposed by Messrs. 
Hall, Suess, and Billings. In the French edition of the same work, I provision- 
ally admitted 24 genera and 22 sub-genera, making a total of 46; but of these, 
a few were mentioned with doubt ; and, although I believe we are working in the. 
right path, much care must be exercised not to exaggerate the number of genera 
and sub-genera, and thus to be causing confusion where simplicity should prevail. 


DAVIDSON—PALHONTOLOGICAL NOTES ON THE BRACHIOPODA. 101 


The following are the genera into which the families under descrip- 
tion have been provisionally divided* :— 


Geological Range. | 


| a 
| Eaniily: Genera or Sub-genera, Author, Date, and 3 2 
a Typical Species. s|.©| 2} S) 9] 21 
|e Sola) w 
= o c o “ s 
ALALOIH 1a] 45) 
Brean | Pe FESPA pe Mee ae a 
(| PoramBonttes. Pander. 18390 . | x 
| P. equirostris. 
Ortuis. Dalman. 1827 .~. .|x/x}x/.|? 
O. rustica, 
OrntHEsINA. D’Orb. 1849. . .|x 
O. anomata. 
| STREPTORHYNCHUS. King. 1850 | ? |x| x | x 
+ TUN S. pelargonatus. 
STROPHOMENID.S | StRopHoMENA. Rafinesque. 1520 | x | x | x 
S. planumbona. 
| Leprana. Dalman. 1827. . .|x|x|x|!/x|x| 
S. transversalis. | 
| TRoPIpOLEPTUS. Hall.’ 1857. 2). |x). |e 
| T. carinatus. | 
StropHoponta. Hall. 1852. .|.|x | 
L S. depressa. 
(| CaonemEs., Hischer. 1837...) 1.x |.%)%|*% |. 
| C. sarcinulata, or C. Prattii. | 
|| SrropHanosra. King. 1844. .|.|/x|/x/*|.]. | 
| S. Goldfussit. | | 
eRODUCTIDE "| | Aunosteees. Helmersen. 1847 .|).|.{.)/x|.] J 
| A. Wangenheimi. | 
|| Propucta. Sowerby. 1814 . .|?/x |x |x 
L P. giganiea. | 


The generality of palzontologists of the present day appear to be 
agreed as to the propriety of forming two families out of the genera 
or sub-genera above enumerated ; but I am beginning to fear that 
the characters by which some are distinguished will turn out to be of 
less importance than was at one time imagined. 

It has been stated that external spines were peculiar to the /vo- 


* Family names are derived from those in the typical genera; and, as in the 
present instance Strophomena and Productus were established first, it behoves us 
to admit them in preference to others subsequently introduced. Naturalists have 
not hitherto agreed as to what should constitute a genus or sub-genus; and as 
some even entirely object to the term “‘sub-genus,” I have not made any such dis- 
tinctions in the table here given; but I have endeavoured to arrange the names 
according to their more probable affinities. When treating of the Strophomenide, 
we will endeavour carefully to compare the different ‘‘ genera” or “‘ sub-genera”’ 
with each other ; as the differential characters do not appear to me to have been 
in all cases satisfactorily established. 


102 THE GEOLOGIST. 


ductide, and were always absent in the Strophomenide ; but it is now, 
well known that the presence or absence of spines cannot be con- 
sidered a character of importance, since in many families among the 
Mollusca we find genera and species both with, as well as without 
those appendages. 

About a year or two ago, Prof. L. de Koninck lent me a British 
specimen of Orthis, like the one which he had represented in Pl. XIII. 
fig. 8, of his work on Belgian Carboniferous Fossils, as an example 
of Orthis Michelin; but, as the specimen in question was thickly 
covered with short spines, similar to those that cover the valves of 
Producta punctata, he subsequently felt uncertain whether it could be 
referred to the first-named species, which he did not believe to have 
been provided with those appendages. Since that period I have 
obtained several examples of the (0. Michelini. which evidently 
possessed numerous scattered spines over their external surface ; thus 
proving the correctness of the Professor’s original determination.* 

The only general feature of any importance that can be brought 
forward in the separation of the two families is that of the so-termed 
remform impressions, which are present, although not always clearly 
distinguishable, in the interior of the smaller or dorsal valve of all the 
species of Productide hitherto discovered, but of which no trace has 
been seen in any of the Strophomenide at present known. 

The PRopuctipz have been divided into four genera, or sub-genera, 
viz. Producta, Aulosteges, Strophalosia, and Chonetes ; but, as they all 
bear so natural, and, indeed, so intimate a relation towards each 
other, we will mention the characters of the group, and at the same 
time specify those details by which each in particular has been dis- 
tinguished. I should likewise wish to observe, that a prolonged 
study of the family has disposed me to believe Azdlosteges, Strophalosia, 
and Chonetes to be simple sub-genera, or modifications, of Productus ; 
and this is also the opinion of Prof. de Koninck. 


* Tt is likewise certain that some examples of Orthis resupinata and O. Kerser- 
lingiana were furnished with small scattered spines. Probably such spines have 
escaped observation, not merely from their being of a very delicate nature, and 
consequently liable to abrasion and injury before being buried up in the ancient 
mud, but oftener, possibly, through the hardness of the limestone-matrix which . 
adheres to the outer surface, causing the latter usually to flake off in breaking - 
out the specimens, and which remains in the mould undetached from the em- 
bedded spines. For the opposite reason, probably, it is that specimens from shales 
are generally more perfect than those from limestones. 


DAVIDSON—PALHONTOLOGICAL NOTES ON THE BRACHIOPODA. 103 


All the species at present known are restricted to the limits of a 
portion of the Palzozoic Period ; but experience has taught us that 
any day may bring forth the discovery of some form in a higher or 
lower stage ; thus, until 1847, the Strophomenidcee were considered to 
be limited to the Paleozoic Era, when two or three species of 
Leptena were unexpectedly discovered in the secondary or Mesozoic 
strata; and this first discovery led to that of a large number of 
‘species in the same and other localities. 

As no living representatives of the families exist, the character of 
those portions of the animal can alone be deciphered and described 


which have left their impressions upon the interior surface of the 
shell ; hence the necessity of carefully seeking for these marks with 
great attention, and of comparing them with those observable upon 
the internal surfaces of species of other families which have been 
anatomically investigated. Thus, by analogy, we are gradually led, 
| step by step, to reconstruct in our minds the animal which has for count- 
less ages ceased to be represented in the successive series of creations. 
In this paper we shall treat of the Propvotips%, and we com- 
mence with the external characters. The species are very numerous, 
and among them may be seen some of the largest Brachiopoda at 


present known. The shell is concavo-convex, regular or irregular 


4 


in its growth ; transverse or elongated, more often oval, semi-oval, or 


angular, and generally auriculate. The hinge-line is long and straight, 
-with or without teeth and sockets for the articulation of the valves. 
All well-authenticated species of Producta and Awlosteges hitherto 
examined have shown themselves to be edentulous ; but whether such 
character was general to all the species, or only peculiar to a certain 
| number, will require further confirmation.* Anyhow (as has been 


* In the tenth volume of the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society 
(p. 202, pl. VIII. 1853), I described and figured as Chonetes comoides several 
remarkable exteriors and interiors, which, I believe, along with Messrs. Salter, 
Woodward, and King, to be referable to a single species (Pl. IV. fig. 7). The 
‘sharply defined and well-developed area in each valve, the fissure in the ventral 
one, and the produced cardinal process in the other, as well as the strongly 
articulated hinge, have up to the present time been considered characters peculiar 
to Chonetes, and not to Producta, especially since all well-authenticated species 
and specimens (hitherto examined) of the last-named genus have proved to be 
edentulous. Small pits, observable at intervals along the cardinal edge in several 
examples which I then or have subsequently examined, seemed also to denote the 
existence of small cardinal spines, similar to those observable in certain species of 
Chonetes ; nor do the muscular impressions in the interior of the ventral valve 
“unfortunately only one specimen is at present known) militate against such a 


i 


104 THE GEOLOGIST. 


justly observed by Mr. 8. P. Woodward, in his excellent Manual on 
the Mollusca), the dorsal valve must have turned on its long hinge- 
line with as much precision in the edentulous species as in those of 
Chonetes and Strophalosia, which were regularly articulated by teeth. 
It must not, however, be inferred, from the statement here recorded, 
that the animal ever separated, or required to separate, its valves as 
widely as could be effected by moving the lid of a snuff-box upon its 
hinge ; on the contrary, it is probable that the valves were never 
separated by the animal to the extent of more, at the utmost, than a 
few lines, as was also the case with the other articulated genera with 
which we are at present acquainted. 

It has also been stated, and generally believed, that Producta 
might be distinguished from its sub-genera by the total absence of an 
area in either valve ; but, although this would appear correct in the 
generality of species, some exceptional specimens have exhibited a 
distinct and defined area in the ventral valve.* Jn all species of 
Strophalosia, Chonetes, and <Aulosteges, at present known, a triangular 
or sub-parallel area, of variable dimensions, has been recognized ; and 
this is larger in the ventral than in the dorsal valve, in which it is 
moreover divided by a fissure, more or less arched over by a pseudo- 
deltidium ; the cardinal process of the opposite valve filling up and — 
effectually closing any portion that might otherwise have remained 
uncovered. 


conclusion. If, therefore, the shells in question belong to Producta, and not to 
Chonetes (as Professor de Koninck appears disposed to believe), the genus or sub- 
genus Chonetes would become superfluous, and our notions regarding Producta 
require material alteration, since the genus would be made to contain both eden- 
tulous as well as strongly articulated species. Such a supposition would demand 
much further examination and confirmation before being admitted as a definitely 
settled fact. At the time the paper above referred to was communicated, Mr. D. 
Sharpe announced that in his opinion fig. 1 alone belonged to Chonetes comoides, 
and that fig. 2, &c. were referable to another, although closely allied, species. 
Since that period Professor de Koninck has referred them to Producta hemispherica, 
Sow. There again I must be allowed to observe that none of Sowerby’s original 
specimens of the last-named species show any area, nor apparently any articulated 
hinge ; they bear, however, so exact a resemblance to a true Producta that it 
would be necessary to examine a larger number of specimens before I possibly 
could conscientiously admit the identification to be strictly correct. I am happy, 
however, to know that my distinguished friend, who has devoted so much time to 
the study of the species of which this family is composed, intends shortly to issue 
a supplement to his great work, in which he will fully express his views regarding 
the subject of the present note. _ 
* A very remarkable specimen of Producta semireticulata, which at one time 
formed part of Mr. Charlesworth’s collection, illustrating this feature, has been 
recently added to the British Museum. This also presents a small pseudo-deltidium. 


DAVIDSON—PALHONTOLOGICAL NOTES ON THE BRACHIOPODA. 105 


The external surface varies according to the species. In some it is 
almost smooth ; in others it was longitudinally and finely striated, or 
coarsely costated, as well as intersected by numerous concentric 
wrinkles, or lines of growth. All the specimens appear to have been 
furnished, more or less, with tubular spines. In some Preducta, 
Strophalosia, and Aulosteges, both valves were so ornamented ; while 
| in others they were restricted to the ventral valve. In certain species 
they are small, delicate, and so closely packed as to conceal every por- 
tion of the shell, with the exception of the area; while in others they 
were irregularly scattered, and chiefly confined to the auriculate 
portions of the valves. In certain species the spines exceeded by four 
or five times the length of the shell ; and while some were almost as 
delicate as the hair of one’s head, others exceeded a line in diameter ; 
the dimensions of the shell, however, had nothing to do with that of 
the spines ; for in some small species these were few and large, while 
the reverse has occasionally been found to be the case with species of 
the largest dimensions. Chonetes alone appears to have differed from 
Producta, Aulosteges, and Strophatosia, in its tubular spines, which are 
in all known species confined to the cardinal edge of the ventral 
valve, where they are regularly disposed and interspersed, generally 
increasing in length as they approach the extremities of the shell. 
The intimate structure of the shell has been described by Dr. Car- 
penter, in the second chapter of the “ General Introduction” to my 
work on British Fossil Brachiopoda, and from which I will extract the 
following passage :—“In all the genera of this family large perfora- 
tions exist, resembling those of Strophomena depressa in their general 
aspect, and in the infundibular arrangement of the lamine of the shell 
around them. Where the shell is furnished with spines, as is especially 
the case with Producta horrida, the perforations are continued 
into them; and such passages are of more than the average 
dimensions.” | 

These are the more important external features presented by the 
family. We will now examine the interior dispositions, and will com- 
mence with those which relate to the smaller or dorsal valve. 

In the Productide the internal surface of this valve is more or less 
convex, and presents in the middle of the hinge-line a prominent 
bi-lobed or tri-lobed projection, which has been termed a “cardinal 


106 THE GEOLOGIST. 


process ;”(7)* its upper surface is often striated, and afforded attach- 
ment to the cardinal or divaricator muscles (7). Under this a narrow 


Lign. 4.—Producta horrida. 


Fig 1. Interior of Dorsal Valve. Fig. 2. Interior of Ventral Valve. 
a. Posterior occlusor. «@/. Anterior occlusor. a. Occlusor, 
w. Oral prominences (Woodward). r. Divaricator. 
a. Reniform impressions (King). l. Hollows occupied by the spiral arms. 
j. Cardinal process. 


longitudinal ridge generally extends to about half (or more) of the 
length of the valve, and on either side are seen the ramified or den- 
dritic impressions which we consider to be attributable to the adductor, 
or posterior (a) and anterior (a’) occlusor muscles. 

In Producta and in Aulosteges the posterior and anterior divisions of 
the occlusor muscles (a a’) are at times situated so close to each other, 
on either side of the mesial ridge, as to render the quadruple attach- 
ment not so distinct as could be desired ; but they are well defined in 
P. horrida, P. longispina, &e. 

Outside and in front of the muscular sears above described, are the 
two “reniform impressions ” before referred to (x). Their surface is 
generally smooth ; they are bounded by ridges, which, after dividing 
the occlusor muscles, proceed in an outward oblique or almost 
horizontal direction ; then, turning abrubtly backwards, they terminate 
at a short distance from their origin. There exists also in many 
species, but not in all, two prominences (w), one on each side of the 
median ridge, and close to the base of the muscular scars. ‘These are 


* In the plates accompanying this article the same letters are used for the 
corresponding parts as are inserted in the woodcuts. 


Se ee) iP Pet tes 


: 
: 


DAVIDSON— PALEZONTOLOGICAL NOTES ON THE BRACHIOPODA. 107 


very apparent in Producta and Aulosteges, but are not observable 
| either in Strophalosia or Chonetes. 
The internal surface of the valves in all the family is covered with 
_ innumerable granulations, some of which are thought by Mr. Hancock 
to have been “probably produced by the muscular bands which 
_ retracted the margin of the mantle.” 
We will now describe the internal appearances observable on the 
concave surface of the larger or ventral valve. A narrow mesial 
ridge, originating under the extremity of the beak, separates the two 
| large elongated, ramified, or dendritic impressions which have been 
_ referred by Mr. Woodward and myself to the adductor or occlusor 
| muscles ; and in this opinion we have Mr. Hancock’s concurrence, for 
| it is the position occupied by the same muscle in all the articulated 

genera of Brachiopoda with which we are at present acquainted. 
This view is, however, dissented from by the distinguished Russian 
_ paleontologist and geologist, Count Alex. Von Keyserling, as well 
as by some others who consider these impressions attributable to 
ovarian sinuses, and who would go the length of supposing that 
_ Producta did not require adductor or occlusor muscles; but the 
_ largely developed cardinal process seems to denote that there must 
_ have been divaricator or cardinal muscles, and in all probability 
_ powerful ones ; then, why should we not conclude that Producta, like 
. their congeners, had also occlusor muscles. Count Keyserling doubts, 
_ likewise, the possibility of muscular fibres even producing dendritic 
_ impressions, but in the Pectinide (e.g. Spondylus), as well as in the 
Unionde, dendritic and granular muscular scars are not uncommon ; 
and I am informed by Mr. Hancock that in Anomia patelliformis 
_ there is one with radiating lines. Professor King refers the large 
scars above described to cardinal or divaricator muscles, so that there 
_ exists a difference of opinion relative to the origin of the large 
dendritic impressions in Producta, which occupy a considerable portion 
of the umbonal cavity. 

In Chonetes these impressions are similar in position, but of smaller 
proportions. 

In advance of the large scars we sometimes (in Producta) perceive 
smaller impressions closely connected with the larger ones above- 
described (Pl. III. and IV. c). Professor King—and I believe correctly 


108 THE GEOLOGIST. 


39\ 


—regards these as being due to the occlusor (his “ valvular”) muscles ; 
for it is highly probable that these smaller scars in advance of the 
larger ones were produced by a portion of the occlusors themselves.* 

Immediately under, but outside of, these there exists two deep, 
longitudinally striated, subquadrate impressions, which are in all 
probability due to divaricator (= cardinal) muscles, -but which 
have been referred by Professor King to pedicle muscles.¢ In vain 
hitherto have I sought for impressions referable to adjustor muscles ; 
but, as no peduncle existed in the Productide, such muscle might be 
supposed not to have existed ; however, as the valves of some of these 
forms possess no teeth nor sockets, and, therefore, are not strongly 
articulated, as in the Zerebratulidew, it is not impossible that the 
adjustors may have been so arranged in Producta and Aulosteges as to 
keep the valves adjusted to each other, and that they have thus acted 
as a substitute for a hinge, somewhat in the manner Mr. Hancock 
has supposed to be the case in Lingula.t 


* Mr. Hancock informs me that the occlusors are undoubtedly formed of two 
elements, the anterior and posterior, and that we should not therefore be sur- 
prised to find indications of the two component parts in the ventral as well as in 


the dorsal valve. In Zingula the anterior and posterior occlusors are distinct, - 


having four points of attachment in each valve. 

+ Prof. King has figured in his monograph of English Permian Fossils (Pl. XTX. 
fig. 2) what he terms vascular markings in connexion with these large muscular 
scars, and which seem to form part of the impression. Mr. Hancock appears dis- 
posed to consider the whole to be the scar of one muscle, and that there is nothing 
extraordinary in this, as it frequently happens that the same thing may be seen 
in the Unionide and other Conchifera. 

+ Although the case in question may not apply directly to Producta, it will be 
as well to mention that Mr. Hancock has found in Zingula three pairs of adjustors, 
apparently for the purpose of keeping the valves opposed to each other and of 
holding them adjusted. In this respect, they appear well calculated to compensate 
for the entire absence of hinge or teeth. He explains this in the following words : 
—‘‘ The external or ventral pair having their anterior extremities attached to the 
ventral valve—which, as it is fixed to the peduncie, is that from which all muscles 
act—and their posterior ends to the dorsal, it is evident that they will prevent 
the latter from being forced backwards ; while the posterior adjustors having their 
terminations united to the ventral or fixed valve, and their anterior portion to the 
dorsal, they will act in the contrary direction, and guard against the pressure for- 
ward ; they will also at the same time prevent any lateral displacement of the 
valves, as their diagonal position will enable them to act transversely, as well as 
longitudinally. The external and central adjustors will, on account of their 
oblique arrangement, exert a similar double influence in front.’ See Mr. 
Hancock’s admirable memoir on the anatomy of the Brachiopoda, published in 
the ‘ Transactions of the Royal Society” for 1858. 

Mr. Howse remarks, in his paper, published in the Annals of Natural History 
(1857), that, when the cardinal process of Producta is in situ, it fills nearly the 
whole of the umbonal cavity of the ventral valve, and may thus assist in keeping 
the valves in position. It is possible, however, that future researches by the aid 
of batter preserved specimens, may enable us to discover some traces of adjustor 
muscles. 


fete le MAPA: ells he tens 


DAVIDSON—PALHONTOLGGICAL NOTES ON THE BRACHIOPODA. 109 


The only point remaining to be mentioned in connexion with this 
-yalve, are the deep concave, often distinctly subspiral, depressions 
visible in some species of Producta, such as P. gigantea, and which 
have been referred to labial appendages by the generality of authors. 
They have been described by Mr. 8. P. Woodward and myself as 
hollows probably occupied by the spiral arms ; for, if not, it would 
seem impossible to conjecture how they originated. Similar hollows 
could not, of course, be expected to be present in those species in 
which the shell did not possess a sufficient thickness, as they never 
influenced the regular curve or convexity of the exterior of the valve. 
In all the Productide we therefore find the muscles destined to open 
_and close the valve complete. 
One of the most important features in connexion with Brachiopoda, 
_and which has been made use of as a character in distinguishing 
_ them from other Mollusca, is the presence of those beautifully fringed 
/ appendages developed on either side of the mouth, to which the 
_ designation of “ oral arms,” or “ brachial appendages,” has been given 
_ by the greater number of naturalists.* 

In the Terebralulide, Spiriferide, and Rhynchonellide, as well as in 
that singular group to which the term Davidsonide has been pro- 
visionally applied, the oral arms are known to have been more or less 
supported by variously disposed and differently shaped testaceous 
appendages ; or, in other words, that the study of the animal of the 
existing species, composing the first and third families, has thrown 
-much light upon the probable function as well as the manner in which 

these soft parts were attached and disposed. In the Strophomenide 
_ and Productide no such calcified supports have been hitherto detected ; 
| and therefore we cannot speak with the same confidence as to the dis- 


positions which these parts assumed in the two last-named families, 
| Every discovery that can throw some light upon the subject is of 
importance to the zoologist as well as to the paleontologist, and 
should therefore be sought after with the greatest attention. 


* In his Memoir, Mr. Hancock has stated that the brachial appendages sub- 
serve at once the function of gills and of sustentation. To prove that they are 
aerating organs, ‘‘it is only necessary to refer to the manner in which the blood 
circles round the arms, and is carried to the cirri, but more particularly to its 
oe through these latter organs, and to its return direct from them to the 

eart. 


110 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Since the Brachiopoda have become the object of scientific and con- 
scientious study, it has always been believed that the Productide and 
Strophomenide were provided with oral arms, although little positive 
evidence as to their presence has been more often left in the interior 
of the valves. In many species of Strophomenide and Productide the 
space left for the animal between the valves is so exceedingly small 
that one can hardly conceive how all the parts could have been lodged 
or disposed ; still they did exist, and, no doubt, fulfilled the same 
functions, and were as perfectly organized as in those species which 
possessed a more spacious dwelling ; just as one of those very thin 
Geneva watches of modern times is as perfect in its parts and action, 
as were the far more bulky time-pieces manufactured by our ancestors. 

In all the species of existing articulated genera in which the animal 
has been examined, the oral arms were attached or supported by cal- 
careous processes in connexion with the dorsal valves, so that it 
behoves us to seek for any probable attachment in that valve also 
among the Productide and Strophomende. Mr. 8. P. Woodward, 
who has devoted much attention, in conjunction with myself, to the 
internal character of the Productide, has supposed that the arms were 
perhaps attached to those two testaceous prominences (PI. III. fig. 2, w, 
and Pl. IV. fig. 5, w), which are visible in some species of Producta and 
Aulosteges, a little lower down than the occlusor muscular impressions. 
These prominences may possibly have given support to the mouth 
somewhat in the manner of the crural processes of other species, and 
thus they may be said to have sustained also the bases of the arms. 
This suggestion, however, cannot be demonstrated by the direct 
examination or comparison of the animals of existing species of other 
families. These prominences are not present in Strophalosia or 
Chonetes, and therefore are not common to the group. 

In the Museum of Practical Geology I found a very remarkable 
specimen of Producta gigantea, which, although imperfect at the 
margin and cardinal process, possessed all the important parts relating 
to the interior of both valves as perfectly preserved as could be 
desired. From this, the two large representations accompanying this 
paper (PI. IIT. figs. 1 and 2) have been carefully drawn. It will be 
observed that in the interior of the dorsal valve there exist two much 
larger conical projections (z), situated immediately under the emi- 


DAVIDSON——PAL ZONTOLOGICAL NOTES ON THE BRACHIOPODA. l111 


nences (w), termed “ oral processes” by Mr. Woodward, and these (2) 
I have found to correspond almost exactly with the centre of the sub- 
_ spiral hollows in the ventral valve (7). It is therefore highly probable 
that at least a portion of the arm was spirally coiled, and occupied the 
space existing between and all round the conical testaceous projec- 
tions (z) described above, as occurring in the dorsal valve, and the 
hollow (7) in the ventral one,* in the same manner as we have shown 
‘to have been the case with Davidsonia,t but with this difference, that 
in Producta there exists a conical elevation in the dorsal valve, and a 
corresponding hollow in the ventral one ; while the very reverse was 
the case in Davidsonia and Strophomena depressa or rhomboidalis of 
/ Dalman (PI. IV. fig. 13,1). From this I would surmise that the arms in 
the Productide were differently disposed to those in the Danidsomde, 
and at least some of the Strophomenide ; that is to say, the whole or 
a portion of the arm formed a few vertical convolutions directed 
‘towards the bottom of the dorsal valve in Davidsonia and Strophomena 
. depressa, while in Producta they were, on the contrary, directed towards 
‘the bottom of the hollows of the ventral one. I also consider that 
‘those deep conical hollows observable in the interior of the enormously 
“thickened ventral valve of Producta humerosa, Sow., as seen in relief 
upon the internal cast (Pl. IV. figs. 3, L), to have been occupied by 
/the arms. Such is the only reliable evidence that can be offered at 
_ present as to the form and position of the arms; but it is necessary 
here to mention that in his excellent work on the Petschoraland (pub- 
| lished in 1846), Count Alex. von Keyserling has expressed an opinion 
that the so-termed uniform impressions or callosities (Pl. III. fig. 4, 
and Pl. IV. figs. 5, 7, 12, x) observable in the dorsal valve of all the 
Productide, were the probable supports of the oral arms ; which view 
was at a later period reproduced by Mr. Howse, who, moreover, 
_ assimilates those impressions to the ridges supporting the arms in the 
interior of Argiope and Thecidiuwm. Mr. Hancock is disposed to accept 


* In a letter I had the pleasure of receiving from Count Keyserling, it is stated, 
that, ‘‘if in the ventral valve of Producta gigantea, and some few others, we see 
_ the indication of obscure spiral depressions, this may be due to the unattached 
portion of the arms ; but that we perceive no similar hollows in the same valve of 
, the greater number of species ;” but it should also be remembered that we cannot 

expect to find hollows in those forms in which the valve was too thin to admit 
of similar depressions. rs 

+ Tue Groxogist, Vol. L, Pl. XII. figs, 33, 34. 


112 THE GEOLOGIST. 


this interpretation of the origin of the reniform impressions, as he 
does not see how they can have anything to do with the vascular 
system, properly so called, and to which they have been attributed by 
various authors. They could not possibly have been produced by 
pallial or ovarian sinuses ; for, if 36, we should have expected to find 
them also in the ventral valves.* 

We will now add a few words relative to the probable mode of 
existence assumed by the Productide, and which does not appear to 
have been the same for all the species of which the family is com- 
posed. The opinion entertained by some paleontologists that the 
shell was suspended by muscular fibres issuing from tubular cardinal 
spines, or from between the margins of the shell, are highly im- 
probable, and unsupported by any acceptable evidence. It is, however, 
probable that some of the species were free and unattached, while 
others show clear evidence as to their having adhered to marine 
bodies by the beak of their ventral valve (¢g. Strophalosia and 
Aulosteges). D’Orbigny supposes that the animal of Producta lived 
on soft sea-bottoms, lying with the smaller or dorsal valve uppermost, 


* In a letter I have recently received from Mr. Hancock, there is the following 
passage :—‘‘ The idea that the reniform impressions gave support to the arms does 
not appear inconsistent with the opinion expressed by you and others, namely, 
that a portion of each arm was arranged spirally, and occupied the hollows in the 
ventral valve. I am quite inclined to believe that these reniform callosities gave 
support to the first or basal portion of the arms. The arms may afterwards have 
become free, and have formed more or less incomplete spirals, and may have fitted 
into the subspiral cavities of the ventral valve in Producta gigantea, &c. In some 
other species no spirals may have been developed, and the extremities of the arms 
may have been disposed in some other manner. In Thecidiwm the terminal por- 
tions are variously arranged ; and this may have been the case in the Productide. 
[t is impossible not to be struck with the resemblance of the reniform impressions 
in fig. a of your Pl. LV., to the ridges supporting the arms of Thecidiwm in Pl. VI. 
fig. 42, of your General Introduction.” 

Professor King explains his views regarding the origin of the reniform impres- 
sions in the following words, which I think it well to reproduce in this place, that 
the reader may have before him the reasons adduced by those who would connect 
the above-mentioned impressions with the vascular system, as well as of those who 
attribute them to the ridges supporting the arms :— 

“Taking Leptena analoga and Productus horridus, as examples illustrating the 
characterism of the vascular system of their respective families, it may be predi- 
cated of Strophomenide, that the primary pallial vessels are more or less confined 
to the medio-longitudinal region of the valves; and of Productide, that they 
strike off at the moment they issue from between the muscular scars, in a lateral 
direction, running for some distance nearly parallel to the cardinal line, then 
curving forward and round towards the centre, and finally returning to nearly their 
origin. Looking at the vein-like line bounding the reniform lobes of Productus 


horridus (see the woodcuts} and P. semireticulatus, I cannot but think that these 


structures are each due to a recurving vessel, rather than to an expanded and 
simply projecting vascular organ, as appears to be the case in Criopus (Crania).” 


» 1 


DAVIDSON-—PALEONTOLOGICAL NOTES ON THE BRACHIOPODA. 113 


in a similar manner to oysters, scallops, and Spondylus striatus, the 
lamelle and spines serving to retain the animal in a fixed position ; 
but Professor Koninck objects, that these spines are often so long and 
so delicate as to make one believe that they would be fractured under 
such conditions. In a paper communicated in 1853 to the Geological 
Society, I endeavoured to show that the ventral valve in Chonetes 
comoides, Producta henuspherica, P. gigantea, &c. is from four to 
eight times thicker, especially near the middle, than the dorsal one, 
which is, on the contrary, thin and light; and thus if the animal 


| had lived with its larger and ponderous valve uppermost, no muscular 
_ power which it could have exercised would have been, in all pro- 
| bability, sufficient to raise the ventral valve ; while, on the contrary, 
_ supposing the shell to have rested on its larger or ventral valve, the 
slightest force would suffice to raise and separate the smaller or 


dorsal valve. 
Some singular forms of Producta, such as P. proboscidea, P. genwina, 


| &c. have their ventral valves prolonged for more than two inches 


\\\\ \ SS Ste = a m b 
\ SS SS _— abs Cccupied dy the LL 


“entral valve 


Lign. 5.—Longitudinal Section of Chonetes comoides. | 


| beyond the dorsal, the edges being rolled together in the shape of one 
_ or two tubes (Pl. 4, figs. 1 and 2). This circumstance has led 


d’Orbigny to explain this singular appearance, by supposing that the 


animal, from having lived in cavities, or half buried in mud, was 


obliged to prolong the edge of its mantle, and consequently also of its 
shell, so as to reach the surface of the sea-bed for maintaining the 


brachial currents. Mr. 8. P. Woodward suggests that the shell of 


some species may perhaps have been attached by a peduncle when 
VOL. II. rt 


114 THE GEOLOGIST. 


young ; but this of course must remain, for the present at least, one 
of those uncertainties with which the science of Palzeontology abounds ;. 
and I can quite concur with Mr. Toulmin Smith as to the necessity of 
carefully considering what we give out as facts ; for indeed the word 
‘* certain” has been more often made use of where that of “ probable” 
would have been more properly written. 

In conclusion, whether it be desirable to retain some or all of the 
denominations or subdivisions in the Productide, no doubt can exist 
as to their intimate relationship. , 

Producta is supposed to have been always deprived of hinge-teeth 
and sockets for the articulation of the valves ; and although this is 
the condition in all species hitherto examined, there may possibly have 
existed some exceptions. No distinct area is visible in the generality 
of species, but in certain specimens it is known to exist. Aulosteges 
has been considered by some as a synonym of Strophalosia, but the 
want of hinge-teeth and the great similarity of its interior details 
with those of Producta, makes me consider it even more closely con- 
nected with the last-named genus than with that of Professor King ; 
or, in other words, that it is the connecting link between them. 

Strophalosia and Chonetes are distinguishable from Producta by the 
invariable presence of hinge-teeth and sockets, as also by a distinct 
area in either valve, and by other minor interior details. Strophalosia 
was fixed by a portion of its larger valve, while Chonetes was probably 


free, and is in general recognizable by the position and disposition of — 


its cardinal spines.* 
In Notes No. 3 we will endeavour to describe and illustrate the 
character of the Strophomenide. 


* Those who may feel desirous for more ample information concerning the — 
Productidee, will do well to consult Prof. de Koninck’s excellent “‘ Monographie 
des Genres Productus et Chonetes, Liége, 1847 ;” also the second volume of the 
“‘ Geology of Russia, in Europe and the Ural” (1845); Count Keyserling’s 
“* Petschoraland” (1846); King’s ‘‘ Monograph of the Permian Fossils of 
England” (1850) ; Sowerby’s ‘* Mineral Conchology ;” Woodward's ‘‘ Manual of 
the Mollusca,” and various other works and papers by MM. de Verneuil, Geinitz, 
Kutorga, Martin, and Howse, as well as the three editions of my ‘“‘ General 
Introduction,” &c. In my “ Monograph of British Permian Brachiopoda,” pub- 
lished in 1858, the subject has also been attentively re-examined ; and it may not 
here perhaps be considered out of place for me to remark, that during the careful 
preparation of that work, which occupied the greater portion of my time during | 
one year and a half, I did my very utmost to be just and fair towards all con- 
cerned, allowing no bias or preference to interfere with my judgment; and 
although I may be mistaken with respect to certain scientific questions, I have 
not hitherto perceived any valid grounds for altering the conclusions therein 
expressed. 


| Fig. 1. 


SE 


DAVIDSON—PALEHONTOLOGICAL NOTES ON THE BRACHIOPODA. 119 


EXPLANATION OF THE PLATES. 
Puate ITI. 


Producta gigantea, Martin. Interior of the ventral valve, from which a 


9) 


portion of the beak has been removed so as to exhibit the 
umbonal cavity. <A and C, adductor or occlusor ; R, cardinal 
or divaricator muscular impressions. lL, cavity occupied by 
the spiral arms. 

gigantea, interior of the dorsal valve. J, cardinal process. 
A, adductor or occlusor muscular impressions. W, pro- 
jections, to which Mr. 8. P. Woodward supposes the oral arms 
to have been attached (?). X, reniform impressions. Z, 
epanences corresponding to the hollows L in the ventral 
valve. 

These two drawings are taken from valves belonging to the 
same individual, which was obtained from the Carboniferous 
Limestone of Llangollen, and is in the Museum of Practical 
Geology. It is one of the most instructive specimens which 
I have hitherto examined. The cardinal process was so 
much imbedded in the matrix that it could not be developed, 
so the deficiency was completed from a specimen in the 
British Museum. 

gigantea. Part_of the hinge-line and upper portion of the car- 
dinal process, from a specimen in the British Museum. 

gigantea. Ideal section of both valves (slightly improved), 
from the figure published by Mr. 8. P. Woodward, at p. 233 
of his “* Manual of the Mollusca.” The letters refer to the 
same parts in the other specimens. 5; 

semireticulata, Martin. A fragment of the dorsal valve 
(enlarged), to show the beautifully marked adductor or 
occlusor muscular impressions (A), the projections W, and 
the commencement of the reniform impressions. From 
Redesdale, in Northumberland ; in the Museum of Practical 
Geology. The cardinal process J, and the septum 8, which 
are wanting or imperfect in the Survey specimen, have been 
correctly drawn from a similar but more complete example in 
_the collection of Mr. Reed, of York. 

longispina, Sow. ; from the Carboniferous shale of Karova 
(Russia), now in the Imperial Museum of Vienna, here given 
to show the great length of the spines. I am indebted to my 
friend Professor Suess, of Vienna, for this interesting drawing. 


Chonetes comoides, var.(?) (Producta hemispherica, Sow., according. to 


Professor de Koninck.) A fragment exemplifying the great 
disproportionate thickness of the valves. B ventral, G 
dorsal valve. Along the weathered section of the ventral 
valve may be distinctly traced successive layers of shell, also 
small pits (K) along the cardinal edge, which were no doubt 
the tubular bases of broken spines. LK, area. 

This specimen is from Tidenham Chase (Gloucestershire), 
near Chepstow, in the collection of Mr. W. G. W. Ormerod. 


Puare LY. 


Figs. 1,2. Producta proboscidea, de Verneuil. From the Carboniferous Limestone 


of Vise, in Belgium: to show the tubuliform prolongations of 
the ventral vaive. (These two drawings are taken from 
Professor de Koninck’s Monograph of the Genera Productus 
and Chonetes.) 


Toe 


116 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Fig. 3. Producta numerosa, Sow. Internal cast of the ventral valve, from the 
Magnesian Limestone of the Carboniferous series of Breedon, 
Leicestershire. A and C, occlusor, R, divuricator muscular 
impressions. lL, cones, which denote the deep hollows which 
existed in the interior of the immensely thickened ventral 
valve, and which were occupied by the spiral arms. 

4. Aulosteges Wangenheimii, de Verneuil and de Keyserling, Sp. From the 
Permian Limestone of Mount Grebeni, in Russia. 

5: 55 Wangenheimii. Interior of the dorsal valve (enlarged). J, 
cardinal process. A, occlusor muscular impressions. W, 
oral processes (?) of Woodward. X, Reniform impressions. 
I am indebted to General Helmersen for these two beautiful 
examples. 

6. Strophalosia lamellosa, Geinitz, var. Morrisiana, King. From the Mag- 
nesian Limestone of Tunstall Hill (Durham). H indicates 
the portion of the beak which adhered to marine bodies. 

7 a: Goldfussit, Minster. A very remarkable interior of a dorsal 
valve, recently discovered by Mr. Kirkby, and forming part 
of his valuable collection of Permian fossils. The occlusor 
and reniform impressions project to an unusual extent. The 
sockets for the articulation of the valves are clearly seen on 
either side of the cardinal process, J. 

8. + Goldfussii, internal cast of the ventral valve, from the Mag- 
nesian Limestone of Humbleton Hill ; showing the occlusor 
and divaricator muscular impressions. 

9, 9%. Chonetes Prattii, N. Sp.(?) Nat. size. This beautiful specimen (from 
the collection of Mr. Pratt) is here given as an illustration of 
the genus, on account of the admirable preservation of its 
valves. The specimen is silicified, and the valves can be as 
easily separated as in those of a recent species. Its locality 
is unfortunately unknown. ‘The ventral valve is very deep, 
with a longitudinal depression along its middle; the dorsal 
valve is almost flat, with a small elevation towards the front ; 
both valves are covered with minute striz. 

10. 3: A portion of the same, magnified, to show the area of both 
valves ; pseudo-deltidium, and-cardinal process. : 

it ms Interior of the ventral valve; A, occlusor, R, divaricator 
muscular impressions. ‘The cardinal spines and their tubuli- 
form orifices are here clearly exhibited. 

12. $5 Interior of the dorsal valve ; j, cardinal process ; A, and A’, 
anterior and posterior occlusor muscular impressions ; 0, 
ovarian spaces (?) ; X,reniform impressions. The granular 
prominences (described in the text) are here beautifully 
exhibited. 

13. Strophomena rhomboidalis, Dalman. Showing the position of the occlusor 
and divaricator muscular impressions, as well as two conical 
subspiral prominences, L, which I suppose to have been 
produced by the mantle pressing upon the spiral arms, (?’) as 
already described in the same valve of Davidsonia. Enlarged 
from a specimen in Queen’s College, Galway, and which was 
originally communicated to me by Professor King. 

14 & 14°, Strophodonta demissa, Conrad, Sp. Exterior of both valves ; 
from the Hamilton Group of Western New York, America. 

Fig. 14 shows that no fissure or pseudo-deltidium interrupted 
the regularity of the area in either valve; also the small, 
longitudinal strize with which it is covered. ; 

15. 3 demissa. Interior of the ventral valve (enlarged), to show the 
teeth and small testaceous projections between them. A, 
occlusor, R, divaricator muscular impressions. 

16. > demissa. Interior of the dorsal valve. J, cardinal process. 


CAO EF 


ROBERTS—ON THE UPPER LUDLOW TILESTONES. Hi 


A, A’, anterior and posterior occlusor muscular impressions. 
V, muscular markings. 

| I am indebted to Professor Hall, of New York, for these 
beautiful examples of his genus Strophodonta. 

) 17. Orthisina anomala, Schlotheim, Sp. Exterior of the ventral valve, and 
| area of the dorsal valve. EH, area. D, pseudo-deltidium. 


F, foramen. 

17a. Exterior of the dorsal valve. 
| 18. 3) anomala. Interior of the dorsal valve. A, A’, occlusor 
) muscular impressions. 
ng. 3 anomala. Interior of the ventral valve. These beautiful 


specimens were kindly given to me by Professor Dr. Schmidt, 
of Dorpat, and were obtained from the Silurian limestone in 
the neighbourhood of Reval. 

20. “5 anomala. A fragment of the interior of the ventral valve, 
from a specimen in the collection of Signor Michelotti, of 
Turin. For this drawing I am indebted to Professor Suess, 
of Vienna. 


ON THE UPPER LUDLOW TILESTONES. 


By Grorce HK. Roperts, of Kidderminster. 


_ Tue Tilestone passage-beds between the Upper Ludlow rocks and 
those cornstones, now established as the natural base of the Old Red 
Sandstone, are, from the interesting character of their animal contents, 
attracting the greatest interest. I think it would be of value if the 
| pages of the GEoLocist were open to detailed descriptions of the litho- 
logical character and fossils of these “ Tilestones,” as exposed in 
different parts of Shropshire, Worcestershire, and Herefordshire. A 
‘comparison may thus be instituted which would greatly aid our com- 
prehension of them. 

The Upper Tilestone series displayed in my own neighbourhood, 
is thus described in the new edition of “ Siluria” :— 

“In the red ground, two miles north of Bewdley, near Trimpley,. 
in Worcestershire, greyish coloured sandy grits and cornstones rise 
out in undulations, the cornstones charged with the Cephalasprs 
Lyellii, Pteraspis Lloydii ; and the underlying grits with P. Banksn, 
| Pierygotus gigas,* and eggs of this crustacean [?] (Parka decipiens) &c. 
with many remains of plants, including the small Lycopodiaceous 
sporangia.” 


This condensed matter I will now give in detail ; for as every fossil 


* P. Ludensis, vide corrigenda. 


118 THE GEOLOGIST. 


found in the quarries has come before me, I have been able to secure 
the most important, and to take such notes of the others as would be 
of interest. 

Trimpley is evidently connected in its physical elevation with the 
ereat upthrow of Paleozoic strata, along the line of which lie the 
Abberley and Malvern ranges. Of this ridge-line it would seem to be 
the northern limit. No true Silurian bed, however, is exposed along 
the strike of its anticline ; but as the lowest measures of the Upper 
Tilestones, which form its backbone, are the exact equivalents of those 
resting against the north end of the Abberley Hill, micaceous shales, 
_but fifty feet removed from Aymestry limestone, we can assume their 
presence not far beneath the axial line of the hill. 

The ridge is flanked with true Old Red Cornstones, containing 
Pteraspis Lloydu, and P. Lewisw, Cephalaspis Lyell, and defensive 
spines of Ctenacanthus or a related species. ‘These fish-remains are 
coloured blue and purple by phosphate of iron, and glisten like 
enamel. Beneath these beds, somewhat unconformably, lie the Tile- 
stones. Lithologically, they are grey flagstones, interstratified with 
bands of brashy cornstone (this, as far as I can yet learn, is a feature 
peculiar to the Trimpley beds). Fish and crustacean remains occur 
equally in both flagstones and cornstones, but the plant-remains form 
bands of themselves, intermediate between them. Beneath these lie 
micaceous shales, having surfaces bearing tidal ripple-markings and 
hollows. In the sheltered parts of these I have found Pterygotean 
ova (Parka decipiens) and a few drifted plants, but no fish or crus- 
tacean remains. ‘These beds, at Abberley, cover up sandy grits, at 
the base of which I detected the Downton plant-beds, which contain 
the earliest Jand-plants. 

To return to the Upper Tilestones: the fish-remains I have 
met with are these,—Cephalaspis Lyellii, heads only, but in very fine 
preservation ; Pteraspis Lloydu, P. Banksti, P. Lewisii, and P. rostratus. 
Fragmentary remains are very abundant, but good and well-defined 
shields (I know not what else to call them) are rarely met with. The 
triplex character of the plates composing these defensive bony shells 
are beautifully preserved in nearly every specimen I have seen. 
I believe the Kington Pteraspides are remarkable for the want of 
these ornamental layers. Ctenacanthus (?) spines, and fragments of 


ROBERTS—ON THE UPPER LUDLOW TILESTONES. 119 


that substance of osseous character, supposed to belong to that Onchus, 
the spines of which (0. Murchisoni and O. tenwistriatus) are common 
in this bed. I believe, however, that these once supposed fish- 
defences will settle down into spines from the trifid tail of a crus- 
tacean ; possibly the same Ceratiocaris whose curious structure, as 
_ displayed by the Lesmahago specimens, has been still further elu- 
| cidated from the Upper and Lower Ludlow beds of Leintwardine 
/ and Burrington (near Ludlow). So that the fragments of solid bone 
| given us by this deposit will have to look out for a new alliance. 
Trimpley has been justly celebrated for its Pterygoti. The figures 
: in the forthcoming Monograph by Mr. Salter (Geological Survey, 
| Decade 10, pl. xiv. figs. 11, 12, 13), are taken from Trimpley 
_ specimens, valuable as giving portions of this remarkable Phyllopodous 
Crustacean not met with elsewhere. Pterygotus Ludensis and P. 
: problematicus are the species of which I have found remains. Patches 
_ of the carbonized skin of Kurypterus I have also met with. 

The plant remains are abundant, but their character is so far 
| destroyed by carbonization that little or nothing can be made of 
them. Some of them may have had a growth wt situ, upon the 
_ dimly seen shores of that ancient estuary, but of the greater portion 
of the remains we can speak but in the words of Hugh Miller, who 
_ describes their Scotch equivalents as being drifted from highlands of 
_ the period, “irregularly grooved stems, branching into boughs at 
| acute angles, seeming miniature resemblances to the trunks of gnarled 
_ oaks and elms.” There is nothing certain about them, and no special 
character visible. The spores of Lycopodiacese, however, are well 
_ preserved, and have such pretty polished surfaces that casual observers 
_ have carried away from the quarries all they could find. All that I 
| have seen are identical in form. 

This ends my list of Trimpley fossils. I should be glad to learn 
_ the fossil fauna and flora of their equivalent beds in other districts. 


120 THE GEOLOGIST. 


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 
By Dr. T. L. PHipson oF ParRIs. 


Arsenic in Lignite and Bituminous Limestone, &c.—Professor Daubrée’s 
Researches—Subterranean Noises—The Oldest Fossil Mammalia—A 
New Fossil Saurian. 


Somm years ago, M. Daubrée searched for arsenic and found it in 
many different kinds of rocks; but more especially in the mineral 
combustibles belonging to different strata.* He found at that time 
that the tertiary lignite of Lobsann (Bas-Rhin), was uncommonly rich 
in arsenic: certain samples of this lignite were found to contain as 
much as from 0.002 to 0.008 of their weight of arsenic. 

These observations have just been confirmed by the same eminent 
geologist, under certain circumstances that deserve to be made known. 
A limestone strongly impregnated with bitumen alternates with the 
lignite of Lobsann. ‘This limestone forms the principal element of 
the bituminous mortar (mastic) employed in the locality for different 
constructions. For some years it has been employed also to obtain 
certain pyrogenous oils, which are produced by a process of distil- 
lation. When the alembics which have been used in this distillation 
are taken down, the interior of the tube through which the oils distil 
is often seen to be encrusted with a curious deposit, produced by the 
gradual condensation, outside the furnace, of certain volatile sub- 
stances. This deposit, or sublimation, was found, upon examination, 
to be pure arsenic, crystallized in rhombohedrons ; it attains sometimes 
as much as two centimetres in thickness, and in the course of some 
months, it will completely obstruct the necks of the retorts. The 
arsenic thus deposited forms about the one-millionth part in weight 
of the rock which is submitted to distillation. 

The arsenic contained in the limestone is not entirely condensed 
in this manner; a notable quantity distils over with the oils, as 
M. Daubrée assured himself by a special investigation. In what 
state of combination the arsenic exists in these oils has not yet been 
ascertained ; it is well to be aware, however, that arsenic does exist 
in them, as they are constantly employed for burning in lamps, &c. 

The state in which this arsenic exists in the limestone of Lobsann, 
has, however, been ascertained with certainty by M. Daubrée, and in 
a very ingenious way. By the use of an appropriate solvent, the 
bitumen is dissolved out of the limestone ; then the carbonate of 


* See his Recherches sur la présence deVarsenic dans les Combustibles minérauz, 
dans diverses roches, et dans Ceaw dela mer. (Annales des Mines, 4¢ série, tom. 
xix. p. 669.) An extract was also published in the Comptes-Rendus de U Acad. 
de Sc, Paris, Xxxii. p. 827. ; 

2 


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENC:. 121 


lime is dissolved in its turn, when a residue, consisting of very fine 
non-crystalline particles, and amounting to about two per cent. of the 
weight of limestone employed in the experiment, is found to remain 
undissolved. These particles consist of arseniferous wron-pyrites. A 
fact that should be noted here is, that M. Daubrée formerly dis- 
covered arsenic in the limestone of the coal-formation at Villé, and 
found that it was contained in the rock as crystallized particles 
of Mikspikel (Fe As+ Fe 8S’), the small crystals of which were perfectly 
recognizable. 

As regards the environs of Lobsann, it is not only in the beds 
of lignite and bituminous limestone that arsenic is found to be pre- 
sent. Near this locality there exist some masses of iron-ore, which 
are very remarkable as regards their geological position. One of them, 
at Kuhbriick, about two-and-half miles from Lobsann, furnished the 
blast-furnaces with an hydrated oxide of iron which contained so much 
arsenic, that it was found useless to smelt this ore any longer. These 
masses of iron-ore ‘have been developed,” says M. Daubrée, “ina 
series of faults (fazd/es) with which the formation of the bitumen in 
the tertiary formation is connected, as I have shown in another 
memoir, so that in these deposits of such different natures, but con- 
temporaneous, the arsenic appears to have been derived from the same 
source.” 

We have called attention more than once in THE Grouoeist of last 
year, to the beautiful researches of M. Daubrée on Metamorphism, on 
the artificial formation of many minerals, &c. ; and Professor Bunsen, 
at the last Réwnion of Naturalists, at Carlsruhe, declared that for five- 
and-twenty years no work of so much importance for geology had 
been published, as M. Daubrée’s researches on Metamorphism, &c. 
We wish, therefore, that it had fallen into the plan of the late Pre- 
sident of the Geological Society of London to have noticed the labours 
of M. Daubrée, in his yearly account of geological investigations in all 
countries during the previous year (1857), and that he had thus added 
the weight of his testimony to that of the many eminent foreigners 
who have expressed their high opinion of M. Daubrée’s labours, as 
the opinions and writings of English savans of so high a standing 
have a great influence on the Continent.* 

As regards the very interesting note appended by the editor of THE 
GEOLOGIST to my last article, I must observe that I was aware that 
the noises of guns could be heard at considerable distances, and 


* It must be remembered that the address which Dr. Phipson alludes to was 
delivered before the Geological Society in February of last year, and, if we re- 
member rightly, very shortly, indeed, after the most interesting of M. Daubrée’s 
researches were first published. It is somewhat unusual to notice ‘sins of 
omission ” in the president of a society ; but, as the remarks are evidently kindly 
intended, we publish them, in order that it may be fully known on the Continent 
that M. Daubrée’s researches are not by any means slighted by English savans. 
Indeed, they were noticed with much emphasis by the present President of the 
pel Society, Professor Phillips, in the anniversary address delivered a few 

ays since. 


122 THE GEOLOGIST. 


that even the sound of a bell has been reflected from the clouds, 
Thirty-two miles and 130 miles are certainly considerable distances to 
hear the report of cannon. But in advancing a conjecture, that the 
sullen noises sometimes heard on the western coasts of England and 
Belgium might have some connexion with the subterranean rumblings 
which accompany earthquakes and volcanic phenomena, ] remembered 
having read that during the eruptions of the volcano on the island of 
St. Vincent (30th April, 1812) a noise like the report of cannons was 
heard, without any sensible concussion of the earth, over a space of 
160,000 geographical square miles; and on the 23rd of January, 
1835, during the eruption of the volcano Conseguina, in Nicaragua,” 
a subterranean noise was heard at the same time on the island of 
Jamaica, and on the plateau of Bogota, a distance greater than that 
which separates London from Algiers! As the editor of the GEOLOGIST 
justly observes, we cannot, however, be too careful in the manner of 
investigating these questions of noises. - 

It is time now that we should turn our attention a little to some 
paleontological researches that will perhaps be read with interest. 
The following concerns the oldest fossil mammalia. 

It was in the oolitic beds of Stonesfield that, more than forty 
years ago, the first remains of mammalia older than the tertiary 
formations were discovered. This discovery was looked upon with 
suspicion by many naturalists, who could not believe in the existence 
of mammalia at such an early date. 

“In spite of the authority of the justly celebrated naturalists who 
regard the Stonesfield fossils as true mammals, we cannot help 
cherishing some doubts,” M. Alcide d’Orbigny writes, in 1850, in his 
excellent Cours élémentaire de Paléontologie et de Géologie Strati- 
graphiques ; “in studying comparatively the animal forms of each 
series, we have found that the exceptions were generally based upon 
inexact determinations. ... Why, if they be really mammalia, have 
not the bones of the head, or any of the bones connected with the 
jaws even, been described, that the determination of the animals 
might have been confirmed thereby ?... We think either that the 
animals themselves belong to the class of reptiles, as others have 
already thought, or that the lower jaws, being one of the narrowest 
parts of the skeleton, must have fallen from the tertiary beds into 
the crevices of the Jurassic strata.” 

These scruples were never indulged in by Georges Cuvier. “In the 
month of February, 1832,” says M. Elie de Beaumont, “in spite 
of the contrary insinuations by which it was endeavoured to efface a 
fact standing out as an anomaly to the laws established by him, 
Cuvier one evening took from his collection one of the jaws found at 
Stonesfield, and demonstrated in his own drawing-room that this 
bone belonged to a mammal, and that it could not possibly have 
formed part of the skeleton of any of the Saurian tribe. As to the 
geological position of these fossils discovered by Broderip and Buck- 
land, M. Cuvier never had the slightest doubt of it.” 


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 123 


The age of the Stonesfield fossils, nevertheless, remained for a time 
an object of doubt, when a new discovery rendered extremely probable 
the antiquity which their natural position in the earth’s crust assigned 
to them. ‘The discovery in question was made in the Purbeck- 
beds, which, belonging to the upper Oolitic series, lie between the 
cretaceous formation and the Stonesfield strata. Fourteen species 
/ of mammalia, belonging to eight or nine genera (Spalacotherium, 
Triconodon, Plagiaulax, &c.) were found there. 

Such was the state of things when another discovery was added to 
those of which the authenticity had been so much questioned, and 
obliged us to place the date of the first appearance of mammalia con- 
siderably farther back. It was made by M. Plieninger, who found 
at Stuttgard some minute teeth of a new fossil mammal, a type of a 
new genus, that of J/tcrolestes, which he discovered at the junction of 
the Triassic and the Liassic strata. Hence, the J/icrolestes is considerably 
more ancient than the Stonesfield fossils.* 

If any doubts still remain, however, concerning this great anti- 
quity of mamunalia, they will perhaps be dissipated by a letter which 
Mr. Pentland has just addressed to M. Elie de Beaumont. 

“Tt will be interesting to know,” writes Mr. Pentland,t “ that there 
have just been discovered in the ‘ Bone-Bed’ of Dundry, near Bristol, 
which belongs to the superior Triassic beds, some indubitable remains 
of mammalia belonging to the family of Insectivora, and which Owen 
is inclined to connect with the genus Microlestes of M. Plieninger, 
formerly discovered in Germany. It is believed that their true posi- 
tion is of more ancient date than the Lias, and they are certainly the 
most ancient fossil mammalia known to paleontologists.” 

M. Elie de Beaumont observes that one doubt ouly can prevail con- 
cerning the geological age of the “Bone-Bed” of Dundry ; it is, 
whether this bone-bed is really part of the Trias, or whether it consti- 
tutes, on the contrary, the first stratum of the Lias which covers the 
former. However this may be, the discovery made at Dundry entirely 
confirms that made at Stuttgard. “Thus it is,” says M. Elie de 
Beaumont, “that the progress of observation, whilst multiplying in 
SO surprising a manner the mammalia of the tertiary formations, 
shows us that they penetrate, though in much smaller numbers, and 
of much smaller size, into the secondary strata, where they reach, to 
say the least, as far as the base of the Jurassic rocks, and where pro- 
bably they will not stop. These new discoveries of fossil mammals 


ee 
seen 


* * The Dromotherium sylvestre of Dr. Emmons is another of these “oldest” 
mammals ; and two or three jaws have been obtained from the shales associated 
with coal-beds in North Carolina, which are certainly of Triassic, and possibly 
Permian age !—Ep. Guou. 

+ His letter is here translated from the French. 

~ By Mr. Charles Moore, F.G.S., of Bath. See ‘‘Siluria,” new edit. p. 514. 
Sir Roderick Murchison says these remains were found “in an agglomerate which 
fills the fissures of the carboniferous limestone near Frome, Somersetshire ;” 
meaning thereby, we believe, what is usually known as ‘‘the dolomitic conglo- 
merate.”—Ep. GEOL. 


124 THE GEOLOGIST. 


tend naturally to render less surprizing the impressions of birds’ feet 
in the variegated sandstone on the banks of the Connecticut ;* and 
these observations are in perfect harmony with the discoveries of the 
remains of Saurians, which, after stopping for a long while at the German 
Zechstein, and reaching afterwards to the coal-formation, have at last 
furnished us with bones of crocodiles in the uppermost Old Red Sand- 
stonet of Scotland, without speaking of the impressions of footmarks 
already observed in the old red sandstone} of the Alleghanies, and in 
certain sedimentary rocks, probably more ancient still, on the borders 
of the great lakes of North America.§ And again, by a sort of contrary 
progression, certain organic forms, originally regarded as characterising 
some of the most ancient sediments (Orthoceratites, Spirifer, &c.), 
have lately taken an incontestable place in the Couches Keuperiennes 
of St. Cassian, and in the Lias of other countries. Far from lessening 
paleontology, these discoveries, on the contrary, enlarge its boundaries, 
which were formerly established on a plan both narrower and less 
rational than that which progressive observation points out to us.” 

A new Saurian has just been discovered in the Permian strata of 
Lodéve, in France. The slate-rocks of Lodéve, essentially formed of 
Permian schists, had never before presented us with any but vegetable 
fossils. M. Paul Gervais, the distinguished naturalist of Montpellier, 
has, however, just discovered in them a new species of lizard, which he 
calls Aphelosaurus Luterensis. This animal belongs ‘to Paul Gervais’ 
family of Homeosaurides, a family formerly established for certain 
reptiles which, up to the present time, had not been found out of the 
more modern of the Jurassic strata. 

The size of the Aphelosaurus is about that of the largest occelated 
lizards that have hitherto been found in the south of Europe; it 


may also be compared to that of the Varans and Iguanas of average 
dimensions, 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 


_GronoaicaL Socrery oF Lonpon, February 2d, 1859.—The following commu- 
nication was read :— 


ey On the Mode of Formation of Volcanic Cones and Craters.’ By G. Poulett 
Scrope, Esq., M.P., F.B.S., F.G.S. 

he author commenced by saying that he should not have referred again to this 
subject, already briefly treated by him in a paper read to the Society in April, 


* See our article in the Gronoerst for January and February, 1858.—T. L. P. 
+ The exact age of the sandstone at Elgin, in which the remains of Stagonolepis 
occur, Is as yet a question among the best geologists acquainted with the district. 
—E D. Grou. See also the Gzonoaist, Vol. II. pp. 46 and 89. 
t This red sandstone, termed “Old Red” by De I. Lea, belongs to the Lower 
( arboniferous Series, according to the Professors Rogers.—Ep. Gor. 
§ M. E. de Beaumont probably here alludes to the tracks in the Potsdam sand- 
Stone, and described as being those of Crustaceans by Owen and Logan.—Ep. Gzou. 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 125 


1856, had it not been that Baron Humboldt, in the recently published fourth 
volume of his ‘“‘ Kosmos,” applies the whole weight of his great authority to the 
support of the theory of upheaval in contradistinction to eruption as the vera 
causa of volcanic cones and craters,—a theory which the author, with Sir Charles 
Lyell, M. Constant Prévost, and many others, believes to be not merely erroneous, 
but destructive of all clearness of apprehension as to the character of the subter- 
ranean forces, and the part which volcanic action has played in the structural 
arrangement of the earth’s surface. 

He showed, by reference to the works of Spallanzani, Dolomieu, Breislak, &c., 
that the early observers of volcanic rocks and phenomena, together with the 
unscientific world, looked upon volcanic cones and craters, whether large or small, 
as the result of volcanic eruptions ; but that of late years a new doctrine had been 
propagated by MM. Humboldt, von Buch, Elie de Beaumont, and Dufrénoy, 
which denies altogether that volcanic mountains have been formed by the accumu- 
lation of erupted matters, and attributes them solely to a sudden ‘‘ bubble-shaped 
swelling-up ” of pre-existing horizontal strata,—the bubble sometimes bursting at 
top ae then leaving its broken sides tilted up around a hollow (elevation- 
crater). 

The author expressed his belief that this notion originated in Baron Humboldt’s 
account of the eruption of Jorullo in 1759, in which (as the author showed in his 
work on volcanos of 1825) a great error had been committed,—the convexity of the 
Malpais and its five hills being simply a bulky bed of lava poured out on a flat 
plain from five ordinary cones of eruption, and the “ hornitos” common ‘“ fuma- 
roles ” coated over with black mud produced from showers of volcanic ashes mixed 
with rain-water. But the idea of a “‘ bladder-like swelling-up”’ of horizontal strata 
into volcanic hills being thus started by M. von Humboldt, it was further extended 
by M. von Buch ; and hence arose the “ elevation-crater”’ theory. 

The author next proceeded to show the inconsistencies of the advocates of this 
theory, who disagree among themselves as to the extent to which they apply it,— 
MM. Humboldt, von Buch, and Dufrénoy asserting both Somma and Vesuvius, 
the Peak of Teneriffe, and all Etna, to be solely due to sudden upheval, while 
M. de Beaumont declares Vesuvius, the Peak, and the upper cone of Etna to be 
the products of eruption only. Again, while, except M. Dufrénoy, all admit the 
minor cones and craters of Etna, Vesuvius, Lanzarote, and Central France to be 
eruptive, all declare the similar cones and craters of the Phlegreean fields to be due 
only to upheaval. They offer no reliable test by which upheaved can be distin- 
guished from eruptive cones ; or, when they attempt this, differ again from one 
another, and even from themselves. Thus, Von Buch considers the extreme regu- 
larity of the slopes of Etna a proof of its upheaval. M. de Beaumont asserts 
regularity of outline to be the distinguishing feature of an eruptive cone, and 
yet declares the upper and the lower portions of Etna, which are its least sym- 
metrical parts, to be of eruptive origin, and the intermediate cone, the slope of 
which is extremely regular, to have been upheaved ! In respect to the tuff-cones 
and craters of the Phlegrzan fields, the series from Somma to the Monte Nuovo 
is so evidently of similar character, that, to avoid classing the first as an eruption- 
cone, the upheavalists have been driven to deny that the Monte Nuovo itself was 
the product of eruption, and even to assert that it existed in the Roman era, and 
was only sprinkled with a few ashes by the eruption which, from all contem- 
porary authorities, threw it up in two days of the year 1538! The author describes 
the circular anticlinal dip of the strata of the Monte Nuovo and other tuff-cones of 
the Campi Phlegrzi as utterly inexplicable upon the theory of upheaval, while it 
is the natural result of the fall and accumulation of fragmentary materials pro- 
jected upwards by eruptions. 

He then disputes the truth of M. de Beaumont’s dogma, that lava cannot con- 
solidate into a solid bed upon a slope exceeding 5° or 6°, and shows from number- 
less instances in Auvergne and the Vivarais, on Etna, Vesuvius, Teneriffe, &c., 
that bulky beds of lava have congealed on steep slopes,—in some cases, as for 
example in that of Jorullo itself, in the form of a massive promontory projecting 
far from the side of the cone of the crater from which it issued ; in others, when 
liquidity was at the minimum, in that of a dome or bell (Bourbon, Puy de Dome, 


126 THE GEOLOGIST. 


&c.). In regard to Etna, he leaves M. de Beaumont’s misrepresentations of fact 
to be dealt with by Sir C. Lyell, only remarking that, on M. de Beaumont’s own 
showing, the portion of Etna which he supposes to have been upheaved, is 
positively “ encrusted with a coating of lavas.” 

The inapplicability of the elevation theory to the Cantal, Mt. Dore, and Mezenc 
in France, is then shown, inasmuch as, by M. de Beaumont’s own admission, the 
angle of slope of their basaltic and trachytic beds is even less than that of the 
recent and acknowledged lava-flows in the same district. Finally, he asks what 
has become of the products of the repeated eruptions of volcanos, if they have not 
accumulated in the course of ages into the mountains which we find there, com- 
posed of irregular alternating beds of lava and conglomerate just such as we see to 
be erupted from the central orifices ? 

The author next shows that the upheavalists have no correct idea of the 
mode of formation of craters, which are not formed, as they assert, at one blow, 
by a single explosion, like the bursting of a bubble, or of a mine of gunpowder, 
but by the repetition of explosions or flashings of steam from the surface of 
ebullient lava within the volcanic vent (like those of a colossal Perkins’s steam- 
mortar), continued for weeks and months, or more, by which the mountain is often 
ultimately eviscerated, its summit and heart being blown into the air, and scattered 
in fragments or ashes around —not foundering into the cavity and remaining there 
as they represent. He instances the great crater of Vesuvius formed under his 
eyes in 1822 by explosions lasting twenty days ; and judging from the quantity of 
fragmentary matter then ejected and falling around, comparing it with the far 
greater quantities thrown up occasionally by eruptive paroxysms in other quarters 
of the globe, he asserts his belief that in the latter cases craters may be, and are, 
formed of several miles in diameter, nothing remaining of the whole mountain 
except the wreck of its base, as we see in Santorini, the Cirque of Teneriffe, and 
so many other circular clif-ranges surrounding extinct or active volcanic vents. 
He expresses his astonishment that Von Buch and Humboldt should have sup- 
posed Vesuvius to have “ sprung up like a bubble in one day, just as we now see 
it,” in the year 79 a.p., and not to have increased since; and shows that even 
within the last hundred years great changes have taken place in the form of that 
mountain, and that the relation of Pliny of the phenomena witnessed by him is 
Inconsistent with the idea of upheaval, and demonstrative of the occurrence of an 
eruptive paroxysm by which the upper part of Somma was blown by degrees into 
the air, and the crater of the Atrio formed, in which the subsequent eruptions of 
eighteen centuries have raised up the cone of Vesuvius. 

In recapitulation, the author declares that the characters of all voleanie moun- 
tains and rocks are simply and naturally to be accounted for by their eruptive 
origin, the lavas and fragmentary matters accumulating round the vent in forms 
determined in great degree by the more or less imperfect fluidity of the former, 
which, as in the case of some trachytic lavas, glassy or spongy, may and do con- 
geal in domes or bulky masses immediately over, or in thick beds near the vent, 
or, as in that of some basaltic lavas, may flow over very moderate declivities, to 
great distances ; and consequently that the upheaval- or elevation-crater theory is 
a gratuitous assumption, unsupported by direct observation and contrary to the 
evidence of facts. He concludes by representing its continued acceptance to be 
discreditable to science, and an impediment to the progress of sound geology, 
mmasmuch as false ideas of the bubble-like inflation, at one stroke, of such moun- 
tains as Etna or Chimborazo must seriously affect all our speculations on Geological 
Dynamics, and on the nature of the subterranean forces by which other mountain- 
ranges or continents are formed. 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 127 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 


GuactAL Action In Waues.—‘ At the mouth of a lateral valley opening into 
the vale of the Ithon, in Radnorshire, at the turnpike-gate above Llanbadarn 
Fynydd, there is a low hill somewhat in advance of the slopes of the underlying 
schistose rocks. A road-cutting exposes a section of this hill about fifty feet from 
its base, and the same from its summit. It is seen to be composed of materials 
far different to those of the soft coarse rocks around, being, in fact, a collection of 
boulders and angular fragments, with smaller pebbles and mud. The excavation 
made by the stream at the base of the hill shows the same confused collection of 
large stones, little-rolled, with coarse detrital material. The boulders are prin- 
cipally gritty portions of the Silurians found in the hills at the sources of the 
stream. The residual products of a glacier appear to be here apparent.—S. R. P.” 

MaAmManian Remains.—‘ Dear Sir, —I'he remains of Mammalia in the 
Dover Museum are very few, and are mostly those of Mammoth. ‘The collection 
consists of, large tusk of Mammoth, another large tusk, apparently of a different 
species, trawled up in the North Sea, off Holfordness ; remains of Mammoth, and 
large stags’ horns, from Faversham; Elephants’ grinders, dredged up on the 
Calais oyster-ground, off the French coast; part of upper portion of a bear’s 
skull, from the Cherry Gardens, Folkestone ; cores of horns of Bos, from Faver- 
sham ; remains of Mammoth and of Bos, from Herne Bay.— Yours, &c., CHARLES 
GORDON.” 

Lanpsiip at THE Iste or Portitanp.— In the Isle of Portland, early on 
Sunday morning, December 26th, an unusual kind of noise was heard by some of 
the inhabitants at the village of Chesil, compared, by the narrator, to the con- 
tinual falling of a stone wall. On the return of daylight it was found to have 
proceeded from the sliding away of a large extent of under-cliff, covering an area 
of from twenty to twenty-five acres, which had caused the sinking of an enormous 
mass of broken stone, the débris of the adjoining quarries, and the accumulation 
of very many years. ‘The scene of the occurrence is on the west side of the island, 
overlooking the great west bay, about 200 or 300 yards from the village of Chesil. 
A slight smking had been observed by one of the quarrymen on the previous 
afternoon, but it was not until an hour after midnight the general mass gave way. 
The main cliff, or escarpment, is, at this point, about 200 feet above the level of 
the sea ; the north end is 495 feet, but with a considerable southerly dip. The 
upper strata of the Isle of Portland are the Purbeck, or fresh-water limestone, 
alternating with layers of clay or dirt, as it is here called ; one ef which seams 
contains the fossil trees and Cycadee. Below this is the true Portland-series, 
consisting of beds of stone interspersed with bands of chert and flint, and termi- 
nating with the Portland-sand. Below all these the Kimmeridge-clay— the 
formation which yields the well-known bituminous schist—forms the general 
substratum of the island. It forms the anchorage ground of the Portland road- 
stead, and is the stratum on which the Chesil-beach has accumulated. The 
immediate cause of the landslip undoubtedly has been the action of the springs 
from behind and above passing through the numerous fissures in the beds of solid 
limestone, and carrying away in their course the soft and yielding clay ; and thus 
undermined, the superincumbent mass has sunk downwards and outwards. In 
ascending from the beach, the visitor will be first attracted by the low under-cliff 
of Kimmeridge-clay, which, from lateral pressure, has been pushed forwards 
beyond the beach into the water, and forced upwards with the shingle over it, so 
as to present an escarpment, or outer face, towards the sea. The condition of the 
displaced under-cliff is, more or less, the accompaniment of all landslips on the 
coast, and was remarkably exhibited in the great landslip near Lyme Regis, De- 
cember 25th, 1839. On that occasion, the argillaceous stratum of under-cliff was 
tilted up to a height of thirty feet, leaving a corresponding depression behind, 
which soon became filled with the fresh water issuing from the main land. At 
Portland, a small pond only has been formed. A little way up the cliff, a singular 


128 THE GEOLOGIST. 


change has been effected in the condition of some garden-plots, which were pre- 
viously inclined towards the sea, at an angle of about forty-five degrees, but now 
dip in the opposite direction ; the plane of this portion of land having traversed 
ninety degrees, or one-fourth of a circle. The entire ground, from the beach 
upwards, is rent with innumerable cracks, from a few inches to several feet in 
width, and in lines parallel to the coast, rising in a series of steps or terraces. On 
reaching the summit, other effects are visible, especially to those familiar with the 
locality. For many years past the waste material of the neighbouring quarries 
has been here thrown from trucks over the cliff, and had formed there a kind of 
causeway, extending about forty feet ; all this has sunk bodily down into basin- 
shaped cavities, carrying with it portions of the main cliff. Hither from the sudden 
withdrawal of this enormous mass, or the undermining below, a partial severance 
of a large part of the solid cliff has been effected. At present, the crack is but a 
few inches in width, and the opinion among the more experienced quarrymen is, 
that at present there will be no further displacement beyond a slight settlement. 
Should this ever be detached, the crash would be tremendous, and be attended 
with danger both to life and property. The east side of the island has in past 


yous been the scene of many extensive landslips, some of which are recorded in. 


utchins’ ‘ History of Dorset.’ On the 2d February, 1615, the pier was demolished, 
blocks that lay forty yards off in the sea were raised above the water, and the ways 
leading from the pier to the quarries were turned upside down. ‘The earth for one 
hundred yards sank into the sea. It was conjectured that this, too, was caused by 
the weight of rubbish thrown over the cliff upon a foundation of clay. After an 
exceedingly wet season, in December, 1734, another landslip occurred, when one 
hundred and fifty yards of the north-east end of the island sank into the sea, by 
which a pier and road were destroyed ; the damage being computed at £46,000. 
A still more destructive one occurred in February, 1792, when the extent of ground 
moved was a mile and a quarter in length, and six hundred yards in width. One 
effect of these slips on the east side of the island has been to bring down the old 
burying-ground from the level of the land above to within a few feet of the sea. 
The insulated condition of large portions of cliff near Pensylvania Castle, are due 
to the same cause. ‘The whole offers a good illustration of the wasting process of 
land-springs, when acting on formations such as the Oolitic, in which the stony 
beds are interspersed with bands of clay and sand.” 


REVIEWS. 


The Earth and the Word; or, Geology for Bible-Students. By S. R. Parison, 
F.G.8. London: Longman and Co. 1858. 


The Primeval World: a Treatise on the relations of Geology to Theology. By Rev. 
ey J. Gntoae. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark. London: Hamilton, Adams 
and Co, 1859. 


‘Tess are two charming little books upon subjects to which, of late years, the 
Christian public have looked with great interest, and upon which some of our best 
geologists and theologians have spent much study and labour. Every effort to 
bring about a reconciliation of the biblical account of creation with the truths of 
geology is to be praised and not condemned ; at all events, a thorough and con- 
stant discussion of all the points of coincidence or difference must be productive of 
beneficial effects. 

Many, indeed, of the Protestant clergymen of our own land are those who have 
not feared to become geologists, nor have hesitated to believe that neither the 
testimony of the Bible in its proper or moral aspect could be invalidated, nor the 
stability of true religion shaken, by the teachings of science. 

To Mr. Gloag is particularly due the praise of having dared to view every subject 
—and we say it sincerely, whether we concur in all his views or not—in a bold and 


: 


REVIEWS. 129 


truthful manner, and without apparently the remotest desire to garble any topic 
to his own purposes, or to pander to any prejudices. ‘‘ It is,” he says in his com- 
mencing words, ‘‘a Christian duty to meditate upon the character of God, not 
only as exhibited in grace and redemption, but also as displayed in creation. God 
is the Author of nature as well as of revelation. His existence is declared and his 
perfections are manifested in the one as well as in the other, and therefore both 
claim our devout attention and earnest study.” 

The first half of the work is an epitome of geological doctrines ; the following 
passage, describing the order of organic remains, well exemplifies that intelligibi- 
lity of language and admirable brevity, simplicity, and accuracy by which Mr. 
Gloag’s writing is characterized :— 

‘* And now let us endeavour, if possible, to realize these facts which we have 
stated. Let us travel in imagination into the distant past. Let us fix our atten- 

tion upon a small portion of the earth. It is the ocean-bed. Fish of peculiar 
' shape are swimming about it ; some with fins spread like wings, and others with 
huge scales like a coat of armour. In general they are carnivorous, and prey upon 
their fellows. Ages roll on. These fish have ceased to exist ; their remains have 
been embedded in the mud or sand at the bottom of the ocean ; this has been 
consolidated into stone, and has been gradually elevated until it forms part of the 
dry land. And now we are led, as it were, into a different world. Gigantic ferns 
or reeds, like trees, now grow upon the earth. A vegetation has sprung up far 
ranker and more luxuriant than that which we read of in tropical climes ; but not 
one tree, not one plant is the same as any which now exists. Ages again roll on. 
The vegetation has disappeared ; the trees have been swept into the ocean, or the 
ground on which they grew has been submerged ; the dry land has again become 
sea. And in that sea we behold strange shapes and forms—huge reptiles and 
terrible monsters of the deep ; there is one, at least thirty feet long, with a neck 
longer than that of any swan, a head of a lizard, a body of a crocodile, and the 
paddles of a whale: there is another, a flying monster, a reptile covered with 
scales, with wings similar to those of a bat, rivalling in its shape any of the fabu- 
lous dragons of antiquity. But their existence also has its limits ; the species dies 
as well as the individual ; the age of reptiles has come to its close ; and after ages 
upon ages have passed away, after another series of elevations and submersions, 
after this portion of the earth has been sea and land alternately, it is ultimately 
raised, and peopled with created intelligences, and is the seat of the mightiest 
empire that ever existed upon earth, and has become the abode of civilisation and 
religion ; for this portion of earth, the past history of which we have traced, is 
a part of the island of Great Britain. 

““ Hivery formation has, of course, been formed at the bottom of the sea, and is, 
therefore, a decisive proof that the district where it is now found once constituted 
the ocean-bed. It is also a proof that dry land and sea existed contemporaneously, 
for the materials of which the formation is composed were all originally washed off 
from the land ; and thus in past geological eras, whilst the stratified rocks were 
deposited, there never was a time when all was land or when all was water. 
Indeed, every portion of the dry land has, in all probability, been frequently at the 
bottom of the sea. ‘ By an abundance of various complicated evidence,’ says Dr. 
Pye Smith, ‘it is proved that there is probably no spot on the face of the earth, 
- both the dry land and the seas as they at present exist, which has not gone 

repeatedly through the conditions of being alternately the floor of the waters, and 
an earthy surface exposed to the atmosphere and occupied by appropriate tribes of 
vegetable and animal creatures.’ ”’ 

In Chapter IV. the consideration of the Mosaic days of creation is taken up, 
and the creation of the world is put by the author at that beginning which may 
now be regarded as popularly considered to have been divided by a lengthened 
period of vast ages from the six days of the Mosaic account. “The sacred Scrip- 
tures,” writes Mr. Gloag, ‘open with a description of the creation and arrange- 
ment of the universe—a description which, for the unity of simplicity of diction 
with sublimity of thought, is probably unequalled by any composition. The first 
sentence contains a comprehensive statement of the creation of the universe. It 
reveals God to us as the Creator of heaven and earth, the Great First Cause, the 

VOL. II. K 


130 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Source and Origin of all existence.” The various theories and schemes of reconci- 
liation of various writers are then reviewed, and the meanings of the terms 
creation, days, earth, in the senses used are duly weighed ; but after a careful com- 
parative analysis of the interpretations and modes of reconciliation as yet proposed, 
with the concurrent geological facts, the author concludes that we must ‘‘ regard 
all attempts at the discovery of an adequate theory of reconciliation for the present 
hopeless,” and especially he regards as a barrier to an immediate settlement of a 
satisfactory solution, the admitted ignorance of geologists as to the precise state 
of the earth, immediately before the present creation. In leaving the subject thus 
open, Mr. Gloag takes good ground in the expressed conviction that both the 
geological facts, when fully demonstrated, and the scriptural declarations, when 
properly interpreted, are founded on truth, and cannot possibly contradict each 
other. ‘‘We need be under no apprehension,” he properly says, “that true 
science shall ever be opposed to revelation. The Word of God is not contradicted, 
but illustrated by his works. This has ever been the case in fat ages ; and this 
will ever be the case in ages to come. Scripture does not shrink from the strictest 
scrutiny, nor is it at all afraid that any discovery of science shall either weaken its 
evidence or contradict its statements.” 

The author then passes on to reflections on the existence of death before sin, 
the scientific view of the Deluge and the scriptural statements in reference to it, 
and then devotes the remaining portion of his eloquent little book to the illustra- 
tion of the Divine benevolence as displayed in the pages of geological history. 

We rejoice in the production of such inexpensive works, when characterised by 
the information and candour so especially marked in this, and we heartily wish 
“The Primeval World” an extended circulation, from the belief that its pages 
will nowhere be perused without pleasure, and by no one without advantage. 

Mr. Pattison’s is a still smaller book than the one we have just reviewed, 
but it is by no means its inferior in diction or matter, and is characterised by a 
peculiar poetical vein of writing. The author tells us that it is not another 
attempt to construct a scheme of reconciliation which shall satisfy all parties, nor 
a new theory of interpretation either of the earth or the Word of God; but an 
endeavour to consider both records together with equal reverence as being of equal 
authority. ‘‘ Undoubtedly,” he says in the Preface, “the minds of many good 
men are uneasy at the suspicion of a conflict between the testimonies, just as on 
the eve of an important trial the young advocate is distressed by the prospect of 
contrary evidence equally credible. But in both cases the open examination 
removes, one by one, all the apparent discrepancies, and truth comes out all the 
more illustrious for the clouds which beset its course.” 

Mr. Pattison opens his book in an easy flowing style, which is maintained 
throughout. ‘From some eminence, ascended in the course of our autumnal 
ramble, we see the green earth spread out before us asa map. Its aspect, colour, 
composition, and arrangement, suggest design ; we ask, was it made for us ?—by 
whom ?—and when ? emory brings to our recollection the offerings made by 
‘mother earth’ to our material well-being, and we readily conclude, that the 
requirements of man had something to do with its origin and plan. The sbrewdest 
observers and most profound thinkers in all ages, who have investigated the con- 
dition of the earth, have arrived at the universal conclusion that ‘the hand that 
made it is divine.’ From the deepest mines and loftiest mountains, from primeval 
rocks and alluvial plains, from liquid ocean and ambient air, the testimony springs 
up, ‘In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth.’ ” 

From the cosmogony of the subject the author proceeds to a brief review of the 
succession of strata forming the earth’s crust, with the remains of former creations 
entombed in them, and the value of those mineral masses to the necessities and 
uses of mankind. ‘The arrangement of the rock-masses is then more minutely 
dwelt upon, with a view to show “the one property which belongs to all the varie- 
ties of material, namely, utility to man. As Civilisation advances, one and 
another instance of this is discovered, and brought into practical demand in the 
common life of the world’s population. We daily avail ourselves, in a thousand 
ways, of the vast stores of mineral matter laid up and prepared for this end 
amidst the slow processes of anterior time.” 


REVIEWS. 131 


The subject of Paleontology is then taken up, and regarded in the light of the 
continuance of God’s creative energy and providence ; each successive life-stage 
being subjected to analysis and special notice in descending series from the most 
recent with the remains of man and of his works through the ages of great beasts, 
of gigantic reptiles, of profuse vegetation, of trilobites, to that of primeval worm- 
tracks and rain-drops. Everywhere in these rocks ‘‘ we find the clearest evidences 
of adaptation in the character of the animal-remains of their successive beds. One 
kind of life flourishes in the fine shales, the consolidated impalpable mud of the 
early seas ; another affects the coarser sandstone, loving the littoral conditions 
suited to its existence; a third abounds only in shell-sand ; whilst the most 
numerous occupy the calcareous zones, which are the chief sepulchres of the remote 
past.” The first appearance of every creature in the geological scale is not in a 
rudimentary or imperfect condition, and so sudden has sometimes been the addition 
of life that one band of the Upper Silurian Formation—the Niagara limestone— 
presents us with 150 new species. ‘The results of extensive observations in various 
regions show that marine species in the olden geological periods had a wider range 
than those now living, so that the climatal or physical conditions of the ocean over 
large areas must have been more uniform, although particular localities were 
characterised by the predominance of particular forms. ‘l'hus lifting the curtain of 
the past, we are struck by the endless procession of animated existence appearing 
on the stage, moving slowly across it, and visibly ending, not by worn-out life, but 
by changed conditions, nor ‘‘ can we announce that there have been absolute life- 
breaks, for evidence is continually coming in, showing that such lines do not exist, 
or if existing in one district, do not extend to others.” 

“The study of Geology puts to flight for ever the opinion that God has rarely, 
if ever, been actively employed in creation since the issuing of His fiat for its com- 
mencement. There have been no long periods of inaction, positively no repose 
whatever of Divine power, no trace of quiescence, no proof of abandonment for a 
moment.” 

From these reflections the author’s thoughts turn hopefully to futurity, and he 
concludes ‘‘if He has thus cared for the material universe from all eternity, so He 
will for the moral, and the traces of continual provision for the one may be 
well appealed to as tokens of assurance for the other. It is not, therefore, 
as a stranger that the geologist opens the Word of God.” 

The fourth chapter deals with the history of our globe. In it, of course, the 
high antiquity of our planet is-dwelt upon, and a pretty illustration of this 
is thus pleasingly given: ‘‘ Just as we should learn much of the history of 
England by tracing the fortunes of one of our aristocratic families backward to the 
Norman man-at-arms who came over with the Conqueror, so we may obtain a lively 
impression of the sequences in the geologic past by tracing the fortunes of any 
family which has survived from the earliest times to the present, in the paleeonto- 
logical roll.” And so Mr. Pattison selects the Lingula, and traces the family- 
pedigree back from the tiny molluscous inhabitant of the Polynesian coral-reefs 
““ beyond the time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary,” 
beyond ‘‘ legal memory, whose boundary is the departure of brave Coeur-de-Lion to 
the Crusades—beyond Herodotus, the father of history, from before the voyage of 
the good ship Argo, it has been living and flourishing unknown to fame.” “ It 
may have attracted the attention of the world’s grey fathers in their boyhood ; but 
it claims a still higher ancestry, for we find it in pre-historic times.” Backward in 
time the pedigree is traced—among the crag shells, in the sands of the cretaceous 
sea, we find it ‘‘in the region of the oolites, it takes its place with the coral then 
growing over the new-made grave of the gigantic saurians, beyond still with the 
marine fossils of the mountain limestone,—in the Devonian and Silurian rocks,” 
but we must still press on, “‘ for the little Lingula ascends to the utmost limit of 
organic life ;’ and thus, by the aid of Geology, ‘‘ we carry back into untold ages 
the evidences for God, which the naturalist so triumphantly gathers from the 
creation around.” ‘‘ Paleeontology and mineralogy both tell us that the world has 
a history not recorded, because not professed to be recorded in the Scriptures; and 
that the great actor in this history was unquestionably God, ‘ blessed for ever- 
more.’ He has in the Bible given us adequate information to sa wise unto 

K 


132 THE GEOLOGIST. 


salvation, but has left for the present untold much of the great story of his love.” 
The sequence of this chapter is naturally the ‘‘ exposition.” “In the beginning 
God created the heaven and the earth” is the starting-point of both theologists 
and geologists—indeed, of all mankind. Concurring in the interpretation of a great 
‘“‘interval in which all pre-historic geology finds its place,” our author proceeds to 
the second verse of the Mosaic narrative, “‘ And the earth was without form and 
void ; and darkness was upon the face of the deep,” and considers that this “was 
not a phenomenon preceding all order whatever, but a marked interruption in the 
sequence of physical events.” The Spirit of God moving upon the face of the 
waters he regards as the putting forth of the Divine energy for the commencement 
of the present state of things, which differs as a whole so much from any ante- 
cedent condition, that it can well be called a new creation. “ Light was now made 
to appear ; first as to the darkness out of which it immediately sprang, and first 
with reference to all that of which it was the introductory manifestation.” ‘‘ On 
the second day, the present atmospheric arrangements were restored and developed ; 
differences of climate had been produced long before ; but out of the condition of 
disorder and dark miracle of verse 2, now again were evolved, at the fiat of the 
Almighty, the play of the great system of exchange, whereby the clouds “‘ drop 
down fatness.’’ On the third day, ‘‘ The present geography of the earth’s surface was 
made apparent, and then the creation and growth of vegetation in soils which had 
been prepared in previous pre-historic epochs.” Day four—‘‘ The unveiling, in the 
now lucid atmosphere, of the sun, the moon, and stars, in perpetual connexion 
of forces and influences with the earth—not the original establishment, but the 
first manifestation as regards the earth’s present surface.” In the fifth verse, it is 
considered, we have narrated to us “‘ the creation, asa whole, of the present assem- 
blage of aquatic animals and of birds.” The fifth day is viewed as a narration of 
the creation, as a whole, of the present assemblage of aquatic animals and of birds, 
and here we would transcribe one remark as highly pertinent. ‘It is owing,” 
runs the passage we allude to, “to the creation of everything, ‘after its kind,’ 
both in this and in the previous stages, that we can advance with unfaltering foot- 
step into the domains of the dead, to pronounce with confidence concerning the 
true character of the relics.” ‘‘ Among the most antique things we can gaze upon 
are the familiar forms of the creatures around us. In unvarying similitudes have 
they been preserved and transmitted from the first.” 

The passage describing the transactions of the sixth day, “informs us of the 
ee as a whole, of the living species of reptiles and animals, and lastly of man 

mself.” 

The second chapter of Genesis is regarded as “a summary of the work of creation 
as relating to the present condition of the earth, with special reference to the 
appointment of a day of rest, and the primeval history of mankind,” and in a scien- 
tific point of view, “as confirmatory of the conelusion derived from natural history, 
ac se new species nor any new substance has been created since the period here 
indicated. 

After just considerations of the difficulties besetting the reconciliation of the 
two accounts, and of the probably partial character of the Deluge, the geology of 
the “Scripture Lands,” and the bibliography of the subject of the treatise, con- 
clude this interesting book. 

Some points in both books, as in all works of this class, may seem strained 
to meet a special purpose, and others to have an unnatural appearance, still both 
authors have made good selections of the best published ideas upon these important 
discussions, and have added many sensible remarks of their own ; and we would 
end our review by re-echoing the concluding remarks of Mr. Pattison. “ And 
should it be, that after all these efforts, somewhat of obscurity still hangs over 
the subject, we will believe in the goodness and wisdom of God notwithstanding, 
endeavouring to walk humbly, and therefore surely, before Him.” 


REVIEWS. 133 


Illustrations of the Geologie Scenery of Purbeck. 

Illustrations of the Geologic Scenery of Weymouth, Portland, and Purbeck. 

Illustrated Historical and Picturesque Guide to Swanage and the Isle of Purbeck. 
By P. Brannon. Sydenham, Poole ; London, Longman & Co. 


Tur humblest effort deserves commendation and support when it is made ina 
right spirit. We confess to a weakness for letter-head views and those cheap litho- 
graphs and engravings, which provincial booksellers so abundantly display as baits 
for the small silver superfluities of the stranger’s purse. 

Common in execution as many of these are, they are more quickly purchased 
than sketches could be made even by expert draughtsmen, and they serve years 
afterwards to remind us of the famous or cherished spots, which we, like other 
pilgrims on the road of Life, have chanced to visit. 

The above set of brochwres which the author has forwarded to us, are illustrated 
amply with engravings of the letter-paper class, but of far better execution 
than the average of such productions. The ‘ Illustrations of the Geologic Scenery 
of Weymouth, Portland, and Purbeck,” and ‘“ Illustrations of the Geologic 
Scenery of Purbeck,” each contain eight such views without any descriptive letter- 
press ; but they are useful memoranda for the geologist or the visitor to bring away 
from this most picturesque portion of Dorsetshire. In the latter set is a pretty 
view of the Haggerstone, or Agglestone, as it is there spelt, a natural mass of 
rock, with no legitimate claim to the falsely given title of a Druidical remain. 

The famous Lulworth Cove, Durlstone Head, and St. Alban’s Head, are 
among the number of these well-selected views, which thus represent the scenic 
characters and physical geography of the Tertiaries, the Chalk, Portland Oolite, 
and Kimmeridge Clay, besides the Wealden and Purbeck beds. 

The ‘Illustrated Guide to Swanage” contains more geological and other 
scientific information than we have ever seen in any work of so unpretending a 
character. The geological features of the district are undoubtedly worthy of such 
full notice, and the author has well pointed out the conciseness, so to speak, of 
the display within this limited area of many geological groups of strata. In a 
subsequent place the author points out the high commercial value of many of the 
mineral products of the locality described, the vast beds of fine pottery-clay, the 
fire-clay, the alum- and copperas-shales, pyrites and iron-ore, paving-, building, 
ee lime-stones, and marble, the bituminous shales so rich in gas and 

araftine. 
; The natural divisions of the region are next given, attention being specially 
drawn to the two great hill-ranges of chalk and oolite, stretching nearly due west 
from Swanage Bay, dividing the tract into two upland and three valley districts ; 
the chalk range forming the south-western extremity of the great basin of Hamp- 
shire and Sussex. 

Mr. Beckle’s excavations and researches, his discoveries of mammalian remains, 
the stone and marble quarries, from sixty to seventy in number, and other points 
of geological interest, are all successively noticed, and with sufficient accuracy to 
make the observations of value to the student, as well as to the general reader, 
or to the mere visitor. 

The shelly-marble of this district is well known from its extensive use in eccle- 
siastical buildings of the Middle Ages, and Mr. Brannon’s account of the Purbeck 
strata, and the rude manner in which the quarrying work is still carried on, will 
not only be of interest to our readers, but will afford a good example of the style 
of this very unassuming production :— 

“The true Purbecks, or thin beds of shelly limestone, alternating with clays 
and sands, formerly considered as Wealden, now as upper oolite, furnish the great 
staple of the stone exports from this district. They consist of an immense 
number of beds from a quarter of an inch to four feet in thickness, mostly very 
hard and close grained, and separated from each other chiefly by beds of clay, 
varied with sandy and loamy, gravelly or marly earth. A very great proportion 
of the stone beds are useless, either on account of their excessive hardness, their 


134 THE GEOLOGIST. 


‘ability. or softness. The upper beds are the well-known and beautiful Purbeck 
ale ener this, the ties beds of the harder kinds are adapted to sea-walls, 
fortifications, and other solid work, where minute cutting and rubbing are not 
required. The more easily worked, or ‘freestone beds,’ are used for all kinds of 
architectural dressings, external and internal stone-fittings, sunk and rounded 
work, such as sinks, troughs, granary and rick-leg and cap-stones, and in fact all 
those purposes where easy and clean cutting in work, and subsequent durability, 
are essential. The thin beds are employed for paving, and the stone when well 
selected is the best in the kingdom ; the very thin layers of tough limestone, or 
the tough fissile beds, are split into suitable thicknesses as tilestones for roofing. 

‘< Al] the useful beds are broken up by natural partings into blocks and slabs of 
various sizes, generally irregular rectangles, varying in size from ten or twelve 
feet long, by five to eight feet wide, down to eight or fifteen inches long, by six or 
ten inches wide, and three to eight inches thick. The latter class are termed 
pitchers, the term ‘horse pitchers’ being applied to the larger sizes. It is worthy 
of remark, that amongst the useless beds, those called ‘hones’ by the workmen are 
the most frequent. The name is exceedingly appropriate, as both in the original 
mass, and in the smaller subdivisions, they have the smooth rubbed appearance 
of finished hones, or whetstones, as sold in shops. They are mostly argillaceous 
or cherty limestones, in their original mass appearing perfectly solid, without 
any indication of partings, but on being handled continually subdivide into 
rhombic pieces. But the most interesting to the stranger is the great ‘ Cinder ’-bed, 
a blackish or brownish rock, with two or three subdivisions, consisting almost 
wholly of a small oyster-shell, the Ostrea distorta, and so exceedingly hard and 
intractable as to be almost useless, and only operated on by blasting. It would, 
however, be very serviceable for marine works, or for exposed batteries. 

“The principal groups of beds of merchantable stone are termed veins by the 
quarriers. Describing them in descending order, we meet first with the marble, for 
ornamental purposes ; then the marble-rag for walls ; and the lane-end, or laneing 
vein beds, containing good stone for tomb-stones, paving, walling, and marine works. 
Below this is the freestone-vein, a group containing kerb-, step-, and tile-stone, and 
in its lower portion the admirably working and durable freestone, used for all kinds 
of cut and hollow work as above described. Below this, immediately above the 
great ‘cinder’-bed, is the downs-vein series, worked almost wholly for paving. 
Directly under the cinder is the feather-vein series, worked for steps, walls, and 
marine works, then below this the new-vein beds supply still larger slabs and 
blocks, for similar purposes. 

‘“‘There is a freestone called Purbeck bur, exceedingly durable, yet very free to 
work, but the blocks are of small size. It was used for all the masonry of Corfe 
Castle, and the wonderful sharpness of the work there at the present time, almost 
without sign of decay, shows the value of the material. The quarries are not 
regularly worked, and are situated near Orchard, in Knowle parish. It belongs 
to the upper Purbeck strata. 

‘* The quarries are all worked underground, and entered by oblique shafts, from 
twenty to a hundred feet deep ; a slope for dragging up the stone, and steps at 
the side for the workmen, with a rude capstan worked by a horse at the top, and 
sheds adjoining, in which to carry on dressing the stone, constitute the whole 
arrangements in these primitive works. There are in the Isle of Purbeck about 
one hundred of these quarries, more than half being in the immediate neigh- 
hourhood of Swanage ; it is difficult however to give the exact number, because 
there are constantly some being abandoned, or new ones opened. 

“ Below the true Purbecks is a great mass of clay-, sand-, and marl-beds, which 
however thin out towards the sea-cliffs, so that there the Purbeck limestones rest 
at once on the crest of the true upper oolite, or Portland limestone, and it is to 
the stone obtained from this latter formation within the Purbeck district, that the 
name of ‘Purbeck’-Portland is given. In the essential qualities of closeness, 
slight absorption, and durability, it excels the true ‘ Portland,’ but these qualities, 
characterising the oolite increasingly in an easterly direction, are also accompanied 
by increased hardness, so that the fine quarries of Tilly Whim, and Howcombe, 
near the eastern extremity of Purbeck, have been long disused for dressed and 


REVIEWS. 135 


hollow work on account of the labour involved, but for marine construction in 
pierre perdue the whole mass of Oolite there is admirably adapted. ‘The other 
quarries in Purbeck furnish stone less hard than those above mentioned, but still 
superior to the true ‘ Portland’ in their essential characters. All the quarries of 
‘ Purbeck’-Portland are in the face of the sea cliffs, the first portion being cut 
down perpendicularly from the crest, which when effected at once by blasting is 
termed ridding, so as to form a platform level with the base of the merchantable 
stone, which in most of them is afterwards extracted by driving galleries into the 
rock, forming deep caverns, and leaving pillars for the support of the superincum- 
bent mass. From the position of the quarries the produce can only be shipped in 
very calm weather, so that the greatest part of the year they are unapproachable. 

“* The beds, in descending order, are the ‘ cinder,’ the ‘ red-head,’ thick beds of 
shelly rock, the ‘shrimp’-stone, the ‘ blue-bed,’ the ‘ white’ and ‘ spangle-cap,’ good 
for lime, ‘pond’ or ‘upper freestone,’ a good material for building purposes, the 
‘cap-stone’ in three beds, ‘ listy,’ ‘ middle,’ and ‘ house cap,’ then the ‘ wunder-picking 
cap,’ which is picked or blown out to free the great bed of working stone, known 
as the ‘ freestone’ or ‘under freestone. Below this is a thick mass of rock, con- 
taining large nodules of chert blending by concentric rings into the limestone. 
This has never been used, but would be admirable for the pierre perdue works, 
above referred to. 

“The mode of shipping the stone from Swanage is even more primitive than 
that employed for brmging it to the surface. There is no pier for this purpose, 
although its construction would be a source of great profit even in the present 
state of the trade. The stone, being carted to the beach, is there piled on the 
bankers, as the storage quays are called ; when wanted it is handed into a cart,.the 
cart is drawn into the water, and the stone is passed into a barge, and thence 
again is delivered to the vessel lying in the bay. For the oolite, or ‘ Purbeck ’- 
Portland, it is necessary to get it from the quarry in the short intervals of fine 
weather, when it is craned into the vessel and conveyed to the bankers, where it 
remains until it is required for use. By these cumbrous arrangements a valuable 
and beautiful piece of beach is rendered a useless deformity for all other purposes 
and by this accumulation of tedious and expensive labour, some of the finest an 
most durable building stones are prevented from being so fully employed as they 
might be, and a great hindrance is created to the execution of architectural works, 
for which the varieties of Purbeck and ‘ Purbeck’-Portland are not only eminently 
fitted, but really superior to any other kinds in the market.” 


Geological Map of England and Wales. By A. C. Ramsay, F.R.S. F.G.S. 
Local Director of the Geological Survey of Great Britain. London: E. Stanford, 
Charing Cross. 


WHEN we say this is unquestionably the best geological map as yet published of 
England and Wales,* we have said all that even Professor Ramsay could desire of 
a critic, and we may fairly proceed to point out what appear to be defects. This 
we do unactuated by the slightest desire to find fault, but simply because an 
authoritative name will often lend an unintentional character to blemishes. 

First, then, in more places than are indicated on this map the occurrence of 
alluvium might have been marked ; as, for instance, the Pevensey levels, on the 
north side of the mouth of the Humber, and in the river valleys of Norfolk. 

The patch of Tertiary strata at Newhaven has been overlooked, and we should 
have certainly wished that Professor Ramsay had dropped as obsolete the term 
“ Plastic Clay ;” for having partly adopted Mr. Prestwich’s admirable grouping of 
the British Tertiary strata, he should also have adopted Mr. Prestwich’s far 
preferable denomination of ‘‘ Woolwich-beds.” 


* We are not oblivious of Mr. Greenough’s long celebrated map, the larger size of which gives, 
of course, greater latitude for details. A new edition of this, we believe, is about tobe published. 
Its greater dimensions and higher pretensions will necessarily make it a more expensive work ; 
but although it should even surpass Mr. Stanford’s publication, it can never be regarded in the 
light of a rival. 


136 THE GEOLOGIST. 


The Purbeck beds are left out in Section No. 1, on one side of the curve at its 
rise at the foot of the Downs, near Watlington. Lundy Island, too, is nearly all 
granite, if we mistake not, and is therefore wrongly coloured, although it appears 
to have the correct indication-letter. The reference number 23 is left out on the 
outliers of typical Bagshot-sands, and this is of moment, as the tint is so like those 
of the Upper Eocene and of the Alluvium (24 and 26), that the reference number 
there is of great value. Cr P 

We have long observed a great looseness of diction and of phraseology in 
numerous geological works. We have noticed it with regret, in more than one 
writer, even amongst the really talented staff at the Jermyn Street Museum. 
The yielding to such looseness of language, and, still worse, the actual adoption 
of a particular geological slang, has crept ito vogue far too generally amongst 
geologists, for the reviewer to pass either without comment in his remarks upon 
any really good or popular work. The strongest censure of Mr. Toulmin Smith’s 
condemnation of geologic jargon may be far more justly applied to such instances 
of carelessness than to the generally useful although sometimes barbarous com- 
bination of Greek and Latin words, or to a few facetious corruptions of personal 
names as generic or specific designations. ; 

It is, however, only to a very modified form of such looseness of expression, or 
rather perhaps it is to merely an official disregard of the true meaning of words, 
that we allude in the present case. It is to the use of the word “ lime” for 
limestone, in diagram No. 6. Again, in Lower Lias clay and ‘ lime,” in section 
No. 2; Wenlock “ lime,” in No. 5, &. Now, limestone is not lime, and lime 
does not exist in nature as such, but only in combination with some other 
substance, such as carbonic acid gas, when it 1s a carbonate of lime or a limestone ; 
or with sulphuric acid, when it is sulphate of lime or gypsum. In no case what- 
ever on this map ought there to be written ‘ lime.” 

We have a high respect for Professor Ramsay, and we have the pleasure, more- 

over, of enjoying his friendship ; our stronger remarks, therefore, are not intended 
to apply to him individually, but to attack the outgrowth of a vile system, which 
has already disfigured some of our best geological books and works, and the 
tendency of which is to reduce to worse than newspaper style that which ought to 
be of strictly classical composition. 
* Some contracted expressions occurring in the flowing passages of a description 
are often susceptible of a ridiculous interpretation. In reading, some time since, 
a book by another author, we came upon the following passage :—‘‘I well 
remember, many years ago, being struck, when attempting to walk under the 
cliffs from Scarborough to Filey Bay, with the enormous slices or square pilasters of 
cliff, that, having been undermined by the action of the breakers at high-water, 
had fallen forwards,” &c. We could not, at first, help sympathising with the 
unfortunate author, and had half ejaculated an expression of hope that he had not 
been seriously hurt in his dangerous journey, when we perceived from the context 
that he had not really been injured or even hit, but that he had been merely 
mentally struck with the appearance of those singular masses referred to. 

To return again to Professor Ramsay’s excellent Map, for we would not 
willingly conclude our notice of it with any other expression than that of the well- 
merited praise it deserves, we would add, that we have observed the more correct 
delineations of the geological features of particular districts, beyond even what has 
been accomplished in the Government Survey sheets themselves, issued, it is true, 
some time since. We can, however, but be grateful for the communication of the 
new information which Professor Ramsay’s personal knowledge of the labours of 
the official staff subsequent to the publication of those documents has enabled 
him to give us; and while cautioning the inexperienced that the admirable 
sections attached to the present Map are constructed chiefly from the measure- 
ment of the angles of the dip of the strata at their outcrops, and that consequently 
they are often highly hypothetical, as far as the underground continuation of the 
beds is concerned, we would praise this successful effort to teach, by means of the 
eye, some highly important passages in the geological history of our island. 


THE GEOLOGIST. 


APRIL, 1859. 


ON THE STRUCTURES PRODUCED BY THE CURRENTS 
PRESENT DURING THE DEPOSITION OF STRATIFIED 
ROCKS. 


By H. C. Sorsy, Esq., F-B.S., F.G.S., ETc. 


It is now several years since I first became convinced that a diligent 
study of the various structures produced by the action of the currents 
present during the formation of stratitied rocks would lead to the 
knowledge of many very valuable and remarkable facts in connexion 
with physical geology and ancient physical geography. Since then I 
have never willingly lost any opportunity of determining the direction 
and character of the currents present during the deposition of rocks 
of every age, and of accumulating information on every kind of sub- 
ject that could throw light upon the inquiry. I must now have, in 
my note-books, not less than twenty thousand recorded observations, 
many of which I have not been able to make use of hitherto, for want 
of sufficient points of comparison; and, although I am most willing 
to admit that the subject is quite in its infancy, and that I am a 
mere student of nature, ready to modify my own opinions or to adopt 
others which would explain the facts in a more satisfactory manner, 
yet some of the facts are so definite and distinct, and I have verified 
them in so many localities, over sufficiently extensive districts, as to 
warrant the formation of definite conclusions. We all protest against 
theories without facts; but to accumulate a great number of facts 
without attempting such explanations as would unite them into a 
complete and consistent whole would be not less unphilosophical. 
VOL. II. L 


138 THE GEOLOGIST. 


In various papers in the “ Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal” 
(new series, vol. iii. p. 112; iv. p. 317; v. p. 275 ; and vii. p. 226) 
I have explained many of my deductions, and I have shown that 
many peculiarities of physical geography at former epochs may be 
learned from a knowledge of the directions of the currents in various 
localities. In those papers I entered into some portions of the sub- 
ject at greater length than would be proper on the present occasion, 
when I shall attempt to give a general popular outline of the whole, 
referring the reader to those papers for more special information. 
I have often felt surprised that scarcely anyone has entered into this 
field of inquiry, in which the facts are so marked and distinct. If 
the current structures had been on a small scale requiring the aid of 
a microscope, there would have been good reason for this; but such 
is not the case; although I find that, from some extraordinary mis- 
understanding, many persons have imagined that it is so. Unassisted 
eyes and a compass are all that are requisite in determining the 
greater number of the facts, and I have never before said that the 
microscope is not required ,because I never thought anyone would 
imagine that it was. Moreover, many of the structures have been 
known long enough, for they are of such a character that no one could 
overlook them, although sufficient attention may not have been paid 
to their teachings ; and the study of their relation to one another 
and to other facts in an accurate and business-like manner may have 
been neglected. 

If advantage be taken of an artificial water-course, or of natural 
streams of water, to examine the effect of the current in the deposition 
of sand, it is easy to see that, according to the circumstances of the 
case, three very different kinds of structure are formed, from which 
the direction of the currents could easily be ascertained. If the 
bottom be tolerably level, and the velocity of the current just suffi- 
cient to drift forward particles of sand, a kind of grained or striped 
surface is almost always produced. The variable motion of the water 
along a particular line marks that line on the surface of the sand, in 
elongated patches of various colour and character, so distinctly that, 
even when the current has ceased, or the water has been dried up, 
we can clearly perceive the direction in which the current moved. 
If some of the sand thus drifted forward accumulate at the bottom, 


SORBY——-ON THE STRUCTURES PRODUCED BY CURRENTS. 139 


of course an horizontally stratified mass would result, each layer of 
which would have a grained and striped surface. Sandstones of this 
character, which may be distinguished by the term “grained or 
striped horizontal stratification,” are very common in the lower coal- 
strata ; and they are so distinctly grained and striped that there is 
no difficulty whatever in determining with certainty the ine in which 
the ancient current moved, while the side from which the current 
came can usually be learned from other structures. 

If in a modern water-course the depth of the water increase to 
such an extent that the velocity of the current is diminished so much 
that it becomes too slow to wash the sand forward, the sand is then 
transported only to a certain point, where it falls down and accu- 
mulates on a slope. This will be best understood from the following 
diagram (fig. 1)— 


representing, by a vertical section in the line of the current, what 
takes place at the bottom of the water. This kind of structure 
can only be formed where there are particular relations between the 
depth of the water and the velocity of the current. The velocity 
above the part a 6 must be sufficient to drift forward the sand when 
the sand is in motion, or else there would be no increase in the 
dimensions of the bed for lack of material carried forward and thrown 
down at b¢; but the velocity must not be so great as to wash up the 
sand from a state of rest along the surface a 6, else the bed would not 
remain permanent. As might be expected, there cannot be a great 
difference in the velocity of the currents producing these different 
effects ; but still it is easy to convince one’s-self by experiment that 
there is a decided difference. In one case the velocity need be only 
sufficient to cause the resistance offered by grains of sand to the 
motion of the water to be rather more than equal to the mere friction 
of the transported sand on that lying unmoved at the bottom ; 
whereas, in the other case, it must be enough to likewise overcome 
the inertia of the grains of sand. Above the part ce, the velocity 
L 2 


140 THE GEOLOGIST. 


must be so much less than above a 6 that the sand can be left at 6 c, 
and not drifted forward beyond c. When such is the relative velocity 
of the current before and after arriving at 0, the particles of sand are 
drifted along the bottom from a to 6, and thrown down on the slope 
bc at an angle of from 30° to 40°, varying according to the character 
of the material. We may often see beds of this kind in the process 
of being formed in rivers and water-courses, and can clearly perceive 
that the current must come from the opposite quarter to that towards 
which the beds parallel to 6 ¢ dip. When the water is all dried up, 
and especially in frosty weather, when the otherwise loose sand is con- 
solidated with ice, it is easy, by cutting into small beds of this kind 
of structure, to see the smaller bands of varying colour and character 
parallel to 6 c, represented by the lines in fig. 1, and to perceive that 
it is identical with much of the so-called “ false-bedding.” Since, 
however, some false-bedding has been produced in a very different 
manner, it is desirable to distinguish that just described by a special 
name, and I have therefore employed the term “ drift-bedding,” in 
allusion to its being formed by the drifting forward of the material, 
and to its being so pre-eminently characteristic of deposits drifted — 
into their present resting-places, and not in anywise deposited from 
above, as in the case of other kinds of stratification. False stratifi- 
cation may also have been produced under a variety of circumstances, 
differing from those just described ; but in many cases, as when, for 
instance, a single bed, as in fig. 1, extends with uniform thickness and 
character for several hundred yards, all other explanations are out of 
question. . 

Strictly speaking, perfectly developed drift-bedding and simple 
horizontal stratification are two extreme structures which gradually 
pass into each other. In drift-bedding the material is drifted forward 
along the bottom a b, and thrown down on 6 ¢, whilst none is 
deposited on @ b or ¢ e On the contrary, where simple horizontal 
stratification is formed, none is washed forward along the bottom, but | 
all is deposited from above, more or less uniformly, from a to e. The 
connecting link between these is the “grained and striped stratifica- 
tion.” In passing into this, the angle 6c d becomes gradually less, 
the velocity of the current above a b and c e becomes more and more 
nearly equal, the sand is drifted over the face of the inclined plane 0 ¢, 


‘ 


SORBY—ON THE STRUCTURES PRODUCED BY CURRENTS. 14] 


causing it to be grained and striped, and some is even carried forward 
and deposited beyond; and when the angle } ¢ d becomes very 
small, or of no appreciable magnitude, the whole passes into the 
horizontal grained and striped stratification. This, again, by the 
increase in the amount of the material actually deposited from above, 
and the decrease of that drifted forward, passes into simple horizontal 
stratification, with little or nothing to indicate the direction of the very 
feeble current. The production of the grained and striped, instead of 
the simple horizontal stratification, therefore, depends upon the actual 
velocity of the current ; whilst the formation of drift-bedding depends 
upon the relative velocity above a 6 and ¢c e, which must usually be in 
inverse proportion to the relative depth. The thickness and other 
characters of the bed must therefore be so intimately related to the 
actual depth of the water, that, when all the requisite data have been 
determined, this actual depth could be calculated from the thickness 
and peculiar characters of the bed a d. 

I have already made a number of experiments from which a first 
approximation to this very interesting problem can be deduced ; but, 
before everything can be determined in a perfectly satisfactory 
manner, it will be necessary to take into consideration many things 
requiring much further investigation. Even in the present state of 
the inquiry, however, we may draw several important conclusions. 
The existence of perfectly similar beds, separated by a considerable 
thickness of rock, clearly shows that, whatever the actual depth of 
water might have been, it must have been the same at both periods, 
which, of course, necessitates the notion of a considerable amount of 
subsidence having taken place ; whilst, in other cases, the upper beds 
indicate a less depth than the lower, as if owing to a decrease in the 
depth of water, caused by the accumulation of the deposits. 

We all know very well that when wind blows over the surface of 
water it gives rise to ripples and small waves, which trend perpendi- 
cular to the direction of the wind, and move forward in the line of its 
motion. We could thus readily determine the direction of the wind - 
from the direction of the waves and ripples on the surface of the water. 
In a somewhat similar manner, when a current of water moves over 
sand and water, small wave-like undulations are generated on the 
surface of the semi-fluid mixture of sand and water, of which the 


142 THE GEOLOGIST. 


bottom consists. The nature of the material of which these waves 
are formed is such, that, when the current ceases, their forms remain, 
and thus permanently record the direction of the current, which, of 
course, must have flowed in a line perpendicular to their trend. 
These wave-like forms are the well-known “ripple-marks,” about the 
origin and nature of which there has often been much misunderstand- 
ing. They have too frequently been looked upon as having been 
invariably formed by the action of the waves of the surface of the 
water stranding on a sandy beach. They are, however, by no means 
necessarily connected with the waves of the upper surface, but are 
merely the effect of the movement of the current over the sand, and 
are the impressions of disturbances of a wave-like form affecting the 
bottom of the current, and generated by the resistance experienced by 
it in moving over the sand, under certain conditions of depth and 
velocity. Stranding waves produce “ripple-marks ” on a sandy beach, 
because they give rise to a current; and it is this current which 
produces the ripple-marks. Other facts must be taken into account, 
if we wish to decide whether any particular ripple-marks were formed 
by wave-currents, or by currents due to any other cause. 

If we have merely the surfaces of the ripple-marks to guide us, we 
cannot always determine from which side the current came ; but very 
commonly their wave-forms move forward and progress in the same 
direction as the current of water which generates them. This is 
owing to the sandy material drifted forward by the current being 
carried up the side of the ripple turned towards the direction from 
which the current comes, and then thrown down on the opposite side 
more protected from the action of the current. This will be more 
clearly understood by means of the diagrammatic section, fig. 2, which 


is intended to show the connexion and gradual passage from a level 
surface at a, to low and round-topped ripples at b, which at c and d 
become crested and sharp-topped. Except in rare cases such a ripple 
as d could not hold together ; the upper portion would be washed off, 


SORBY—ON THE STRUCTURES PRODUCED BY CURRENTS. 143 


as far as the dotted line, by the current (supposed to. be moving in 
the direction indicated by the arrow), and the material thrown down 
on the protected side, in a small bed, as at e. Sand is usually also 
washed up by the current from the exposed side of the ripple, and 
thrown down on the protected side ; so that ripples like f gradually 
progress. In this case it is very easy to ascertain the direction 
from which the current came ; for, of course, it must have flowed in a 
line perpendicular to the trend of the ripples, and from the opposite 
side to that towards which the small beds of the ripple dip, as shown 
by the arrow in fig. 2. | 

If no actual deposition be taking place, and there be merely a 
drifting forward of sand along the bottom, when the ripples progress 
there is necessarily as much washed up from one side of each ripple as 
is thrown down on the other ; and, therefore, nothing but an advanc- 
ing series of laminated ripples is formed. If, however, more sand be 
deposited than is washed up, so that there is an actual accumulation 
of material, the lower part of the advancing ripples is necessarily left 
behind. Fig. 3 will make my meaning apparent, and represent in 
section that which occurs when deposition takes place at a uniform 


s Z ZZ Z 


rate. For all structures that are the effect of the action of ripples 
on drifted material, I have employed the term “ripple-drift.” This 
necessarily includes some cases of the well-known ripple-marks, which 
term I would, however, restrict to those instances where the upper 
surfaces of the ripples are more or less perfectly preserved. When 
this is not the case, the resulting structure might easily be con- 
founded with “ drift-bedding,” and no doubt often has been classed 
with it as “ false-bedding,” being much more like it than like ripple- 
marks. It will much facilitate my explanations if we also adopt the 
following descriptive terms, and call the whole thickness, a c, a “bed” 


144 THE GEOLOGIST. 


of ripple-drift. The layers parallel to a b may be called the “ripple- 
drift-bands ;” whilst the smaller layers of which these are composed 
may be distinguished by the term “stratula.” The thickness of the 
beds, the length of the bands, and the number of the stratula, may be 
indefinite, whilst their other peculiarities are definitely related to the 
circumstances under which each bed was formed. 

The “‘ripple-drift-bands” are the lower portions of the laminated 
ripples of the upper surface, which were not washed up, but covered 
over by the next-following ripples advancing over them. ‘They are, 
therefore, made up of oblique bedded stratula, and in this respect 
resemble a single bed of drift-bedding ; but, from the nature of the 
case, they are inclined to the true plane of horizontal stratification at 
the angle a 6c; whereas a single bed of drift-bedding is parallel to it. 
They also usually differ much in size. I have seen beds of drift- 
bedding twenty-five feet in thickness, and beds several feet thick are 
very common, whereas the thickness of an inch or two is considerable 
for the “ripple-drift-bands.” Still, in some cases, the size is quite 
similar, and then it requires care to distinguish a band of “ ripple- 
drift” from a bed of “ drift-bedding,” notwithstanding that they differ 
so essentially in their origin and relationships. 

If anyone will reflect on the manner in which the “ ripple-drift- 
bands” are formed, he will perceive at once that their thickness 
indicates the excess of material deposited on the sheltered side of the 
ripples over that washed up again from the exposed side, during the 
time required for each ripple to advance a distance equal to its own 
length, which time we may conveniently call its “period.” The 
thickness of the bands, therefore, shows how much material was per- 
manently accumulated during the period of the ripples, which must 
be a portion of time so definitely connected with the structure and 
character of the ripples that I feel persuaded we shall ultimately be 
able to deduce from them the actual period for any given instance, 
and thus, knowing how much was permanently deposited in a given 
time, we should know the rate at which deposition took place. 
Hitherto I have made so few trustworthy experiments on this point, 
that I do not profess to be in a position to solve this problem with 
approximate accuracy, but even now we can form a good opinion 


respecting the relative rate of deposition, and can perceive that this 


i _ 0 


SORBY—ON THE STRUCTURES PRODUCED BY CURRENTS. 145 


relative rate must have varied much. In some cases, no permanent 
accumulation can have taken place ; for simple ripple-waves advanced 
leaving no bands behind them ; whereas, in other cases, deposition 
must have gone on at a very considerable rate, for the greater part of 
their material must have been left behind in the form of thick bands. 
Sometimes the rate of deposition must have been very uniform, as 
indicated by the uniform thickness of each band; whilst still more 
commonly the rate must have been very variable, for the thickness of 
each band varies very much in different parts. 

The actual velocity of the current is of course very distinctly 
indicated by the character of the materials of which either drift- 
bedded or ripple-drifted layers are composed ; but it is probably also 
related to other peculiarities in their structure. There are several 
curious facts still unexplained ; but I am much inclined to believe 
that the velocity of the current has a considerable share in deter- 
mining the length of the ripples. J have seen cases where the 
separate ripples were not an inch apart, and others upwards of a yard 
from each other ; and there must have been some definite cause, 


more or less intimately connected with the depth and velocity of the 


current, for this difference. 

Such, then, is a general account of the conclusions to which I have 
been led by the study of the structures produced by the action of 
currents. These various structures are so common that they cannot 
have escaped the attention of anyone who has carefully examined 
stratified rocks. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that scarcely any- 
one has studied them as they ought to be studied, or attempted to 
draw from them the important conclusions to which they lead. A 
comparison of what may be seen in progress in modern currents of 
water with the structure of deposits formed at earlier epochs, is suffi- 
cient to convince anyone that the mere direction of the current can 
be readily determined in those cases in which its velocity was sufficient 
to have any decided effect. This alone enables us to ascertain many 
very important particulars respecting the formation of stratified rocks. 
It points out the quarter from whence their materials were drifted, 
and also many of the peculiar features of the physical geography of 
the period, as I hope to be able to show in a subsequent communica- 
tion. But this is not all; for, when strata are deposited under the 


146 THE GEOLOGIST. 


influence of a current, the character of the resulting structure must . 


depend upon the depth of the water, the velocity of the current, the 
nature of the deposits, and the rate of deposition. Now, I argue that 
all these are more or less intimately concerned in the production of 
every bed of rock, and that the various structures which I have 
described are so related to them by definite and unalterable physical 
laws, that, in many cases, the whole secret of its formation is locked 
up and preserved for our information, if we will but perseveringly 
search for the key. At one time no one would have thought it 
possible to ascertain the nature and habits of an extinct animal from 
the examination of a few bones or teeth ; but Paleontology has now 
been so perseveringly elaborated by able investigators that we look 
upon this as a matter of course. The laws of the organic world are 
surely no more definite and exact than those of mechanics and hydro- 
dynamics involved in the formation of stratified rocks, that geologists 
should place full confidence in one and so far neglect the other as too 
often to fear to attempt to deduce from them equally definite and 
exact conclusions. The problems may appear to be more difficult, and 
their solution may, and certainly does, require a very different kind of 
study and train of thought ; but that is no reason why its solution 
should not be attempted. My opinion is, that the various structures 
which I have described are so intimately connected with the circum- 
stances under which they were formed, that nothing but perseverance 
is required to enable us to determine the depth and velocity of the 
current, and the rate of deposition, with more or less accuracy, from 
the existing peculiarities of ancient stratified rocks. If there be only 
an apparent probability of doing this, it is surely better to make the 
attempt and fail than to be content with our present ignorance and 
to make no effort at all. Even at present the facts are sufficiently 
distinct to enable us to form tolerably satisfactory conclusions 
respecting the relative depth and velocity of the current and the rate 
of deposition, and to perceive that the knowledge of their actual value 
would enable us to make a very great advance in physical geology. 
For this purpose many experiments will be requisite, which I hope 
I shall be able to make, and which I should have made before now 
if I had not been induced to follow out other inquiries involved 
in the study of the structure and origin of rocks, Those which I 


MITCHELL—ON THE FLAGSTONES OF FORFARSHIRE. 147 


have made already, though not nearly sufficient to clear up many 
highly important questions, are still sufficient to give very great 
encouragement ; and I therefore feel anxious to induce others to turn 
their attention to this branch of research, being convinced that it 
cannot but yield a bountiful harvest of facts, when studied with 
perseverance and zeal. 


ON THE FLAGSTONES OF FORFARSHIRE., 


By Hucxu Mitcuent, of Craig. 


THERE is a close resemblance between the fossil contents of the 
_“ Upper Ludlow Tilestones,” as described by Mr. Roberts, of Kidder- 
minster, in the last number of THE GxEoLoaisT, and those of certain 
strata developed in this neighbourhood. The rocks of the southern 
districts of Forfarshire have been described by Fleming and Miller, 
and their fossils have attracted the attention of the scientific world. 
I am acquainted with sections in the north-eastern division, an account 
_ of which has not yet appeared in print, and it may be of interest to 
indicate their organisms. 

Among our fish-remains I have twice met with heads of the Cephal- 
aspis Lyell ; but the fossil is more common in other localities. The 
Pteraspides, which seem to be so frequent in the English beds, I do 
not know, unless some of the fragmentary remains, like pieces of skin 
or shell, and to which I shall hereafter refer, belong to the genus. 
From one of our sections I have collected several specimens of at least 
two species of fishes, entire and beautifully preserved. They are small 
creatures, and have all their fins armed with spines. One of my 
specimens is a very tiny fish, scarce an inch in length, but with its 
every spine in its place, and, so far as regards its dermal covering, a 
complete picture. We have also a considerable variety of Ichthyo- 
dorulites. Some of them resemble the Onchus-spines figured in the 
first edition of Sir Roderick Murchison’s “ Siluria.” Others are larger 
and have more the appearance of true fish-defences. Mostly all our 
fossils are mere impressions in the stone ; but the bony matter of the 


148 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Ichthyodorulite seems occasionally preserved, and there are also other 
indeterminate fragments of bone. 

Not having had access to Mr. Salter’s monograph, I am not able to 
pronounce upon the species of crustaceans found in these beds. We 
have at least several very large Pterygoti, judging from the sculptured 
rings of the abdomen, their curious jaw-feet and prehensile limbs ; 
and I should think both Wimantopterus and Hurypterus, I have care- 
fully treasured all the crustacean remains that I have found, in the 
hope of light yet reaching us in this remote region as to their generic 
and specific character. All that I can affirm is, that we must have 
had an abundant development of the family in the era when our 
rocks were laid down, of all sizes, from half an inch to many feet, and 
with various styles of ornamentation. There also occur numerous 
pieces of shell or skin, sometimes torn, but at other times bounded 
by straight lines, drawn in black in the stone, and which an humble 
friend of mine compared to the pieces—of course, in miniature—of 
which a black cloth coat on the back of a human subject is composed. 
We must not omit to mention a very peculiar form, which has been 
named the Kampecaris, from its resembling the impression in the 
stone of a butterfly-caterpillar, and which I have often thought might 
be the larval form of some of our crustaceans. 

Our plant-remains, like those of Kidderminster, are for the most 
part badly preserved, although in some layers they are very abundant. 
Our most common and characteristic organism is the Parka decipiens, 
which, occurring over three counties in Scotland, viz. Kincardine, 
Forfar, and Fifeshire, has now also been detected in England. I do 
not know on what ground it can be spoken of as Pterygotean ova. 
It is true, our quarrymen, in their rude northern phrase, call it “ pud- 
dock crud,” or the spawn of frogs, but they are chiefly familiar with 
the fossil as it occurs in the more micaceous beds, known in commerce 
as “ Arbroath pavement,” where it is always much broken and dis- 
persed. I still believe it to be vegetable. I have several specimens 
with the seeds (?) inclosed in a sort of spathe, the sides of which 
radiate from a base or disc, to which is attached apparently a stem. 
There are also several distinct bodies which might correspond with 
the spores of Lycopodiacew, besides many other obscure vegetable 
forms. On the whole, therefore, there is a striking similarity between 


ANDERSON—ON THE TILESTONES OF FORFARSHIRE. 149 


our fossils and those of the “ Upper Ludlow Tilestones,” if, indeed, 
they are not identical Hugh Miller, in his classic work, the ‘ Old 
Red Sandstone,” assigned our Forfarshire strata to a middle formation 
of the Old Red or Devonian system. Murchison, on the other hand, 
places our “ Cephalaspis-beds” at the base of the system; and the 
fossil evidence which I have briefly related seems to decide in favour 
of the latter view. This point is of great value in the arrangement 
of our rocks, as in the grits and conglomerates, and even in the 
underlying and highly metamorphosed slate-rocks, we are to recognise 
the equivalents of the Silurian system as known in the south of 
Scotland, or better still in Shropshire and Wales. 

So far as I know, no fossil has been disentombed in this part of 
the country from any strata beneath the flagstones ; but perhaps the 
discovery, some day, of a graptolite or other characteristic Silurian 
organism will reward the researches of the geologist along the flanks 
-of the Grampians. 


ON THE TILESTONES OF FORFARSHIRE. 
By Joun Anperson, D.D., F.G.S., ere. 


Tue March number of THe GeoLocist contains, I observe, a notice 
of the “ Upper Ludlow Tilestones,” and the author invites descriptions 
of their equivalent beds in other districts. Now, so close are the 
resemblances, lithologically and palzeontologically, between these de- 
posits and those of Forfarshire, that they may be regarded as part of 
one and the same series. I have been induced, therefore, to throw 
together the following observations upon our northern Scottish 
system. 

The rocks to which I refer occupy a narrow but extended trough- 
line along the central district of Forfarshire, commencing on the east 
near Montrose, and terminating at Babruddery and Rossie Den on the 
west. They trend in a south-westerly direction, across the river Tay, 
into Fifeshire at Parkhill, Newburgh, and along the northern slope of 


150 THE GEOLOGIST. 


the Ochils towards Dunning and Tereagles in Perthshire. These 
tilestones, and the grey and red sandstones with which they are 
systematically associated, occupy the whole superficies of that well- 
known and beautiful tract of country which is bounded by the old 
crystalline rocks of the Grampians on the north, and by the later 
felspathic Ochil range on the south; and it includes the celebrated 
geological localities of Cavonylie, Glammis, Forfar, Kinnordie, Clash- 
bennie, Babruddery, and Parkhill. 

The strata all dip off from the Grampians, generally in a south- 
easterly direction, and at various degrees of inclination. They rest 
on a great coarse foundation of conglomerate, the true equivalent of 
the fundamental conglomerates of Caithness and Sutherland; and 
thus they constitute, with the absence of some members of the series, 
component parts of the Lower Division of the old red sandstone. The 
thickness of the group may be estimated at about two thousand feet, © 
the deepest section of which is exposed in the quarries of Balbeuchlie, 
and which, uptilted at various angles, protrudes along the ridges and 
numerous valleys of the highest crest of the Sidlaws. There are, 
in the line of strike from north to south, two well-defined synclines — 
and three anticlines, occasioned by the upheaval of the trappean 
formations. 

A new opening was lately made into the tilestone-beds at Tealing ; 
and, as it has proved so exuberantly rich in fossil remains, I shall 
confine the few observations I have now to make to this most 
interesting locality. I visited the spot in February last, In company 
with Lord and Lady Kinnaird, Sir John and Lady Jane Ogilvy, and 
an enthusiastic party of juveniles of both sexes, some just fresh from 
their Oxford studies. 

The fossiliferous bed of “Tilestone” rests upon bands of highly 
micaceous flagstones, the well-known “Carmylie pavement,” and is 
overlaid by strata of similar lithological structure and mineral con- 
stituents. The ripple-marked bands are above as well as below, and 
the tilestone itself is often deeply indented by the wavelets. The 
distinguishing characteristics of the tilestone consist in its finer 
texture, more fissile lamination, and deep blue colour,—which often 
render it, in hand specimens, difficult to be distinguished from the 
old clay-slate. 


ANDERSON—ON THE TILESTONES OF FORFARSHIRE. 191 


The space cleared at the Coral Den of Tealing, on the day in ques- 
tion, was about ten feet square, every patch of which contained fossil 
markings of some kind or other. The Parka decipiens* was the most 
conspicuous, colouring the whole face of the rock, a perfect Ptery- 
gotean egg-nest inclosed in its sedgy mass of vegetation. As a proof 
of the denseness of this ancient spawn-bed, in the restored ova of the 
creature, suffice it to state, that on a portion of the rock now before 
me, seven inches by five, I enumerate seventy to eighty distinct 
impressions of the egg-sac. Some flags, two to three feet square, 
had the whole surface blackened and reticulated with the eggs and 
pedicles of the oviparous organs. The impressions are generally 
rounded, and of all sizes, varying from that of a garden-pea to upwards 
of an inch in diameter ; some of them, indeed, two inches by an inch 
and a half in length and breadth. The inclosing sac, in some cases, 
is entire and opaque, showing no portion of the developed eggs or 
dots ; in other cases, the vessel appears to be bursting, and part of 
the ova are visible; while again, in others, the whole clusters are 
complete, and in their fullest development for the inspection of the 
microscopist. 

A locality so affluent in the spawn—if spawn they really be—could 
not fail to present evidences of the depositor of these curious organ- 
isms. Tracings accordingly of the huge crustacean were everywhere 
abundant. The mandibular feet, or jaw-feet, of the Pterygotus 
turned up, more or less perfect, on almost every flag. Several of the 
broad plates that envelope the body were likewise found; as also 
some good specimens of other parts of the carapace. A large swim- 
ming-foot was among the trophies of the day. But no entire fish, 
the eager object of search, rose to the captivating beat of the hammer, 
although we trawled the identical spot where was bagged the splendid 
specimen exhibited at the Leeds meeting in September last ; and, 


* The probable relationships of the so-called Parka decipiens may be— 
1. (2?) A real fruit like a blackberry, as remarked by the first observers. 
2. (7?) The fruit of the sedges which Dr. Anderson says are so plentiful ; 
3. (7?) The spawn of frog-like beasts, 
4, (71) The spawn of newt-like creatures, to both of which Dr. Mantell has 


referred. 
5. (7) The spawn of Pterygotus, as it is considered by Page and Salter. 
For information on these points see Dr. Mantell’s paper in the Quart. Journ. 
Geolog. Soc., vol..vili. p. 106, Lyell’s “Manual of Geology,” Murchison’s “‘Siluria,” 
Page’s ‘‘ Advanced. Text-book of Geology,” and “ The Wonders of Geology” (Mr. 
Rupert Jones’ edition).—Ep. Guot. 


152 THE GEOLOGIST. 


what was the more stimulating to our labours, we were assisted by 
the same James McNicol who was the finder of the fish, and who 
still possesses among his geological stores the upper concave cast of 
the creature, and with which neither coaxing nor bribe will induce 
him to part. é , 

Mr. James MeNicol, now that I have introduced him to the reader, 
is “grieve” at Tealing Manor, and will be found a most useful guide 
and intelligent explorer in the quarries of the district. These lie 
nearly equidistant from Dundee and Forfar, about eight miles inland 
from each; and, as both places are on the lines of railway to Aberdeen, 
the savans of the ensuing meeting of the British Association will com- 
mand an easy opportunity of paying them a visit., 

But, in addition to the interesting fossils enumerated above, the 
party were equally successful in their capture of various other organ- 
isms. Rich as the bed of tilestone is in Parka decipiens and limbs of 
Pterygotus, there are spines and other osseous fragments in the greatest 
profusion. The spine-forms, indeed, are so numerous that in some 
parts the surface was literally covered with them ; the white spear- 
like projections contrasting strongly with the fucoid masses in which 
they were entangled. There were likewise fragments of bodies 
resembling the recently detected Ceratiocaris and Kampecaris, and 
undoubtedly a caudal appendage of Stylonurus Powziensis, so abun- 
dant in the quarries nearer Forfar ; and along with these were some 
well-defined heads of the Cephalaspis Lyellit. 

The plant-remains are equally abundant, consisting of stems and 
branches of trees, and tufts of water-grasses thickly matted together. 
The stems are generally flattened, often three to four inches broad, 
but the bark is so changed by carbonization as to render the appli- 
cation of the microscope of little use. The sedge-like grasses (Juncites) 
are slender and jointed, and sometimes several feet in length. For 
miles east and west, in every opening of the tilestone-bands, the 
surface of the rock is entirely blackened by these and the other 
organisms, clearly demonstrating a quiet inland shore-line, or marshy 
lagoon, over which much of the detritus may have been cast by the 
action of the tides, and in the silt of which such may have flourished 
im situ. Thither would roam the Pterygotus, Cephalaspis, and other 
fish and crustaceans in quest of food, so plentifully supplied by the 


MACKIE—ON THE BOTTOM-ROCKS. 13 


shrimps, grubs, and other small creatures that lived in the shallows, 
or there sought a fitting place for the deposition of their spawn among 
the seaweeds of the period. 

One other specimen more, of vegetable-like matter, I shall just 
notice as falling under observation that day. The forms of this 
substance have a spongy appearance, are of a deep red ferruginous 
colour, extend laterally in the rock several yards, and descend 
vertically into the matrix about a foot to a foot and a half. Mr. 
Salter’s attention has been called to this curious concretion, and a 
Specimen, three yards in length, is now under examination in Jermyn 
Street. 


THE COMMON FOSSILS OF THE BRITISH ROCKS. 
By 8. J. Macxig, F.G.5., F.S.A., Eve. 
(Continued from Vol. I. page 289.) 
Cuap. 3. The Remnants of the First Irfe-World, and the Bottom-rocks. 


In one of my last papers on the “ Bottom-rocks” I appended a 
coloured map to a portion of the first dry-land of our mother-earth, a 
portion of the first division of the land from those waters “ which 
covered the globe,” a fraction of one of those primeval cracks or ridges 
which then remotely shadowed out our present continents and oceans ; 
and in the little green patches I gave all the traces known of the first 
beaches and sands which spread around those low and barren tracts in 
the great region of North America which I selected for an illustration. 
To this map I hope soon to add, as supplements, others of South 
America and of Europe. Africa must be left yet a long while ere one 
dare make the like attempt. To these maps, from time to time, I shall 
add colour after colour to show the successive deposition of those 
.great rock-formations in which the animals and plants of the succes- 
sive life-creations of our planet have been entombed ; and I hope 

VOL. IL. M 


154 THE GEOLOGIST. 


also to be able to give charts of the teeming oceans during each of 
those past wonderful ages severally characterised as the stages of 
progress and development of organic beings. If we regard the out- 
lines of those primitive land-domes and crests when laid down upon a 
map of the world, we are struck with their simplicity. We may 
remark, too, their frequent concurrence with those lines of greatest 
heights which abut against the oceans of greatest extent. ,The highest | 
mountains of the land face the heaviest waves of the sea. The lines of 
igneous and volcanic products in all ages have been, and still are, the 
barriers to the sea’s most powerful labours ; the lavas and granites 
fused in the subterranean depths have been evolved to form an un- 
conquerable wall against the most destructive powers of the foaming 
waves. A towering chain borders the Pacific from Russian America 
to Tierra del Fuego: lower hills face the narrower Atlantic ; but 
against the smaller Arctic Sea no special mountain-land is presented. 

While those lines of primeval uplift determined the directions of the 
mountain-ranges and thus established the basis of the subsequent con- 
tinental areas in the accumulated sediments successively deposited on 
their protected flanks, so the great parallel lines of subsidence and 
depression gave the form and direction to the profound abysses of the 
deeps and ocean-basins. 

America thus presents almost the simplicity of a single continuous 
result compared with Europe, which is full of complexities. 

We have said against the greatest oceans there is the highest land. 
Throughout all known time this has been the rule: for wherever the 
sediments have been most thickly deposited, there has taken place the 
greatest uplifts. Nature always works by positive laws, and there is 
some reason for this. We are not very partial to the doctrine of a 
central incandescence ; we admit, however, most entirely, the existence 
of a deep-seated internal heat, of, even now, very great intensity. 
There are certain lines of equal temperature in the subterranean 
portions of the earth’s crust. There is such a line, for instance, of 
temperature equal to that of boiling water. Now this subterranean 
isothermal line would not be continuous at one even depth all round 
the circumference of this planet ; but it would vary in its depth from, 
and in its approach towards, the surface, according to the density of the 
rock-materials, the free circulation of water, and many other natural 


MACKIE—ON THE BOTTOM-ROCKS. 155 


eauses ; so that this, as well as every other such isothermal line, would 
in any given vertical section present the form of an irregular undu- 
lating curve. 

Now wherever the deep oceans reposed, their water-masses would form 
natural conductors of the internal heat, and beneath them the lines 
of equal heat would recede more or less towards the centre. But 
wherever great quantities of sediment were deposited, there the con- 
ducting power of the ocean-water would be prevented from action, 
and the isothermal lines below would ascend. Thus such deposits of 
sand and mud would be exposed to the force of the subterranean heat ; 
and these new strata, if of limestone or other similarly heat-affected _ 
substances, would expand ; and the result would be an elevation of 
territory. Thus, in North America, the great uplifted mass of the 
Alleghanies (Apalachian Mountains) consists of Paleozoic sediments ; 
or, in other words, that uplift or elevation was of post-Carboniferous 
date. The Pyrenees, again, are of post-Cretaceous elevation ; the 
Andes of South America, the Alps in Europe, and the Himalayas of 
India are of post-Tertiary, or, more accurately, of post-Eocene date. 

If, on the other hand, the accumulated sediments subjected to the 
action of the internal heat by the subterranean rise of the isothermal 
lines were of aluminous or other similarly heat-affected mineral mate- 
rial, a contraction might take place; and, instead of an uplift, an 
extended depression, deepening the abyss of the ocean, might result ; 
and thus, by the various combinations, oppositions, and modifications 
of these expansive or contractile operations, new lines, or double, or 
parallel lines of elevation might be formed ; or the original lines of 
uplift and consequent weakness may either have been extended, like 
the successive extensions of the cracks of a starred pane of glass, by 
every thermal variation, or have been altogether broken down. 

By this rise of the range of the internal calorific influence up to, and 
its action upon, the inferior portions of the accumulated sediments, 
various kinds of granitoid and gneissic rock would have originated ; 
the granite being the lowermost portion fused, so to express it, under 
intense pressure of the superincumbent heap, in the presence of water, 
of a temperature perhaps equal to red-heat. As this granitized mass 
was forced up by its own expansion, it fissured the semi-crystalline 
and unchanged strata above it, dragging up, like a giant on its shoulders, 

mM 2 


156 THE GEOLOGIST. 


the circumambient pasty rock, and, laminating, streaking, and con- 
torting it in the “squeeze and jam” of its intermural expression, pro- 
duced the ribboned-structured mica-schist and gneiss.* 

When we regard the extensive areas still exposed of the old gneiss 
and similar-aged rocks in various parts of the world, and which pro- 
bably have remained uncovered by any sedimentary deposit whatever 
from the first hour that the golden sun tinged their brine-washed 
crowns to the present play of his cheering rays upon their grey and 
barren fronts, we may well ask if those oldest gneissic rocks have 
thus been formed ? 

We must, however, look upon these granitoid and gneissic founda- 
tions as the buttresses, denuded and weathered out in the lapse of 
incomprehensible ages from the originally circumambient beds, and 
exposed in this way to our view, rather than as dykes of molten 
matter, forced completely through open fissures into the upper air. 
We have alluded to the different ages of granite-formation and their 
outbursts by the influence of internal heat on successive sedimentary 
floors; may we thence look to find any difference of composition, 
marking the difference of the age in which each was generated and 
irrupted? Mr. Sterry Hunt has done something towards this know- 
ledge. He has pointed out that the oldest granite contains most 
soda, and that the quantity of that alkali diminishes sensibly in the 
several granitic masses in proportion to the proximity of their epoch 
of formation to our times» Hence this proportional quantity of one 
chemical ingredient may some day be made subservient to an approxi- 
mate registration of geological time upon the great chronological dial. 
As the first granites, or gneissic rocks, were worn down into sub- 
marine sediments, to be afterwards changed in the progress of natural 
phenomena into newer granites and metamorphic rocks, from those 
sedimentary materials the primeval oceans dissolved out and accumu- 
lated much of that soluble substance ; and so, those regenerated and 
less alkaline granitoid rocks being again worn down, their sediments 
were also in the lapse of time formed into newer granites and schists 
with a still less quantity of alkaline matter. 

But let us go back to the old gneiss and the law of upheaval by 


* See Mr. Scrope’s paper in Tur Gronoatst, vol. i. page 361. 


MACKIE—ON THE BOTTOM-ROCKS. 157 


the rise of the range of internal heat beneath sedimentary masses. 
Were the old gneissic and granitoid rocks, that form the real nucleus 
of our present lands, generated, expanded, and uplifted on these prin- 
ciples and by those means? The evidence seems, to incline towards 
this belief ; and if so, there must have been a world of land and sea 
older than those remote ancestral island-domes and ridges that form 
the earliest recognized traces of our present Jands. For there must 
have been Jands to have furnished the materials of those sediments, 
the heaping-up and over-piling of which gave increased range to the 
subterranean heat ; and there must have been waves and ocean-cur- 
rents to have abraded and worn them down, and to have transported 
their finely divided particles into the abyss. And this still older 
has been melted up by 


world-crust—whether life-less or life-full 
fervent heat, and fused into the adamantine foundations of the “ ever- 
lasting hills.” 

Tt is not, however, on the ancient physical geology of our globe 
that we wish to dwell at length in these chapters; our object is to 
treat more at large of the successive forms of the organized creatures 
which have inhabited it, and to portray in our descriptions and illus- 
trations the whole of the common forms of those abundant tribes 
whose offices have been the most important in the past conditions of 
our planet, and whose remains are characteristic of our principal rock- 
masses. 

Still, we could not avoid considering, first, the formation and uprise 
of those ancient lands of which these perished beings were the in- 
habitants. Our thoughts must naturally first turn to the soil, the 
shape and extent of the land, the form and elevation of the hills, the 
flow of the rivers, if any existed, to the rivulets and rills, to the beat 
of the waves on the shore, to the sunshine, the rain, and the dew ; 
and then we seek to reclothe those ancient lands with plants, herbs, 
and trees, to bedeck them with flowers, and to repeople them with 
living creatures. Before we describe the first fossils we must think 
of the first land and the first water that trickled over its surface. 
We must think of the sky and the air, the sunshine and shadows, the 
storms and calms of that first age of terrestrial conditions. | 

Philosophers tell us of a central heat, still sufficient within the 
range of 800 miles below to fuse the most intractable rock. They 


158 THE GEOLOGIST. 


tell us too of a gradual refrigeration of our planet, and refer many 
problems of former temperature to the ancient higher internal incan- 
descence of our planet. Measure off on a roll the successive masses 
of rock-strata which we know by their superposition to be true in 1- 
cations of geological time, on a scale of 13 inch to a thousand feet of 
vertical thickness, and your diagram will reach to a length of nearly 
nine feet. 

Over the uppermost of these add a segment to represent recent 
deposits ; it will scarcely be the eighth of an inch in thickness. Yet 
four thousand years at least have intervened since the parents of the_ 
human race trod the verdant floor of beauteous Eden. ‘Take the 
next in order, the latest Tertiary age—the age of glacial drifts and 
icebergs, and a quarter of an inch will overlap the segment you have 
drawn. And yet for thirty thousand years at least the foaming cataract 
of Niagara has been cutting through the raised and consolidated strata 
of that vast age, for vast it must have been when whole species of 
maritime mollusca migrated many geographical degrees from their 
ancestral haunts to seek out warmer climes; when whole continental 
tracts were raised into the regions of perpetual snow ; and again, the 
uplifted lands subsiding to their ancient levels, their shores were once 
more inhabited by the returned posterity of the out-driven shell-fish. 
Take the next segment of the rock-formations, and the caves disgorge 
the bones of hundreds of extinct pachyderms and ruminants. Com- 
pute the cubic space of the fleshly bulk of the collective carcasses of 
those exhumed by inquiring man alone, and their volume far surpasses 
the capacity of the cave to contain them; and yet for hundreds 
disinterred, thousands remain behind. Take the next age, and two 
thousand feet of sediment tell of still more extensive changes and still 
more extended time; and the next, and the next; and greater and 
greater becomes the thickness of the stony volumes of the earth’s 
history, until in the coal-measures we have 15,000 feet and more of 
instructing leaves, and in the Silurian and the “bottom-rocks” 
25,000 and 26,000 feet of evidential records. 

These too are only the records of the periods of active deposit of 
sediment, and the minimum even of that. No indication is here of 
the periods (equally great, or greater) of cessation, nor of the far sur- 
passing periods of re-generation and re-formation. The greatest 


MACKIE—ON THE BOTTOM-ROCKS. 159 


amount of sediment which, according to our present information, 
can be permanently laid down in our deeper waters, over the range of 
our present seas, would probably not exceed in the aggregate, including 
even our littoral accumulations, a coating of more than three inches 
thick in ten thousand years ; and yet we have at least a minimum 
thickness of upwards of 80,000 feet of consolidated sedimentary rock 
to explain as the result of natural agencies in past time. 

The whole of nature teems with the sublime and beautiful, whether 
we turn to the starry firmament, with its planets and its suns, its 
comets and its meteors, and its showers of falling stars, the lightning 
and the tempests, to the contemplation of the incomprehensible dis- 
tance of the heavenly bodies, or to the rapidity of their motion. 

But what more sublime than the age of Time? “Ye paint me old! 


and why ?” says the Dutch poet :— 


* Ye paint me old ! and why ? 
And doth my speed eld’s frozen blood betray ? 
Methinks the storm-wind is not swifter flighted ; 
The rapid lightning scarce o’ertakes my way. 
Ye think your hurrying thoughts perchance outrun me : 
Go, race with sunbeams,—when they have outdone me, 
Talk of my age,—I fly more swift than they.” 
* * * * 
“ One glance—but one— 
O’er the huge tombs of vanished Time, around ye,— 
Mountains of ruins piled by me alone : 
I did it :—I smote, yesterday, —to-morrow, 
I wait to smite,—your cities,—you ; go, borrow 
Safety and strength, they shall avail you none. 
Eternity was mine,—and still eternal 
I hold my course,—God’s being is my stay,— 
I saw worlds fashioned by His words supernal : 
I saw them fashioned,—saw them pass away. 
I bear upon my cheeks unfading roses ;” 
x * * % x 
“Take from my front the white locks Folly fancies. 
My hair is golden, and my forehead curled ; 
My youth but sports with years. Fire are my glances.” 
* * * * * 


““ But give me too the hour-glass,— ever raining 
Exhaustless streams untired ;—for I am he 
Who pours forth gems and gold, and fruits undraining, 
And treasures ever new, or can it be 
For desolation only? Do not new drops 
Of dew replace in summer fervour’s fallow dew-drops ? 
Fresh flowers replace each flower crush’d by me? 


160 THE GEOLOGIST. 


I, the destroyer, do it—without measure. 

I fill creation’s cup of joy,—man’s lot, 

That vibrates restlessly ’twixt pain and pleasure, 
Determine ;—in my youth his years forgot. 

Worlds crumble ;—Virtue mounts to Heaven ;—no sleeping 
In dust for me ;—but, with bright angels keeping 

God’s throne, with God I dwell and perish not.” 


How imperfectly can human expressions shadow out the inex- 
pressible age of the “ Bottom-rocks!” What, then, was that old land | 
like ? 

If for all these ages this globe has been cooling down, how much 
nearer to the surface then must have been the isothermal line of 
boiling-water temperature? Put it at fifty feet beneath the “rind of 
Earth ;” then every spring and water-flow over the bare and barren 
sea-washed crests and ridges would be reeking with clouds of rolling 
steam. The sea would be ever giving off dense vapours, which the 
sun in vain would strive to dispel,—a thick mist would envelope the 
world! Nothing—no not even the lichen, would vegetate upon the 
glassy solid rock,—and every spot would be silent, barren, damp, and 
glistening grey. 

Was this the state of the first land ! 


GEMS FROM PRIVATE COLLECTIONS. 


III.-PHACOPS CAUDATUS; FROM THE DUDLEY LIMESTONE. 
In the Private Collection of Prorgssor J. Tennant, F.G.S. 


TE beautiful specimen of Phacops caudatus, which we figure in Plate 
V., has long been in the private collection of Professor Tennant. It is 
from the Upper Silurian limestone of Dudley, and would be a perfect 
example but for the exception only of its having the segments of the 
body somewhat bent inwards, and slightly distorted from their natural 
positions by pressure. The lateral edges and their segments are 
unfortunately obscured by being embedded in the matrix, so that 
they cannot be accurately delineated. 

This characteristic species of Trilobite was first noticed by Brun- 
nich, in 1781, under the name of Trilobus caudatus. . It was subse- 
quently termed Asaphus caudatus by Brongniart, Dalman, Dr. Buck- 
land, and other writers. Burmeister, however, in his valuable work 


VOL. II. PLATE VY. 


In the Private Collection of Professor J, TENNANT, F'.G.S. 


PHACOPS CAUDATUS.—From the Limestone of Dudley 


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 161 


on the “ Organization of Trilobites,” called it Phacops caudatus, which 
generic determination modern palzontologists have followed. 

One of the chief features in the species is the great prominence of 
the eyes and the distinctness of the numerous lens-facets into 
which those special organs are divided. 

There are certain variations in the outlines and form of this, as 
well as of other species of Trilobites, which have been regarded by 
naturalists as sexual characteristics ; judging upon these grounds, 
Mr. Tennant’s specimen would be probably considered a female. 

This species, Phacops caudatus, ranges in vertical stratigraphical 
distribution from the Lower Llandeilo flags to the Upper Ludlow 
rock, and it has also a considerable geographical range. 

The species has been described at length by Burmeister, and also in 
the Decades of the Geological Survey. 


Po CON, CORR ES.PON DE N CE. 
By Dr. T. L. Pareson or Paris. 


On the Crystalline form of Coal—Coal and Carburetted Hydrogen in 
Meteoric Stones—Coal that cuts Glass like the Dvamond—Another 
word on the Artificual formation of Coal. 


I HAVE just published in France some observations “ On the Crystalline 
form of Coal.”* In November, 1858, I picked up in London some 
fragments of coal that were perfect rhombohedrons, giving angles of 
102° and 78°. This coal came from Sunderland. In December fol- 
lowing I found many analogous specimens near the town of Glasgow, 
in Scotland, one of which measures nearly a foot in every direction. 
The coal-beds near Glasgow have been upheaved by trap-rock, and the 
immense pressure has given to the coal a crystalline structure that 
causes it to break under the hammer in rhombohedric fragments ; 
and these, whatever be their size, give always the same angles, 102° 
and 78°. Graphite, which is known to be a variety of pure carbon, 
is found crystallized in short hexagonal prisms (lamine), that is, in a 
form derivable from the rhombohedron. Coal and graphite belong 
therefore to the same crystalline system. This fact goes a long way 
to prove that coal must be regarded as a variety of pure carbon, and 
not as a combination of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and azote, as some 
have asserted. For the oxygen, hydrogen, and azote that coal gives 
on analysis are derived from the substances, such as bitumen, naphtha, 
vegetable remains, &c. with which it is mixed. 


* Bulletin de la Soc. d Hist. Nat. de Strasbourg, and Journal de Pharmacotogie 
de Bruxelles. 


162 THE GEOLOGIST. 


It is a curious but well-known fact that substances which do not 
possess a crystalline structure may be made to take it under the 
influence of mechanical forces; thus, iron becomes crystalline by 
repeated percussion, and above we have an example of a crystalline 
structure being given by pressure. The foregoing facts will also tend 
to explain why coal sometimes takes the form of hexagonal prisms in 
contact with trap-rock. The rhombohedron and the hexagonal prisms 
are certainly the crystalline forms of carbon in the state of coal and 
graphite ; whilst the diamond, as is well known, crystallizes in forms 
derived from the cube or the regular octahedron ; whence carbon is 
dimorphous. 

M. Wobhler, Professor of Chemistry in the University of Gottingen, 
has sent to the Académy of Sciences at Paris the following description 
of the composition of a meteoric stone :— 

“T have just made the analysis of a meteoric stone which fell at 
Kuba in Hungary on the 15th of April, 1857. The aérolite in 
question is black, and its colour is owing to amorphous coal. It also 
contains—besides those elements generally found’ in meteorites—a 
certain quantity of organic matter, that is to say, a carburet of hy- 
drogen similar to paraffine, to cozokerite, or to scheererite. The quan- 
tity of this bituminous matter is certainly very small; but I have 
assured myself of its presence by the most incontestable proofs. This 
organic matter is soluble in alcohol, and becomes carbonized by ealci- 
nation. I have since found the same organic matter in the meteoric 
stone which fell in 1838 at the Cape of Good Hope. This stone is 
also of a black colour, and contains 1:5 per cent. of carbon. It is 
probable that this bituminous matter is a product of organic nature, 
and that the presence of coal in these meteoric stones is to be attri- 
buted to the action of heat upon the bituminous matter whilst the 
meteorite was in an incandescent state, z.c. during its passage through 
the terrestrial atmosphere.” ? 

This remarkable discovery, which we have given in the author's 
own words, would appear to be favourable to those philosophers who 
still look upon meteoric stones as products of our earth. We should 
not, however, without reluctance abandon another opinion :—When 
the periodicity of remarkable falls of aérolites became tolerably cer- 
tain, Arago, in 1839, wrote: “ We thus become more and more con- 
firmed in the belief that there exists a zone composed of millions of 
small bodies, the orbits of which cut the plane of the ecliptic at about, 
the point which our earth annually occupies-between the 11th and 
13th of November; it is a new planetary world beginning to be 
revealed to us.” (Annwaire, 1839.) 

It is now almost doubtless that there are other periods besides the 
November one. 

Sir Isaac Newton once said that he took all the planets to be com- 
posed of the same matter as the earth, namely, earth, water, and 
stone, but variously concocted. “‘ Recalling to mind the remarkable 
interview between Newton and Conduit at Kensington,” says. Alex. 


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 163 


Von Humboldt, “1 would ask why the elementary substances that 
compose one group of cosmical bodies, or one planetary system, may 
not in a great measure be identical? Why should we not adopt this 
view, since we may conjecture that these planetary bodies, like all the 
larger or smaller agglomerated masses revolving round the sun, have 
been thrown off from the once far more expanded solar atmosphere, 
and been formed from.vaporous rings describing their orbits round the 
central body ?” (Cosmos, vol. i.) 

At one of the recent meetings of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, 
our ever-active friend M. Jobard, of Brussels, director of the Belgian 
Musée d’Industrie, presented to the members a piece of anthracite 
found in a blast-furnace, and which possessed the following properties. 
In his amusing and instructive work of last year, entitled “ Les 
Nouvelles Inventions,’ M. Jobard speaks of a species of coal, found in 
Belgium, that cuts glass as easily as does the diamond of a glazier. 
But it is only alluded to once in the whole four volumes, and his 
account of it is so short that we did not quite understand his 
meaning. Now it is evident enough: “I have the honour,” says 
M. Jobard, “of presenting to the Academy a piece of coal which has 
become incombustible from having passed through a blast-furnace at 
Creuzot, in France. This coal, which was given to me by M. Méne, 
the chemist of the establishment, was originally of a poor quality, and 
appears to have taken some carbon from the rich coal with which it 
was mixed in the furnace together with coke, and it has undergone 
this transformation without any change in its form.” * 

It may be well to remark here that, when M. Jobard begins to 
theorize on chemical subjects, he appears to be one of those who 
belong to a region which the Germans are fond of calling “cloud- 
land.” But our friend is a good observer of facts. “This product,” 
he continues, “‘ cuts glass with the noise of a glazier’s diamond, which 
proves that it is as hard as the latter (!).7 and that, after being reduced 
to powder, it may possibly serve to replace diamond-powder in the 
workshops of lapidaries, or certain other polishing powders. . . . This 
transformed coal is not, however, isomorphous with the black dia- 
mond ; it is lighter and more friable.” + 

M. Elie de Beaumont remarks that M. Jobard’s coal has the form, 
colour, aspect, and density of anthracite. 


* The absorption of carbon by, or the crystallization of the volatilized carbon 
- upon, other substances is prettily displayed in the case of straw, matting, or other 
foreign substances lying on the surface of the materials in the coke- and cinder- 
ovens. These become impregnated and coated with metallic-like films and masses of 
crystals ; which action of deposit appears to take place after the doors of the 
furnace are closed, when there is no escape for the carbon volatilized by the heated 
mass beneath.—Ep. Grou. 

+ At this rate quartz, flint, ruby, &c. should possess the hardness of the 
diamond.—T. L. P. 

t I have been told by the men employed in the South Eastern Railway Com- 
pany’s coke-ovens at Folkestone that the extreme points of the coke-lumps, which 
are there made for the locomotives on that line, will cut glass like the diamond. 
I have not, however, verified the statement by actual experiment.—Hp. Grou. 


164 THE GEOLOGIST. 


In speaking, in a former article,* of the artificial formation of coal, 
we gave the names of some philosophers who had realized to a certain 
extent the problem in question before M. Barhouiller laid the results 
of his experiments before the public. I regret to say that I find the 
name of M. Beudant was forgotten, not only in my article, but also in 
M. Barhouiller’s paper. I believe that, if Beudant were now living, 
he would be able to affirm that the results obtained by M. Barhouiller 
had been already realized, or nearly so, by himself; for he says, in his 
Minéralogie (p. 210 of the Edit. of 1844), “It results from various 
experiments which we have commenced, but which certain unavoidable 
circumstances have not permitted us to terminate, that, when vege- 
tables are submitted to temperatures ranging between 180° and 200° 
(centigrade), and under a proper degree of pressure, they are converted 
into black substances in every respect similar to lignite, coal, and 
bitumen.” 

P.S. I ought to have mentioned in my last article, in respect to the 
statements of the submarine volcano, near Leghorn, that M. Senevier, 
the French Consul at Leghorn, was misinformed, and had sent an 
erroneous statement to the Academy of Sciences at Paris. 


Nore ON THE STAGONOLEPIS oF Exein, by Sir R. I. Murchison. 


We have received a communication from Sir Roderick Murchison 
relative to our Note (p. 124) on Stagonolepis, in which Sir Roderick 
reiterates his conviction of the correctness of his statement that the rock 
in which those remains were found is of “ Old Red Sandstone” age. 
He says, “ Sedgwick, Malcolmson, Robertson, Anderson, Duff, Hugh 
Miller, and Gordon, as well as himself, have called it ‘Old Red.’ 
Certain geological theorists who have not visited the district, and who 
judge or opine certainly from the character of the beast, still throw 
doubt upon the decision of stratigraphical observers. The note 
ought to have stated, that, despite the testimony of those who have 
explored the district, and class the sandstone of Elgin as ‘Old Red,’ 
some geologists, who are guided by paleeontology only, are so much 
startled at the discovery of a Reptilian of this high order in such 
ancient rocks, that they have thrown doubts upon the true age of the 
deposit, and suppose it may prove to be of Oolitic date. 

“This would be fair, and ought to be stated in the next number. It 
is barely possible, but still possible, that I may be wrong, but the note 
as it stands is not correct. This is intended for the Editor, with 
whose work in other respects I am very much gratified.”—R. I. 
Murcaison, 


* THE GroLoetst, vol. i. p. 2C2. 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 165 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 


———— 


GEoLoGIcAL SoctETy oF Lonpon.—ANNUAL GENERAL Mrstine.—February 
18th, 1859.—Prof. J. Phillips, President, in the Chair. 

The Reports of the Council, of the Museum and Library Committee, and of the 
Auditors, having been read by the Secretary, were adopted, and ordered to be 

rinted. 
‘ The President stated the Council had unanimously awarded the Wollaston 
Medal to Mr. Charles Darwin, F.R.S., F.G.S., in testimony of their appreciation 
of the great value of his long-continued and successful geological researches both 
abroad and at home, and both in the practical and the philosophical branches of 
the science. 

The President then announced the award of the balance of the proceeds of the 
Wollaston Fund to Mr. Charles Peach, of Wick, N.B. 

The President then proceeded to read his Anniversary address, briefly alluding 
to the loss the Society had of late sustaimed in the decease of several Fellows and 
Foreign Members, among whom were H. Warburton, Esq., the Dean of Ely, the 
Duke of Devonshire, Lieut.-Col. Sir W. Reid, Sir W. G. Cumming, Rev. E. Tagart, 
Herbert Mackworth, Esq., Richard Taylor, Esq., Prof. Weiss, &c. 

The ballot for the Council and Officers was then taken ; Prof. John Phillips, 
M.A., LL.D., F.R.S. was re-elected President. 

ORDINARY GENERAL Mentine.—February 23d, 1859.—The following com- 
munications were read :— 

1. “On the occurrence of Liassic Deposits near Carlisle.’ By E. W. Binney, 
Esq., F.G.S. 

The author’s attention had been drawn by Mr. Richard B. Brockbank, of 
Carlisle, to the district lying between Carthwaite, on the Carlisle and Maryport 
Railway, and the Solway, especially about Aikton and Oughterby, as containing 
a limestone, supposed to belong to the coal-measures, but found by Mr. Brockbank 
to contain an Ammonite and other fossils, which he thought to be Liassic. Mr. 
Binney subsequently went over the district with Mr. R. B. Brockbank, and found 
that, although the country is thickly coated with boulder-clay or till, yet lias- 
limestone and shales were observable in several spots, in wells, streams, &c., 
especially at Quarry Gill, Fisher’s Gill Farm, and in Thornbybrook, south-east of 
Aikton. Gryphea incurva and other Gryphew, with Oysters and Ammonites, 
characterise these beds. The area occupied by the Lias is known to extend under 
the rising ground lying between Crofton and Orton, on the south, and the Solway, 
on the north, comprising Aikton, Thornby, Wiggonby, Oughterby, and probably 
other places on the rising ground between the Carlisle and Maryport and Carlisle 
and Port Carlisle Railways. 

Z This paper was illustrated by specimens of the Lias, forwarded by Mr. E. W. 
inney. 

2. “On the Fossils of the Lingula-flags or Zone Primordiale——I. Paradoxides 
and Conocephalus from North America.” By J. W. Salter, Esq., F.G.S., of the 
Geological Survey of Great Britain. 

After briefly noticing the relations of the ‘‘ Zone Primordiale” instituted by 
M. Barrande, the author described the remains of a large Paradoxides sent from 
the vicinity of St. John’s, Newfoundland, by Mr. Bennett. The fossil belongs to 
a new species of Paradowides, the largest yet known (93 inches broad), and termed 
P. novo-repertus by Mr. Salter. A new species of Conocephalus, from Georgia, 


166 THE GEOLOGIST. 


was also described from a specimen brought to England by Dr. Feuchtwanger, 
and placed in the Great Exhibition of 1851; it is named C. antiquatus by the 
author. As these two genera have as yet been known only in the “‘ Zone Primor- 
diale,” Mr. Salter regards the above-mentioned specimens as indicative of the 
existence of that geological formation in the countries here mentioned. 

The author also referred to an obscure specimen of Asaphus, from the ‘ Calci- 
ferous sand-rock ” of Canada, which he once, but on insufficient grounds, published 
as a Paradoxides. 

The specimens alluded to in the paper were on the table. 

3. “On a new species of Dicynodon (D. Murray?) from near Colesberg, South 
Africa.” By Prof. T. H. Huxley, F.R.S., Sec. G.S. 

For the original specimen from which Prof. Huxley first obtained (in the spring 
of last year) evidence of the existence of this species he was indebted to the Rev. 
H. M. White, of Andover, who subsequently put the author in communication 
with the discoverer of the fossil, Mr. J. A. Murray, and the latter gentleman 
having written to his father, resident in South Africa, obtained for Prof. Huxley 
a large quantity of similar fossil remains. One specimen in particular having been 
carefully chiselled out by Mr. Dew, afforded a complete skull of this peculiar and 
previously undescribed species of Dicynodon. 

The author described the distinctive features of this skull in detail. Dicynodon 
Murrayi is distinguished from all the already known species by the following 
characters :— 

(1.) The plane of the upper anterior face of the nasal and premaxillary bones 
would, if produced, cut that of the upper face of the parietal at an angle of about 
80°. 2 

(2.) he supratemporal fossee are much longer from within outwards than from 
before backwards, owing partly to the shortness of the parietal region. 

(3.) The alveoli of the tusks, the transverse section of which is circular, commence 
immediately under the nasal aperture, and extend forwards and downwards 
parallel with the plane of the nasal and upper part of the premaxillary bones, and 
do not leave their sockets until they have passed beyond the level of the posterior 
end of the symphysis of the lower jaw. 

(4.) The nasal apertures are altogether in front of the orbits. 

(5.) The length of the upper jaw in front of the nasal apertures is certainly equal 
to one-third, and probably to one-half, the whole length of the skull, which is 
between six and seven inches. 

(6.) The os quadratum is about half as long as the skull. 

These peculiarities are regarded as sufficient to distinguish Dicynodon Murrayt 
from all others ; and the author stated that he should reserve the description of 
many other anatomical features, which are probably more or less common to other 
Dicynodons, such as the bony sclerotic, the bony interorbital septum and vomer, 
the characters of the humerus, of the pelvis, and cf the ribs, for another paper, in 
which other Dicynodont remains will be considered. 

The specimen illustrating the paper was exhibited by Prof. Huxley. 

4. “On the Coal found by Dri Livingstone at Tete, on the Zambesi, South 
Africa.” By Richard Thornton, Esq. 

forwarded from the Foreign Office by order of Lord Malmesbury. 

Mr. Thornton states that this coal is free-burming ; showing no tendency to 
cake ; containing very little of either sulphur or iron, a large proportion of ash, 
but only a little gaseous matter. The result of the trial (made in the steam- 
launch) of this coal and its appearances favour, in the author’s opinion, the idea 
that the coal, when taken from a deeper digging (that which Dr. Livingstone had 
sent was collected at the surface of the ground), will probably contain less ash and 
a little more gaseous matter. 

March 9th, 1859.—The following communications were read :— * 

1. “On some Minerals from Persia.” By the Hon. 0. A. Murray, ©.B., &c. 

Forwarded from the Foreign Office by order of Lord Malmesbury. 

‘The mineral specimens referred to were obtained from the district between 
Tabriz and the Caspian, especially from the Karadagh Range, and consist of 
native copper, chrysocolla, red oxide and black oxide of copper, malachite, azure- 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 167 


copper, bornite, copper-glance, copper-pyrites, varieties of galena, zinc-blende, 
magnetite, specular iron-ore, manganese-ore, orpiment, sulphur, and brown-coal. 
The series of copper-ores appears to indicate the existence of considerable masses 
of metallic mineral, probably in lodes or regular veins. The lead-ores have the 
appearance of having been taken either from veins of small size, or from near the 
surface of the ground. ; 

The specimens alluded to were exhibited. 

2. “On the Veins of Tin-ore at Evigtok, near Arksut, Greenland.” By J. W. 
Tayler, Esq., F.G.S. 

These tin-veins, of which there are about twenty, extend over an area of about 
1,500 feet in length by 80 feet in breadth; and they run in various directions, 
some KE. and W., others N.E. and 8.W., and others N. and 8. They vary from 
10 inches to 3 of an inch in width ; in the largest veins the tin-ore occupies about 
1 inch of one side of the vein. The veins nearly all occur in a great vein of felspar 
and quartz ; which contains also ores of lead, copper, zinc, iron, and molybdena, 
associated with cryolite, fluor-spar, zircon, &c. 

Specimens from Evigtok were exhibited, from the Collections of Prof. Tennant, 
F.G.S., and the Society. 

3. ‘On the Permian Chitonide.” By J. W. Kirkby, Esq. Communicated by 
T. Davidson, Esq., F.R.S., F.G.S. 

After having fully noticed the progress of our knowledge respecting the paleeozoic 
Chitons, and those of the Magnesian Limestone in particular, the author described 
in detail the characters of Chiton Loftusianus, King, and Chiton Howseanus, Kirkby, 
and a new species, referred with some doubt to Chiton C. (?) cordatus ; also Chiton 
antiquus, Howse, which Mr. Kirkby refers to the subgenus Chitonellus, as well as 
two new species, C. Hancockianus and C. distortus. 'The specimens on which all 
these species have been determined have been found in the Magnesian Limestone 
af she neighbourhood of Sunderland, Durham, and chiefly in that of Tunstall 

ill. 

The author particularly aliuded to the great similarity that some of the plates 
of these fossil Chitons have at first sight to Patelle and Calyptree, and recom- 
mended that especial care should therefore always be taken in the determination 
of patelliform fossils. 

The paper was illustrated by fine pencil-drawings by the author. 

4. “On the Vegetable Structures in Coal.” By J. W. Dawson, LL.D., F.G.S., 
Principal of M‘Gill College, Montreal. 

After referring to the labours of others in the elucidation of the history of coal, 
the author remarks that in ordinary bituminous coal we recognise by the unaided 
eye laminz of a compact and more or less lustrous appearance, separated by un- 
even films and layers of fibrous anthracite or mineral! charcoal. As these two 
kinds of material differ to some extent in origin and state of preservation, and in 
the methods of study applicable to them, he proceeds to treat of his subject under 
two heads :—Iist. The structures preserved in the state of mineral charcoal. This 
substance consists of fragments of prosenchymatous and vasiform tissues in a car- 
bonized state, somewhat flattened by pressure,-and more or less impregnated with 
bituminous and mineral matters derived from the surrounding mass. It has 
resulted from the subaérial decay of vegetable matter ; whilst the compact coal 
is the product of subaqueous putretaction, modified by heat and exposure to air. 
The author proceeded (after describing the methods used by him in examining 
mineral charcoal and coa!) to deseribe the tissues of Cryptogamous plants in the 
state of mineral charcoal. Among these he mentions Lepidodendron and Uloden- 
dron, also disintegrated vascular bundles from the petioles of Ferns, the veins of 
Stigmarian leaves, and from some roots or stipes. He then describes tissues of 
Gymnospermous plants in the state of mineral charcoal ; especially wood with 
discigerous fibres and also with scalariform tissue, such as that of Stgmaria and 
Calamodendron ; and the author remarks that probably the so-called cycadeous 
tissue hitherto met with in the coal has belonged to Sigillaria. 

The next chief heading of the paper has reference to structures preserved in the 
layers of compact coal, which constitute a far larger proportion of the mass than 
the mineral charcoal does. The laminz of pitch- or cherry-coal, says Dr. Dawson, 


168 THE GEOLOGIST. 


when carefully traced over the surfaces of accumulation, are found to present the 
outline of flattened trunks. This is also true to a certain extent of the finer 
varieties of slate-coal ; but the coarse coal appears to consist of extensive laminz 
of disintegrated vegetable matter mixed with mud. When the coal (especially 
the more shaly varieties) is held obliquely under a strong light, in the manner 
recommended by Goeppert, the surfaces of the laminz of coal present the forms of 
many well-known coal-plants, as Sigillaria, Stigmarva, Poacites (or Neggerathia) 
Lepidodendron, Ulodendron, and rough bark, perhaps of Conifers. When the coal 
is traced upward into the roof-shales, we often find the laminze of compact coal 
represented by flattened coaly trunks and leaves, now rendered distinct by being 
separated by clay. 

The relation of erect trees to the mass of the coal, and the state of preservation 
in which the wood and bark of these trees occur,—the microscopic appearances of 
coal,—the abundance of cortical tissue in the coal, associated with remains of 
herbaceous plants, leaves, &c., are next treated of. 

The author offers the following general conclusions :— 

(1.) With respect to the plants which have contributed the vegetable matter of 
the coal, these are principally the Stgillarie and Calamitee, but especially the 
former. 

(2.) The woody matter of the axes of Sigillarie and Calamitee and of coniferous 
trunks, as well as the scalariform tissues of the axes of the Lepidodendree and 
Ulodendree, and the woody and vascular bundles of ferns, appear principally in 
the state of mineral charcoal. ‘The outer cortical envelope of these plants, together 
with such portions of their wood and of herbaceous plants and foliage as were 
submerged without subaérial decay, occur as compact coal of various degrees of 
purity, the cortical matter, owing to its greater resistance to aqueous infiltration, 
affording the purest coal. The relative amounts of all these substances found in 
the states of mineral charcoal and compact coal depend principally upon the 
greater or less prevalence of subaérial decay occasioned by greater or less dryness 
of the swampy flats on which the coal accumulated. 

(3.) The structure of the coal accords with the view that its materials were 
accumulated by growth without any driftage of materials. The Sigillarie and 
Calamitece, tall and branchless, and clothed only with rigid linear leaves, formed 
dense groves and jungles, in which the stumps and fallen trunks of dead trees 
became resolved by decay into shells of bark and loose fragments of rotten wood 
which currents must have swept away, but which the most gentle inundations, or 
even heavy rains, could scatter in layers over the surface, where they gradually 
became imbedded in a mass of roots, fallen leaves, and herbaceous plants. 

(4.) The rate of accumulation of coal was very slow. The climate of the period, 
in the northern temperate zone, was of such a character that the true conifers 
show rings of growth not larger, or much less distinct than those of many of their 
northern congeners.* The Sigillarice and Calamites were not, as often supposed, 
succulent plants. The former had, it is true, a very thick cellular inner bark ; 
but their dense woody axes, their thick and nearly imperishable outer bark, their 
scanty and rigid foliage, would indicate no very rapid growth. In the case of 
Sigillarie, the variations in the leaf-scars in different parts of the trunk, the inter- 
calation of new ridges at the surface representing that of new woody wedges in 
the axis, the transverse marks left by the successive stages of upward growth, all 
indicate that at least several years must have been req:iired for the growth of 
stems of moderate size. The enormous roots of these trees, and the conditions 
of the coal-swamps, must have exempted them from the danger of being over- 
thrown by violence. They preuaely fell, in successive generations, from natural 
decay ; and making every allowance for other materials, we may safely assert that 
every foot of thickness of pure bituminous coal implies the quiet growth and fall 
of at least fifty generations of Stgillarie, and therefore an undisturbed condition | 
of forest-growth enduring through many centuries. Further, there is evidence | 
that an immense amount of loose parenchymatous tissue, and even of wood, 
perished by decay ; and we do not know to what extent even the most durable | 


* Paper on Fossils from Nova Scotia, Proc. Geol. Soc. 1847. 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 169 


tissues may have disappeared in this way, so that in many coal-seams we may have 
only a very small part of the vegetable matter produced. 

Lastly. The results stated in this paper refer to coal-beds of the middle coal- 
measures. A few facts which I have observed lead me to believe that in the thin 
seams of the lower coal-measures remains of Neggerathia and Lepidodendron are 
more abundant than in those of the middle coal-measures.* In the upper coal- 
measures similar modifications may be expected. ‘These differences have been to 
a certain extent ascertained by Goeppert for some of the coal-beds of Silesia, and 
by Lesquereux for those of Ohio ; but the subject is deserving of further investi- 
gation, more especially by the means proposed in this paper, and which I hope, 
should time and opportunity permit, to apply to the seventy-six successive coal- 
beds of the South Joggins. 

There were exhibited at this meeting Coal, Minerals, Fossil Leaves, &c. from 
Sarawak ; presented by R. Coulson, Esq. 


Gronogists’ Assocratron.—On Thursday, the 8th February, the second 
ordinary meeting of this Association was held at St. Martin’s Hall. The Rev. 
Thos. Wiltshire, M.A., V.P., in the chair. 

Mr. Hyde Clarke read a paper, in which he sketched out a plan for the 
organization of local committees in conjunction with the Association, by which 
the work of the Government surveyors and others labouring in the geological field 
might be usefully followed up, and supplemented by the bringing together of new 
facts, as local circumstances might favour their collection. He adverted to the 
valuable services which had been rendered to the science by ladies, and mentioned 
several whose names were well known as accomplished geologists. 

He believed that much remained to be done, in more minute classification of 
the strata, &c., by local researches, and that much good was to be effected by 
announcements of new minerals, particularly such as would be useful as manures, 
for building-materials, or in connexion with the manufactures; as well as by 
notice of such operations as new mines, quarries, wells, pits, railways, roads, 
tunnels, &¢., of land-slips ; observations on springs, on thermal, superficial, and 
subterranean waters; electro-magnetic observations on mineral bodies ; earth- 
quakes in particular districts ; the rates of erosion of shores, and of new deposi- 
tions ; the like of river-operations ; of recent and ancient abrasions ; and many 
other particulars, which would be not only interesting as bearing on points of 
theoretical geology, but as likely to throw light on questions of great practical and 
economic importance. 

From these records Mr. Clarke thought valuable reports might be drawn up, 
from time to time, which would exhibit the progress of geological knowledge ; and 
that thus a really useful work would be effected by the Association. 

March 8.—Professor J. Tennant gave a lecture on Mineralogy. The lecturer 
stated that as many as 520 species of minerals were described in one English treatise 
on the science ; and, when anyone looked at a map of the world and compared 
the small area of the British Isles and their mineral wealth with the extent of 
such territories as that of Canada and Hudson’s Bay, and the treasures to be 
there probably discovered, he must perceive the importance of some acquaintance 
with the science of mineralogy. Australia, a few years since, was only known as 
containing a few sheep-walks, and as a penal settlement. In 1851, a piece of 
stone was received in London and placed in the Great Exhibition, where it created 
much sensation. It was a gold nugget. Such nuggets had been frequently 
picked up in Australia ; stones containing the yellow metal had been built into 
walls and houses ; but no one had, previously to this time, regarded them. Some 
thought the metalliferous substance to be iron-pyrites, others that it was copper- 
pyrites ; but if these persons had been acquainted with a very simple test—a 
aa file—they could have easily ascertained the difference between pyrites 
and gold. 


* I may refer to my late paper on Devonian Plants from Canada for an example 
of a still older coal made up principally of remains of Lycopediaceous plants of the 
genus Pstlophyton. 


= 


VOL. II. ; N 


170 THE GEOLOGIST. 


The rapid progress of the colony since this discovery was familiar to everyone, 
and the history of the gold-nugget trade would display prominently the value of 
observant habits. The lecturer then described the various large nuggets which 
had been brought into this country, the largest being four feet two inches long by 
ten inches wide. ‘This was melted and produced fine gold of the value of 6,905/. 
12s. 9d., only twenty-one ounces of stony matter remaining. 

Diamonds in the rough state had been thrown aside by the gold-seekers, and 
many other valuable substances were frequently wasted in ignorance of their 
nature and properties. 

The most interesting part of mineralogy was crystallography, and the lecturer 
gave illustrations of the methods of distinguishing crystals by their forms, fracture, 
frangibility, degrees of hardness, &c. nh 

Some specimens of ayolite, from Greenland, were exhibited, to show the 
importance of the study of mineralogy, in developmg the means of cheapening 
useful commodities. Aluminium, at the time of the Paris Exhibition, could not 
be obtained for less than 47. per ounce. It was soon afterwards offered for 2/. per 
ounce; but, since cryoline had been used, it was reduced to less than 15s. per 
ounce. This was an important metal, and although hitherto only known as a 
curiosity in the laboratory, would probably, before long, become of the highest 
commercial importance. 

The lecturer concluded with some statistical accounts of the values and annual 
produce of the chief British minerals. 


Matrvern Natcrat History Frenp-Crius.—The annual meeting of this 
Club was held on the 21st ult., at the Museum of the Club, in Malvern, when the 
President, the Rev. W. S. Symonds, of Pendock, delivered the annual address. 

Mr. Symonds recorded with deep sorrow the loss the Society had sustained 
during the last year by the death of two of their most active and distinguished 
members—the Rev. T. T. Lewis and the Kev. F. Dyson. Sir Roderick Murchison, 
in his new edition of ‘‘Siluria,” renders a full acknowledgment of the valuable 
assistance he received from Mr. Lewis in the foundation and establishment of 
‘“‘the Silurian system.” The life-long conduet of such men as Mr. Lewis and Mr. 
Dyson will ever prove an important refutation to the belief, sometimes entertained, 
of the incompatibility of the pursuit of science with religious energy and duty ; 
inasmuch as the departed were well known as faithful ministers of the Gospel, 
who, while they loved the study of nature, as the exponent of the vast and varied 
plans of the Divine Mind, did not make science, as some do, their idol, nor exalt 
philosophy above those nobler principles, the moral relations of man to God. 

Mr. Symonds entered at some length into the mineralogy of the Malverns, and 
their microscopic crystallography. 

Speaking of the Cambrian rocks, he said;—You will, I am sure, allow me to 
take this opportunity of congratulating an illustrious honorary member of our 
Society, Sir R. I. Murchison, upon the publication of his new and long-expected 
edition of “Siluria ;” and perhaps you will allow that I have not chosen an 
unillustrative point im my address, at which to offer our congratulations, when I 
tell you that Sir Roderick has rendered a very important addition to the records 
of geology, by the discovery of a series of sedimentary deposits of more ancient 
date than those rocks of the Longmynd, in Shropshire, of North Wales, and of 
Ireland, which we have been accustomed to term Cambrian.- These oldest 
known sedimentary rocks occur on the north-west coast of Scotland, and are un- 
conformably surmounted by mountain masses of conglomerates and sandstones, 
now known to be of Cambrian age, and the equivalents in time of the Longmynd 
and North Welsh deposits. This lowest Cambrian deposit is a gneiss. 

On reading Sir R. Murchison’s account of this most ancient gneiss, some tinie 
ago, I determined to examine closely certain-stratified deposits which are in con- 
tact with the Malvern syenite, to which Sir R. Murchison alludes (in “ Siluria,” 
p. 103), as consisting of “ chloritic schists, quartzite, and highly micaceous schists, 
almost passing into gneiss.” For this purpose, I have twice explored the whole 
length of the tunnel near Malvern Wells, and have given particular attention to 
certain schistose rocks on the Swinyard, Midsummer, and agged-stone Hills, at 


’ 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. VEL 


the southern extremity of the Malvern range. These investigations lead me to 
infer that many crystalline masses, formerly believed to be of plutonic origin, must 
now be considered as altered sedimentary deposits, and that much of what local 
geologists are in the habit of classing under the convenient head of “‘ Malvern 
syenite” is an ancient sedimentary rock, much displaced and altered, but which 
may turn out, on further investigation, to be the equivalent of the old Scotch 
gneiss. I hope to be able to say more on this subject at our next meeting. , 
Respecting the Lingula-flags of Malvern (black shales) Sir Roderick Murchison 
adheres to his former correlation of these rocks, and places the Lingula-flagstone 
of Wales, the Stiper-stones, the ‘‘ Holly-bush sandstone” of Malvern, and the 
Tremadoc and Arenig slates, as the base of his Lower Silurian rocks, which con- 


~ formably overlie the Cambrian deposits just alluded to. Sir Roderick has given 


an excellent section (‘‘ Siluria,” p. 105) of the strata which intervene between the 
south end of the Malverns and Ledbury, and which I recommend you to consult, 
while, at the same time, I still hold to the opinion that our ‘‘ Holy-Bash sand- 
stone” should be correlated as a Cambrian deposit of the same age as the Long- 
mynds. 

a are aware that great interest attaches te our Malvern black schists, through 
the discovery, by Professor John Phillips, of Oxford, of sundry little crustaceans, 
belonging to the family of Trilobites, of the genus Olenus ; as, also, through Mr. 
Hugh Strickland’s discovery, on the occasion of one of our general meetings, of 
the Agnostus pisiformis, another crustacean found in the same low horizon of life 
in Bohemia, Scandinavia, and North Wales. You will, therefore, be interested 
in my discovery during last autumn, when accompanied by my friend, Mr. Pitson, 
of another organic link in the evidence which connects our Malvern black schists 
with the “ primordial zone”’ of distant lands. ‘This fossil is termed “ Dictyonema 
sociale,’ and isa Bryozoon, “which,” says Sir R. Murchison, “ is exceedingly inte- 
resting, as showing a probable connexion between fhe Fenestellide and the 
Graptolites ;’ it also furnishes an “additional reason for regarding the ‘ Olenus- 
shales’ of Malvern as belonging to the primordial zone” (‘‘ Siluria,” p. 47, and p. 562). 
This fossil, like the little trilobites above mentioned, is by no means abundant, 
and requires careful searching for. - I have, however, conducted several geologists to 
the locality, and we have generally succeeded in carrying off a prize. Specimens 
have been sent to the Malvern, Worcester, and Jermyn Street Museums. 

From the Lingula beds to the Upper Llandovery rocks there is, at Malvern, a 
great hiatus, the Llandeilo, Caradoc, and Lower Llandovery rocks being absent ; 
and the place of those deposits is occupied by an outburst of igneous rock, know ~ 
as the “‘ trap-bosses” of Prof. Phillips. I must refer you to ‘ Siluria” for Sir 
Roderick’s explanation of the identification of the rocks and fossils of the ‘‘ Bala- 
limestone ” with those of Caer-Caradoc ; suffice it again to repeat that the term 
“‘ Caradoc” must be blotted out from the list of our Malvern rocks and fossils, for 


_ the “ Bala-beds” are certainly wanting, as I, years ago, maintained. The deter- 


mination of a transitional or passage-zone of rocks near Llandovery is an impor- 
tant point, proving that there is no breach between the Lower and Upper Silurian 
strata. There is no doubt that our so-called Caradoc-heds of Malvern are no more 
than Upper Llandovery or May Hill deposits. Prof. Sedgwick first detected the 
mistake in the May Hill district. My brother naturalists will be interested to 
learn that a beautiful fucoid was found in a fragment of the Llandovery sandstone 


-by our friend Mr. Edwin Lees, and that this specimen is figured in Sir Roderick’s 


new edition of ‘‘ Silnria ” (p. 106). 
I have several times visited the tunnel near Ledbury ; and, a few days ago, 


accompanied by Mr. Francis Brooks, I carefully examined the strata from the 


entrance to the farthest extremity at which the workmen have arrived. In most 
respects the section is similar to that of the railway-cutting north of Ludlow ; 
but the strata are more inclined. The “‘fossil-band” of grey micaceous sand- 
stone, with fragments of plants and crustacea, and associated with red marls, is 
exposed as at Ludlow. The rock now worked is the Downton sandstone. 

‘The discovery oi the Lower Old Red fish-remains last season, at Cradley, near 


Malvern, was then alluded to, and also the important detection, by Sir Roderick 


Murchison, of the reptilian character. of the Stagonolepis Rohertseni, from the 


f 


172 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Upper Old Red sandstone of Scotland. Portions of Holoptychius and Pterichthys 
had been found by Dy. Melville, Mr. Lightbody, and Mr. Roberts, in the yellow 
sandstone of Farlow, near Ledbury Mortimer, and “‘ Old Red” plants have been 
found by Mr. Symonds in the same passage-beds, on the Daren, near Crickhowell. 
Good specimens of Permian plants have been found near Kidderminster, by Mr. 
G. Roberts, some of which are in the Worcester Museum. 

An important discovery has also been made by the widow of the late lamented 
Hugh H. Strickland. ahs 

The mammalian remains found by Mr. Strickland in the Cropthorne and Avon 
drift and gravels were imbedded in a silt containing fresh-water shells, such as 
Limnza, Bythinia, and of species now living in the adjacent river. The remains 
consist of the teeth and bones of rhinoceros, elephant, deer, bos, horse, &c. 

Among these is a fine head of Bos primigenius, from the interior of which Mrs. 
Strickland obtained a perfect marine shell (Turritella). The discovery of this 
shell is of great consequence to the naturalist, inasmuch as he cannot avoid the 
conclusion that this relic of the ancient ox was originally buried in a marine 
deposit, out of which it was washed to be re-interred in the fresh-water-drifts of 
the ancient Avon. : 

The Club proceeded, after the address, to elect the officers for the ensuing year. 
Mr. Symonds, at the request of the Society, and on the motion of Sir Charles 
Hastings, again accepted the office of President ; Mr. Godwin Lees, the Wor- 
cestershire botanist, was elected Vice-President, in the place of the Rev. F. Dyson, 
deceased ; and Mr. Walter Burrow was re-elected Hon. Secretary. 

The field-meetings were arranged as follows :— 

May 19, Apperley Court, to meet the Cotteswold Club, on the invitation of 
H. Strickland, Esq. June, Ledbury. September, Pershore. 

Nearly twenty members and corresponding-members were proposed for 
election. 


Toe Cotteswotp Naturaists’ Firnp-Cius.—This Club held its meeting 
on the 16th instant, at the Ram Inn, Gloucester. T. B. Ll. Baker, Esq., of Hard- 
wicke Court, having read the address reviewing the proceedings of last year, to 
the regret of the Club, vacated the presidential chair, which he has so ably and | 
worthily filled from its establishment in 1846, with a distinct intimation that he 
could no longer continue to occupy it, in consequence of the amount of time and 
labour he is obliged to devote to. the reformatory movement with which his name 
has become so honourably associated. Professor Buckman retired from the office 
of Honorary Secretary. W. V. Guise, Esq., of Elmore, was unanimously elected 
President, and Mr. John Jones, of Gloucester, Honorary Secretary. 

A discussion followed upon the desirability of throwing open the Club to any 
duly qualified person who might be desirous of joining it, instead of limiting its 
numbers to the fifty gentlemen already composing it, and the proposed alteration 
was finally determined upon. Some members of the Club made an excursion to 
the Lias-Marlstone Quarries at Churchdown and Brockworth, others to Lassington 
and Highnam ; while a few of the geologists devoted the interval between the 
Pee saues referred to and dinner-time to the examination of Mr. Jones’ cabinets 
of fossils. 

After dinner, the new President read a paper upon the “ Oolites in the neigh- 
bourhood of Bath,” which gave rise to a long and animated discussion between 
Dr. Wright, Professor Buckman, the Rev. W. 8S. Symonds, and others. 

An invitation from My. Strickland, of Apperley Court, to meet the Malvern 
Natural History Field-Club, at his house, in May, was communicated by the Rey. 
W.S. Symonds, of Pendock, and accepted. 

‘The following places were named and approved of as places of meeting during 
the ensuing season :—Cheltenham, May 11th; Dursley, June 15th ; Newnham, 
July 13th ; Swindon and Abury, August 17th ; Cirencester, Sept. 14th. i 

In the commissariat department, the Club was never better served than by 
Mr. Nunn upon the present occasion, whose catering was not only duly appre- 
ciated by, but received its due meed of praise from, all assembled. 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 173 


[We should have been glad to have been furnished by our correspondent with 
some fuller account of the geological, as well as of the administrative and convivial 
epee of this meeting. Possibly the former might have been preferable 
ood for those of our readers who had not the gratification of partaking of Mr. 
Nunn’s excellent provisions.—Ep. Grot.] ‘ 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 


THe Supposep Triassic Mammarntan Remarns.—‘ Dear Str,—In the 
foreign correspondence by Dr. Phipson in your last number, I observe that 
Mr. Pentland, in writing to Mr. Elie de Beaumont, refers to my recent discovery 
of ancient Mammalia, and supposes they are derived from the ‘ Triassic Bone-bed 
of Dundry, near Bristol,’ but the beds in this locality belong to the Inferior Oolite. 
In a note you suggest their being from the Dolomitic conglomerate. As it is 
desirable there should be no mistake as to their locality or geological position, 
I write to say they were found in a fissure of carboniferous limestone at Holwell, 
near Frome, and that as these were associated with the teeth of the Microlestes, 
the vertebre and teeth of Thecodontosawrus, and fish-remains of the genera Acrodus, 
Hybodus, Sauricthys, Lepidotus, Gyrolepis, &c., I have little doubt the conglomerate 
is chiefly derived from beds of Triassic age, and that these mammalian remains are 
therefore not so old as the Dolomitic conglomerates. 

“It may interest your readers to know that with the Microlestes I have also 
found teeth of the Muschelkalk Placodus, the first indications I believe of this 
formation or its fauna being represented in this country. 

“J hope soon to communicate fuller information with reference to Triassic-beds 
in the West of -England.—Yours truly, CHArtEs Moors, F.G.S8., Cambridge- 
place, Bath.” 

Acs or Drirt Deposirs.—“ Str,—Observing that the last number of Tur 
GEOLOGIST contains rather scanty notices under the head of ‘ Queries’ from corre- 
spondents, and deeming them of some importance to the uninitiated, permit me to 
ask from what quarter I can obtain the best information respecting the ‘ drifts’ 
which are now and then met with in different parts of this country. or instance, 
may I conclude that the drift in the vicinity of Thirsk in Yorkshire is of the same 
age as the drift-beds at Barrow in Leicestershire, resting on the Lias? You will, 
perhaps, be amused at the question, as the contents are dissimilar. I presume 
that drifts may be of very different epochs ; but some more general notice in your 
valuable periodical may interest others besides myself—G. W. WAKEFIELD.”-— 
In the new diagram map of the British Isles published this day, and which 
has been executed under my direction, the range and course of the Great Northern 
or Glacial Drift is laid down, as far as our present knowledge goes. There are 
local and other “‘ drifts,” gravels, and loams of newer age, the geology of which 
has not yet been properly worked out, although we believe Mr. Prestwich has 
accumulated a considerable amount of material towards the elucidation of their 
histories. We shall be glad of every information and particulars of the “ drift,” 
gravel, and brick-earth deposits Ep. GuroLogist. 

LocaLitizs FoR Fosstus around Lonpon.—Drar S1r,—“ There are a great 
many students in Geology, who, like myself, can find little time for running far 

into the country in search of practical knowledge during the academical portions 

of the year, but who could nevertheless occupy an afternoon occasionally, and to 

great advantage, in studying such formations of fossils as are to be met with 

round London. But it is difficult for a beginner to find out these places, and | 
VOL, Il. 0 


174 THE GEOLOGIST. 


think that one page of Taz Geonoaist devoted to a list of such places within half- 
an-hour’s or an hour’s run of London, with directions as to the exact spots, and 
the beds to be found there, would be a great boon to those who, like myself, are 
advocates for practice as well as theory. If you should consider this favourably, 
Lam sure others as well as myself will feel greatly obliged for your kind assist- 
ance.— Yours very truly, A Brarnner.”—We have for some time past contem- 
plated giving occasional papers on _the characters and features of the chief 
geological localities, not only around London, but also by the sea-side, and in the 
vicinity of larger and important towns. Our correspondent will find in vol. i. p. 208, 
a list of the fossiliferous localities near London.—Ep. GEoLoaist. 

Nortcr or THE OccuRRENCE oF MAMMALIAN REMAINS IN THE VALLEY 
or THE Soar, LetcestERSHIRE.—“‘ In compliance with the admirable suggestion 
of Mr. Prestwich, the following notice of teeth and other elephantine remains 
found in the valley of the river Soar may be of service. This valley, from its 
commencement in the neighbourhood of Lutterworth, to its termination at Red 
Hill, where it joins the great Trent Valley, has been formed by the denudation of 
the Lower Lias, the Upper New Red Marls, and the Kenper Sandstone. The 
denuded inaterials, ground and mixed together, are piled up on the sides of the 
valley to a depth, in many places, of 120 feet and upwards. Bones and teeth of 
ox, deer, horse, &c., are very frequently met with, whenever the alluvial soil of 
the valley is excavated, especially near the present river-bed ; but the teeth of 
elephants have all been found in the drift-clays and gravels that flank each side. 
In the neighbourhood of Barrow the Lower Lias has been denuded to the extent of 
from 160 to 200 feet, as shown by some remaining outliers of that formation. The 
denuded materials, consisting of pieces of shales, blocks of limestone, bones of 
saurians and shells, are scattered far and wide over the adjacent country, but more 

articularly on the north-eastern side of the valley, the set of the current having 

een, no doubt, determined in that direction by the old rocks of Charnwood Forest. 
The altitude of the valley at Barrow above the sea-level is about 180 to 200 feet ; 
and its width, from the escarpment of the Middle Lias (Marlstone) on the north- 
east to the slopes of Charnwood on the south-west, is about 7 or 8 miles. Barrow 
lies near the centre ; and in the neighbourhood of that place the drift-clays and 
gravels immediately covering the Lower Lias vary from 6 feet to 20 or 30 feet. It 
was here the remains of mammalia were found, according to the account of the 
quarryman. When first uncovered, the entire skeleton of an elephant about 
11 feet long was seen lying upon its side, a few inches only above the denuded 
beds of the Lower Lias, and about 6 feet from the surface. So perfect was it 
at that time, that the integuments were plainly discernible, but exposure to the 
atmosphere caused it to crumble into dust and small fragments ; and from the 
whole skeleton it was only possible to preserve portions of the tusks, three teeth 
(one very perfect, large, and but little worn on the grinding surface, the others in 
fragments), part of a femur (thigh-bone), and a large fragment of the scapula 
(shoulder-blade). The large tooth is from the lower jaw, left side ; and, from the 
character of the grinding surface, would appear to belong to Dr. Falconer’s genus 
Elephas, sub-genus Euelephas, species antiquus ; it measures seven inches deep on 
the side at the middle part, and must have been eight or nine when perfect, the 
end of the fangs being now broken ; it is thirteen inches long on the side ; the 
grinding surface is seven and a half inches by three inches in the central part, 
tapering off at each end to about one and a half inches ; there are twelve layers of 
dentine divided by layers of cement of nearly equal width ; the cement splits readily, 
and would admit of the tooth being divided into segments. Some yards from 
the spot where these remains were found two other teeth were turned out of the 
drift-clay, but no bones accompanied them ; they had evidently been rolled consider- 
ably, the grinding-surface of both being very much worn ; and, judging from the 
character of the ridges and the thickness of the cement, they would appear to 
belong to Dr. Falconer’s genus Hlephas, sub-genus Loxodon ; they are both 
lower-jaw-teeth 3 one from the right, the other from the left side, providing these 
points can be fairly deduced from the wearing of the grinding-surface. The largest 
ee them measures on the grinding-surface ten inches long by four inches wide in 
the centre, tapering off at each end to one inch and a quarter ; the greatest depth | 
inside at the middle part is six inches : it has ten layers of dentine. The other 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 175 


tooth is smaller ; its length on the grinding-surface eight and a half inches, by 
three inches wide in the centre, tapering off to one inch at each end; it has nine 
layers of dentine—It may be useful to notice here that all the economic clays, 
viz., those for making bricks and tiles, found on the Red Marls, and also the beds 
of fine sand and gravel, are all of comparatively recent formation ; the true Red 
Marl—a mixture of clay and sand,—whether above the Kenper Sandstone or 
below it, cannot be made into bricks or tiles, and the fine clays used have been 
formed by the washing out of the Red Marl, the sand having been deposited in 
one place, and the clay more finely comminuted, and hence of less specific gravity, 
laid down in another. They are thus found in most Triassic districts as basins of 
clay of unequal depth and extent, and as beds of sand ; it is in these beds and 
basins, and in the gravel-pits, that the young geologist may expect to find 
mammalian remains. The geological maps of the Ordnance Survey, although 
generally very accurate in the boundaries of formations, at least wherever I have 
examined them, are still defective in one particular and calculated to mislead. 
Miles of surface are laid down as Red Marl, Lias, &c., where there are really drift- 
clays, sands, and gravels, of recent age, and this in places where the drift is 
upwards of 100 feet deep. What is wanted is a Map of the Drift. There is no 
doubt that, under this comprehensive term, a number of deposits of different ages 
are all confusedly grouped together ; but such a map would at least greatly 
facilitate the search for Mammalian remains.—J. Puan, Leicester.’—On the 
large diagram-map just executed under my direction, the course and extent of the 
Great-Northern Drift is laid down as far as our present knowledge extends. 
Additional information is still, however, very desirable-—Ep. Grotoaist. 
SAND-PIPES NEAR SwArnstTone, [sue or Wient.— Dear Srr,—In accord- 
ance with the wish of Mr. Prestwich, I beg to make known to your readers an 
interesting section of half a mile in length in this island, lately exposed by a 
cutting for a road near Swainstone, the seat of Sir John Simson, Bart. — Its 
interest chiefly arises from its bearing on the date of the formation of swallow- 
holes,* in conjunction with the period of the upheaval of the vertical chalk-strata 
which are well known to form a belt through the Isle of Wight. At the spot in 
question the chalk-strata are not quite vertical ; their slight dip being to the 
north. The cutting divides the Plastic Clay (Woolwich beds) obliquely at its 
eastern commencement, and extends along the northern escarpment of the central 
belt of chalk-hills. The uppermost beds of the chalk are divided at first obliquely 
to their line of stratification ; but at the western end of the cutting these beds are 
cut through almost exactly parallel to their line of inclination. This cutting is of 
the width of an ordinary road, and presents very numerous sections of swallow- 
holes, nearly all of which have a southerly dip, 2.e. across the line of stratification 
of the chalk. The inclination of the swallow-holes to the south is rather less 
than the dip of the chalk to the north ; hence the inference I draw is, that the 
swallow-holes were formed at a period subsequent to the first upheaval of our chalk- 
belt ; but at a period prior to that when the present verticality of the chalk was 
attained—a point to which I submit some interest may be fairly attached. The 
swallow-holes otherwise present features little differmg from those ordinarily 
-met with. In no instance can I find flints which can be considered as water- 
worn ; for the most part they are fractured, and some are of very large size. In 
most of the swallow-holes flints may be seen lining, as it were, the circumference ; 
while the centre is composed of clayey gravel. In those nearest the eastern extre- 
mity of the section clay predominates, having a great similarity to the Plastic 
Clay, if I may judge from its tenacity, &c.—Yours, &., Ernest P. WinKins, 
F.G.8., Newport.” 
Frums oF SELENITE.—(See vol. i. p. 444.)—“ Thin plates of the desired thick- 
ness may be easily procured by a little tact and careful manipulation. Thus, 


* Our correspondent here uses the word swallow-holes with a meaning somewhat different 
from that in which it is usually applied. Swallow-holes are the conical cavities on the surface 
of some parts of the country into which water runs either permanently or during heavy rains 

(see Prestwich ‘‘On some Swallow hules near Canterbury,” Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc., vol. x. p. 222), 
and though these swallow-holes are regarded as actuai representatives of the original condition 
of many of the conical hollows, the sections of which are often seen in the exposed chalk-strata, 
yet the latter are called sand-pipes, sand-gal]ls, &c. : 


cv 6 THE GEOLOGIST. 


under water, and with a fine and thin lancet, carefully free a lamina of the crystal 
along its line of cleavage ; then, introducing a thread of unspun raw silk, work it 
forward until the plate be disunited. Float upon your glass slide, and mount it in 
the desired manner.—F. S., Churchdown.” 

Tun ARcHmOLOGY OF PaLmontotogy.—‘In a work entitled ‘ Recherches et 
Observations Naturelles de Monsieur Boccone, Gentilhomme Sicilien,’ published 
at Amsterdam, 1674, and the substance of which was communicated to the Royal 
Society of London, may be found many illustrations of the scientific opinions then 
current. The twenty-eighth letter is on the ‘Cornu Ammonis.’ He concedes to 
the popular feeling the opinion that the generality of stones which represent 
shells are mere casts of hardened clay which have been compressed between actual 
shells ; but he maintains the true character of Ammonites as being veritable 
shells, though he advances the theory with diffidence. In the next letter he dis- 
cusses the nature of the fish-teeth found so plentifully in Malta ; and after giving 
a full account of the singular opinions then prevalent as to the non-natural pro- 
duction of these, he concludes that they are veritable marine remains, and are 

roofs either that the sea has flowed where they are now found, or that they have 
een vomited by adjacent burning mountains. The whole work will repay the 
student of the early history of natural science-—8.R.P.” 

Brockxs or Lower OoLrtEe In THE Drirt-ciuay At LercustER.—‘‘ In exca- 
vating for the sewerage works at Leicester, on the eastern side of the river, blocks 
of Lower Oolite rock were discovered, at a depth of from twelve to fifteen feet 
below the surface, in a stiff clay. A great number of them are of large size, and 
over a quarter of a ton in weight; all are much rounded and worn, some of 
them being polished in a high degree, and showing sections of shells and crinoids 
in all directions. No marks of scoring or grooving have been found on those ex- 
amined, although such have been carefully searched for. Some of the blocks are 
complete masses of shells, principally Ostrea, with portions of encrinites and 
corals, all of Lower Oolitic species. The area over which these blocks were found 
was very considerable ; its boundary on two sides was tolerably accurately defined 
by other sewerage excavations in which no blocks were found. ‘The small size of 
the openings made for the sewers, and the hundreds of blocks taken out, may give 
some idea of the number remaining covered. In no previous excavations in the 
drift-clay (and there have been a great many) have blocks of this character and 
size been met with, although rolled Oolitic fossils are common in the gravel-beds. 
The present nearest outcrop of Lower Oolite is distant from this spot twelve miles 
south-east ; it must therefore have been a strong current that rolled such blocks 
-over the intervening Liassic hills—J. Puan, Leicester.” ? 

Tue Lare W. Kexnert Lorrus, Esq, F.G.8.—We regret to announce the 
untimely death of W. K. Loftus, Esq. It occurred at sea, in the ship Tyburnia, a 
week after he quitted Calcutta on his return to England. He was educated at 
Caius College, Cambridge, and his early devotion to geological study attracted 
the notice of Prof. Sedgwick and Sir H. de la Beche, who recommended him for 
an appomtment on the commission for fixing the boundary of Turkey and Persia. 
fle remained four years in Asia under the command of Major-General Sir W. F. 
Williams of Kars. The result of his geological investigations was embodied in an 
elaborate report, with a map of the frontier from Mount Ararat to Mohammereh. 
It was communicated to the Geological Society by the Earl of Clarendon, read and 
subsequently published in their journal. Whilst in the Hast he devoted his leisure 
to antiquarian pursuits in Lower Chaldea and Susiana, on which countries and 
their antiquities he published a large volume on his return to England. He 
subsequently proceeded to Nineveh to complete the investigations commenced by 
Mr. Layard, and fifty cases of his .Assyrian discoveries enrich our British Museum. 
In the latter part of 1856 he set out for India to fill a post in the Geological 
Society of India, and proceeded to the Rajmahal Hills. But the climate soon 
atfected his constitution. He was ordered to Rangoon for the benefit of his health. 
The change was of no avail, and he embarked for England. He died of abscess 
onthe liver at the early age of thirty-seven, and leaves a wife and five young 
children. He was passionately devoted to geology, and had a mind peculiarly 
adapted for close and patient investigation. Whatever he did he did well. His 
various pamphlets are evidence of his zeal and industry in the cause of science ; 


NOTES AND QUERIES. CT 


but it is only those who enjoyed his friendship that can fully appreciate his worth. 

His honest kindness, his gentle nature, and warm generous heart, will remain long 

in the memory of the large circle of friends and acquaintances who mourn his loss 

and cherish his memory. 

Locat Musrums.—‘‘ Dear Srr,—The worthy people who, with so much public 
spirit, form these collections usually begin at the antipodes, and work backwards, 
so that their immediate neighbourhood is the last locality to be illustrated. This 
is particularly unfortunate, since the chief value of local collections consists in 
their being representative of their district with its peculiar features ; and it is 
exceedingly disappointing to go in search of relics which perhaps have derived 
their very names from the place where you seek them, and to find musty garments 
from Polynesia instead of the objects of your inquiry. It will conduce to the con- 
venience of many of your increasing staff of readers, if you will kindly invite brief 
. notices of local museums ; and, after a sufficiently long interval, publish a Hist of 
them to serve as a guide to the traveller. I inclose a brief commencement.— 
Yours truly, 8. R. Parrison, Torrington-square.”’ 

“ PuBiic GronogicaAL MUSEUMS. 

Prenzance.—Museum of the Royal Cornwall Geological Society. Rich in 
mineral specimens. Rich in Petherwyn fossils, unarranged, and in other 
Devonian fossils of Cornwall. 

TruRo.—Royal Institution—Some good specimens from the Devonians. 

Exeter.—Athenzeum. 

Taunton. —Archeological Society. David Williams’s collection, and other 
Devonian fossils from the western counties: many unnamed; some named 
by Mr. Salter ; much work still to be done. 

DorcuEstER.—Some good mammalian remains ; and well stocked with insect- 
remains and plants from the Eocene tertiaries. 

Rypsx.—New collection. Good in Greensand fossils and Wealden bones.” 

—Approving entirely of Mr. Pattison’s suggestion, we invite at once further 

communications from those gentlemen who have knowledge of the state of any 

of the provincial Natural History institutions —Ep. Gnot. 

Tue Firsv Fossin Mrcacnros.— Ballaug his peculiarly interesting to the 
reologist, as the locality where the first tolerably perfect specimen of the great 
rish elk was discovered. At a farm known by the name of Balla Terson, to the 
eastward of the new church, and about a mile from the foot of the mountains, are 
two oval depressions in the drift-gravel platform ; they are on either side of a by- 
road which leads down from the great northern high-road to the sea-shore. It 
was in the most westerly of the two that the celebrated fossil, figured in the 
““Ossemens Fossiles,” tom. iv. pl. 8, from a sketch transmitted by Prof. Jamieson 
to Baron Cuvier, was discovered. Mr. Oswald Douglas (Edinburgh Jownal of 
Science, 1826, vol. ii. p. 28) has well pointed out the character of the basin, and 
the circumstances under which the elk was found‘ It is a small turf-bog, about 
a hundred yards long by fifty wide, and occupied in the central part by a pool, 
varying im size according to the moisture of the season, in which aquatic plants 
luxuriate. The superficial stratum is a light and fibrous peat, of good quality, 
enveloping some fragments of bog-timber. The thickness of the peat in the 
centre of this basin is six feet ; but it thins out considerably towards the margin. 
Under the peat is a bed of fine bluish-white earthy sand, from two to three feet in 

thickness. This rests upon a deposit of white marl, containing delineations of 

shells. The marl is of a fibrous laminar structure, and when dry as white as 
chalk. The shells are delineated white upon a somewhat darker ground, and are 
discovered by separating the layers, but are seldom, if ever, found in their original 
state. In this marl a great quantity of bones of the elk were found at the first 
opening of the pit, occurring at various depths in the marl ; but the deeper they 
were found, the more fresh and perfect did they appear, and near the bottcm com- 
plete heads were met with. The skeleton which was presented by the Duke of 
Athol to the Museum of the University of Edinburgh was found quite at the 
bottom of the marl, where the bed was about twelve feet thick. The different 
bones, though partly connected, were in much disorder. An ingenious blacksmith 
of the village possessed himself of the skeleton, and, in putting it together accord- 
ing to his own ideas of what the animal was, found himself short of a few hones, 
which he supplied from the relics of other animals, and it was some time 


178 THE GEOLOGIST. 


before the fraud was discovered. This shell-marl would appear to rest on the 
poulder-formation, according to the description given by the workmen. When 
they pierced it, water immediately sprung up and inundated the pit. It is worth 
while to notice that the peat and timber are confined to the surface of the basin, 
and that in them no remains of the elk were found ; and this has been universally 
the case in the Isle of Man. Under the portion of the Ballaugh Curragh which 
stretches down towards the Ballamona and pours forth its accumulated waters by 
the Carlaane drain into the sea, similar basins to these have been discovered, con- 
taining the remains of the elk, but they are all below the great turf-bogs, in which 
we meet with trunks of trees, both upright and prostrate.* There is no doubt 
that great changes have taken place throughout this northern area, even within 
the period which has been called historical. The old map of the Isle of Man, 
performed by Thomas Durham, as given by Speed, Camden, Chaloner, and in 
Blean’s Atlas, exhibits ancient lakes, both in the south and north of the island. 
There was the Malar longh, in Lagazayre, a lough in Andreas parish, and Bala 
lough, the corruption of which has given the present name of the village in its 
vicinity —Ballaugh. The great lake of Myreshaw, or Mirascogh, seems to have 
occupied, at one time, a large portion of the Curragh, near the base of the moun- 
tains ; and, so late as 1505, we read of a grant of one-half of the fishery of it to 
Huan Hesketh, Bishop of Man, by Thomas, Earl of Derby. The names of several 
estates in this neighbourhood, such, for instance, as Hllan Vane, White Island, 
&c. point to their original condition, as well as the nature of some of the holdings, 
which show that even since the Act of Settlement, there has been a large territory 
ence occupied by water reclaimed to the purposes of husbandry.’ Further in- 
teresting particulars are noted in the work from which the account has been 
extracted,—‘'The Isle of Man,’ by the Rev. J. G. Cumming, M.A., F.G.S. 
—Yours, &c. F. S. A.” 


REVIEWS. 


Das Mineralreich in Bildern. Naturhistorisch-technische Beschreibung und 
Abbildung der wichtigsten Mineralien. Yon Dr. J. G. von Kurr.. Stuttgart : 
Schreiber & Schill. 1858. 


The Mineral Kingdom. By Dr. J. G. Kurr, Professor of Natural History to the 
Polytechnic Institution of Stuttgart. Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas, 
88, Princes Street. 1859. 


Dr. Kurr is Professor of Natural History to the Polytechnic Institution of 
pAaNe ATE, and he has in this work offerred a most valuable elementary volume to 
the public. 

The original work is in German, nicely printed on stout paper, bound ina 
prettily-designed ornamental cover, and illustrated by twenty-two plates. 

The size Dr. Kur has chosen for his work is a fine folio, and the handsome 
plates by which examples of the most important minerals, rocks, and petrifactions 
are displayed, deserve high praise for the judgment manifested in the selection, 
and for the beautiful manner-in which they are drawn and coloured. , 

The name of the editor of the English translation does not appear, but his work 
seems to have been carefully and conscientiously performed. The price of the 
Knglish edition is, however, much more than that of the German ; the plates 
being the same, and probably imported in their finished state into this country. 


* See the statement of Bishop Wilson, ‘‘ History of the Isle of Man,” p. 314:—‘‘ Large trees 
of oak and fir have been found, some two feet and a half in diameter; they do not lie promiscu- 
ously, but where there is plenty of one sort there are generally few or none of the other.” 


REVIEWS. 179 


We have never seen any elementary book on mineralogy—ever especially a dif- 
ficult subject to simplify—in which so much really scientific grounding was so 
naturally and intelligibly put. The reader is first introduced to the forms of 
minerals, then of crystals ; then to the characters of hardness, specific gravity, 
electrical and chemical qualities, &c. ; thence he is led to special mineralogy, taking 
first in order the precious stones; then follow in due succession, the augitic 
minerals, the felspathic, micaceous, zeolitic, and the calcareous. Compounds of 
baryta, of strontia ; salts of potash, of soda, of magnesia, of ammonia ; combus- 
tible matters ; the metals and their ores. 

The following passages describing the use of the blow-pipe in mineral analysis, 
will afford an example to our readers of the unassuming, easy, and simple, and 
yet thoroughly scientific style in which the book is composed :— 

*€ As the purposes to which minerals may be applied, as well as the knowledge 
of individual species, stand in very close relation to their chemical composition, it 
is important to acquire dexterity in the analysis of minerals ; and for this purpose 
either the moist or dry method may be employed. The latter consists principally 
in the use of the blow-pipe, the former in the solution of bodies in water, acids, 
&c., and the application of certain re-agents by which precipitates of particular 
colours and conditions are thrown down. In both cases the object is either to 
obtain decomposition, or new combinations, which may once more be analysed. 

“Tn using the blow-pipe, small fragments of the mineral may be held either on 
charcoal or in platinum forceps; so that, first, the fusibility, and then the 
escaping vapour or deposit left on the charcoal, as well as the residue, is examined, 
either by reducing it in the inner flame, or by forming from it, along with borax, 
soda, or salt of phosphorus, a pearl-like drop, which is also to be considered with 
reference to its colour and appearance. It is to be kept in mind, in using the 
blow-pipe, that the point of the flame has an oxidizing power, and the inner blue 
cone has a reducing influence, that is, it has the power of deoxidizing ; also that 
metals easily fused or reduced should not be held in the platinum forceps. Many 
bodies, such as chalk, become exceedingly brilliant when heated, others colour the 
flame at once, or after being held in it for some time. Thus, for example, all 
~ calcareous minerals colour it vermilion-red, strontium gives a brilliant purple-red, 
lithium a pale purplish-red, potassium a violet, sodium a pure intense yellow, 
baryta a green, boracic acid a pale green, acetate of copper a green, chloride of 
copper a blue, and the presence of Re may be easily distinguished in this way 
by the addition of some oxide of copper : while, on the other hand, the presence of 
copper, be it of ever so small amount, may be easily recognized by the bright blue 
flame on moistening the test with a drop of hydrochloric acid. ‘The colour which 
certain metallic oxides impart to a bead or pearl of borax, which has been obtained 
by burning on charcoal, when heated on a platinum wire, is likewise important 
Thus, the oxide of cobalt colours it blue, the oxide of copper imparts a green 
colour, and, if a granule of tin is added, it becomes red; peroxide of iron 
makes it yellow when hot, and olive-green when cold; protoxide of iron gives a 
grass-green, oxide of chromium an emerald-green, oxide of manganese an ame- 
thyst-red, oxides of manganese and iron together give a blood-red or garnet-colour, 
and so on ; while the oxides of zinc, lead, and bismuth do not change the colour of 
the bead. Further details will be found in the description of the individual 
minerals. The analysis by water is best performed in a closed glass-tube, or in a 
small retort over a spirit-lamp, by which means small drops are deposited on the 
colder part of the tube. This experiment serves at the same time to distinguish 
the water from the carbonic acid, both of them producing small beads in the 
borax pearl. : 

‘¢ The presence of carbonic acid is best recognized int he moist way, by solution 
in hydrochloric and nitric acids until effervescence takes place. Sulphur and sul- 
phuric acid may be detected by using finely-powdered specimens along with soda 
in the inner flame, by the aid of which a sulphuret of soda is produced, and this, 
when moistened by a drop of water, and brought into contact with a silver coin, 
hs i stain, and gives off an odour of rotten eggs (sulphuretted 

rogen). 
Me The presence of siliceous earths is best ascertained by melting the powdered 
mineral along with borax or soda, while to the clear pearl which is formed there 


180 THE GEOLOGIST. 


is to be added galt of phosphorus ; and thus, after continued heating, the siliceous 
earths may be recognized in the shape of beads or points. The analysis by the 
moist way may be performed either with acids or water. Water can only dissolve 
a few natural salts, as, for example, rock-salt, alum, carbonate of soda, sulphate 
of soda, potass, salts of magnesia, protoxide of iron, oxides of copper and tin and 
lime ; the solution of each of these has a peculiar taste, and when evaporated in a 
watch-glass, leaves behind the dissolved salt, which may now be readily analysed 
by the ordinary chemical process. Cu : 

“<he acids act on several compounds of silica, especially such as contain water 
(the hydrous silicates), as, for instance, the zeolites; they have also a solvent 
action on calcareous felspar, so that the silica separates like a jelly or slime ; 
other silicates must first be melted, or mixed with alkalies, if they are to be 
further examined. On the other hand, the acids dissolve most metallic oxides, 
with a determined colouring, which is indicated to some extent in the accounts of 
the individual minerals.” 

The relations of the chemical constituents to crystalline forms is admirably 
set forth in the same easy and definite manner; and the chapter on this 
subject contains a valuable table, displaying the Latin and English names, the 
symbol, electrical relations, the atomic weight, specific gravity, colour and appear- 
ance, modes of occurrence, &c., of minerals. The minerals noticed are also 
described in the same terse and explicit way, and for the student this must be 
regarded as one of the best, if not the very best, elementary treatise. All it 
teaches is necessary to be known, and to be relied upon, while he has neither to 
wade through a mass of irrelevant. matter, nor to learn under the dread of having 
to reject, on future reading, anything he has, from this book, acquired. 


On Copper-Smelting. By Hypr Cuarxen, C.E. London: Mining Journal Office, 
Fleet Street. 8vo. 1858. 
This pamphlet, a reprint of a report of a paper read before the Society of Arts, 
contains much valuable information on copper-smelting, and a considerable 
amount of statistical details of the copper-trade. 


A New Geological Chart, showing at one view the Order of Succession of the Stratified 
Rocks, with their Mineral Characters, Principal Points, Average Thickness, 
Localities, Uses wm the Arts, &ce. Arranged by Jonn Morris, F.G.S., 
Professor of Geology in University College. London: James Reynolds, 
174, Strand. . 

In our last number we noticed one of the many admirable tables and sections 

for the publication of which Mr. Reynolds, of the Strand, is so well known, and 

it is with much pleasure we notice this tabular chart, which we have received as a 

new publication since our last issue. 

What the title professes the work fulfils. We have, in the centre, coloured 
spaces, in which the succession of the beds and their thicknesses are duly 
registered and supported, on the one hand, by concise descriptions of their uses 
in the arts, and their mineral characters ; on the other, by some half-dozen names 
of the characteristic points of each division, and the like number of localities in 
which each division is typically displayed. 

Little is necessary to be said of such works, and we feel ourselves only called 
upon to recommend them, or point out their defects, for the benefit of our nume- 
rous readers. Of this chart, we would say that it is worthy of a place alike in 
the library of the student or the proficient in geological science, and that we are 
eee to find that Professor Morris has modified the nomenclature of the 
different divisions of the Crag, in a manner to rectify the objectionable terms 
hitherto in use, to which we alluded in our notice of his former production. 


THE GEOLOGIST. 


MAY, 1859. 


THE COMMON FOSSILS OF THE BRITISH ROCKS. 


By S. J. Mack, F.G.S., F.S.A., ere. - 
(Continued from page 160.) 


Cuap. 3 (continued). The Remnants of the First Life-World, and the 
Bottom-rocks. 


Wuat then was that old land like ? 

First, from the structural and physical characters of the primeval 
rocks we may best gather some knowledge. 

In Europe, however, but few are the recognised remnants of those 
primitive lands ; and those few, bare and bleak, return as yet no 
definite answers to our inquiries. 

In the northern parts of Sweden and Norway are large tracts of 
the oldest gneiss, and in Bohemia M. Barrande has described enormous 
masses of stratified rock, devoid of fossils, and apparently of Cambrian 
age, as forming the natural base of his Silurian basin ; but in that 
region, as also in Scandinavia, the earliest traces of animal life belong 
to the Primordial Zone, or that of our Stiper-stones and Lingula-flags, 
and we have no exact knowledge of the lowermost crystalline masses, 
which are probably gneissic. 

In Central France there is also a large tract of the oldest gneiss, 
covered only by a few patehes of lacustrine coal, and which not 
impossibly may never have been submerged, but may remain to this 

VOL. I. P 


182 THE GEOLOGIST. 


hour nearly as it rose ‘above the sea, save in the effects of denudation 
and atmospheric weathering of long past ages, and in its thin crust of ~ 
grey lichens, and its mantle of scanty herbage, which thus may grow 
where Coal and Tertiary plants during former eras found scanty 
sustenance. 

In our own isles, all that remains of the first land are the old 
gneissic regions in the Orkneys, and in the north of Scotland, near 
Cape Wrath ; and these we have questioned hitherto in vain for any 
traces of living things. All their secrets are still firmly locked up in 
their compact, crystalline, adamantine breasts. 

Whether any traces of the old gneissic rock—the equivalent of the 
Laurentian Group—are yet to be found beneath the mountain-masses 
of the primitive sediments formed upon its shores (our Cambrian 
rocks, the equivalents of the American Huronian group), further 
researches, or rather, perhaps, future excavations or borings, can alone 
determine. Probably, however, the original lands, on the shores of 
which the Welsh and Irish Cambrian deposits were formed, have sunk 
beneath the ocean with that old great western continent, the débris of 
which remains in the Upper Paleeozoic and Triassic deposits. 

We must, then, for the present, leave the nature and conditions of 
the first land in that obscurity in which ages of time have enveloped 
it, and turn to the earliest stratified deposits on its shore,—our 
Cambrian or “ bottom-rocks,”—for our first intelligible data of the 
earth’s early history. 3 

Some portions of these primary sediments remain in Caernarvon. 
The grits, 8,000 feet thick, of Harlech, in North Wales, belong to this 
age ; and equivalent rocks rise from beneath the Lower Silurian near 
St. David’s Head, in South Wales. Vast masses are also found at 
Bray Head, in Ireland, and a patch also probably occurs at Charnwood 
Forest, in Leicestershire, although the last is possibly only an altered 
Silurian deposit. 

For along time it was believed, from their crystalline character, 
that the schists, quartzose, and felspathic rocks of the Isle of Anglesea 
were more ancient than any of the strata of the adjacent mainland. 
But this is not the case, for it is now well ascertained that they are 
but altered Silurian beds, and that the rocks from which they, as well 


PLATE VI. 
VOL. I. 


S. J. Macxte del. 


MACKIE—ON THE BOTTOM-ROCKS, 183 


as the slates of Llanberris and Bangor were derived, have long since 
subsided beneath the waves. 

Passing the Menai Straits, towards the west flanks of the moun- 
tainous range of Snowdon, we find “ huge buttresses of very ancient 
grit, schist, slate, and sandstone,” of Cambrian date. 

But, after all, the best British example of lowest sedimentary or 
“ bottom-rocks ” occurs at the Longmynd mountains, in the typical 
region of “Siluria,’ Shropshire. And there and at Bray Head only 
(with one or two isolated exceptions, referred to subsequently) have 
any traces of fossils as yet been found. 

I remember, many years since, seeing the Longmynds, when I knew 
_ very little about Geology, and nothing at all of the history of those 
hills, and thinking, as I passed them, what o/d hills they looked. The 
late Professor Edward Forbes and others have expressed the same 
feeling ; and certainly there is something very remarkable in their 
appearance. ‘The valley to the west of them is bounded by some low 
hills of micaceous schist, ranging along the base of a craggy ridge of 
trap mountains, of which the Wrekin forms the northern extremity, 
and continued on the south side of the Severn by those of Acton- 
Burnell, Frodesley, the Lawley, Caer Caradoc, and Hope-Bowdler. These, 
like the Wrekin, have the longest diameter from north-east to south- 
west, and rise very abruptly, at an angle of 60°, from the plain below. 
The vale in which Church Stretton is situated separates the trap moun- 
tains from the remarkable mass of hills called the Longmynds, which © 
gradually rise to the height of 800 feet, and then with a level and 
nearly unvarying summit stretch for several miles towards Bishop’s 
Castle. A peculiar squareness seems to characterize these mountains, 
and from Stretton Vale, whence three or four series of hills are seen 
rising one above another, this feature is particularly apparent. The 
individual mountains are generally separated from each other by a 
narrow deep glen, traversed in its length bya small stream, sometimes 
foaming in cascades over rugged ridges, and sometimes more gently 
flowing beneath overhanging woods. The Longmynds for the most 
part are covered with heath and a short grass that furnishes exten- 
sive pasturage for numerous flocks of sheep ; and from their flanks 
brooks and streamlets break out and flow northward into the plain 

Pp 2 


184 THE GEOLOGIST. 


of Shrewsbury, or, trending southward, water the country between 
Bishop’s Castle and Ludlow. 

The lowest strata of the Longmynds range along the western side 
of the Stretton valley, and consist of thin, fragile, glossy schists, or 
clay-slate, with two or three minute layers of siliceous limestone, of 
scarcely more than an inch in thickness. These beds, partially inter- 
fered with by bosses of eruptive trap-rock, dip to the west-north-west, 
and are overlaid by a vast and regular series of hard purple or plum- 
coloured, greenish, and grey schistose flagstones and siliceous grits. 
Quartz-veins occur here and there, but on the whole the mass 
consists of schistose and gritty sandstone, often finely laminated, and 
scarcely at all affected by slaty cleavage. These highly inclined beds 
are overlaid in the direction of their dip by other masses of purple 
sandstone, conglomerates, and schists, of very considerable dimensions, 
the highest of which pass conformably under the Stiper-stones and 
other Lower Silurian strata. The thickness of these Longmynd rocks, 
as taken at the out-crop of their highly-inclined edges, is stated by 
the Government surveyors at 26,000 feet. 

Fossils were first discovered in these beds * in 1856, by Mr. Salter, 
Paleeontologist ef the Geological Survey, in nearly vertical beds of 
hard flaggy sandstone, occurring along the strike of the Longmynds 
about a mile and a half east from the principal ridge, and which form 
part of a series of bluish-grey sandstones, alternating with purplish 
slaty beds, lying below the conglomerates and red-sandstones of the 
Portway, and above the thick series of dark-olive schists exposed at 
Church Stretton. 

From the upper olive shales (Lign. 1, Stratum 2) to the hard grey 
grits of the Portway (Stratum 8), through a series of beds of more 
than a mile in thickness, the ripple- and worm-marks are conspicuous. 

The time was when men wondered at the strange forms which 
nature produced in the quarries and in the rocks, and assigned super- 
Stitious tales and qualities to such natural phenomena. The past 


* The Oldhamize, found in 1847 by Dr. Kinahan in the Cambrian rocks of Bray 
Head, were the first relics found in the Cambrian rocks. Of these we shall speak 
presently. Burrows of Annelides have also been obtained at Bray Head by Dr. 


KKinahan ; one trumpet-shaped form of which from thence has been named by that 
ventleman Histioderma Hibernica. 


glen) 
cO 
ra 


MACKIE—ON THE BOTTOM-ROCKS. 


*syOOI OAANAI IOYJO PUL OUOJSUIDIHn » 

*SOTBYS OAT[O Ye “1 

(A 8MOLING-ULIOA\) “Ayse spog oULOS ! SoyLYs parno[oo-aaljo prvyy *] 
(oskdoxleg puv SMOLING-UII0O A) ‘ouojspues Ystuootsd poureis-oury “§ 
(SHAVUL-OABA) ‘soleys pou ‘Pp 

*Sulvusoye ‘souojspues pue sojeys aiding “G 

(SMOTING-ULIOM) “| [ejtoyea ynodg yysry ye ‘sSey pojddit ory “9 


=) ag “TTVJ AL 
= iS 
Be 
10) DLL Lee} Cn 
19VO 
"Ss Aq ‘a 


(SAMOLING-WIOM pur SHIVUI-OAT A) 


» *kVMp0g OT, 


(‘sdurjied Ayeys or} ur SALOTING-ULLO AA ) 


(Aja.v0g ynorbojoayy ayn fo youunor fijsajuon(?) ay? UL WorIaXS! 
‘ANAWONOT HHL 


2 © oOo @ © to £ f wo o'r ee oe, SD 
TEEPE CCLOREEEESLL 
oOo} we 6 Aa) 5 ® Foe es at. Pe wet: Pen) 
Qe S a Oo © Ce oe ake Sw 
so g 2 & SS es fos Be Soe Ss 
Te o ; «wx on 8 CS ~~ 
ro) ca aM Oo Dp w re = oy SO 
oe eae Pea st eas goes 
un g ' Sem SS a YP Or OD 
mse gg So 2s op + SB 
a = 
q 2 bs SR D ef 'b, a. (oe 
sUvUePoo mad Bo &° 6 = 
= 9 &@ge & eS ae Be mo Ss 
FQare aes da aa 9 2 
Poem ee es hae thee Es 
) 
Ped euus eset au gs &S 
moe Se oS HS & A <a) 2 & B 


the speculative sciences. 


The shales, schists, sand- 


stones, and conglomerates 
are the ooze, sand, and 


HO NOMLOWS 


beaches of the primeval 


seas, and, denoting a shal- 
low line of coast, in them- 


selves present the first in- 


8 lOQ)D6) 


dication of the proximity 


of dry land. 


Ratlinghope. 


By this rea- 


‘saleys pue ouojspuEs asiv0op *f, 
‘sys Aors prey ‘8! 
*sa[vYS PUL OUOJSPULS pat OSILOD °G 
*(SoTVYs Wep) ssey-epusury “OL 
(‘syoor snuooUSE Jo spueq YIM ‘sojeys AoIS YIep) Sxyoor O[LopULy'T I9MO'T “TT 
“yrnry yeors ev Aq yooJ 000'G UMOP JOT “92 ‘ATVYS YooTUIA\ “ZT 


Wy Wow) 
Ww asm 
ge ef 
Oi "SS 
a 5 
o m aS 
Aaa F 
a 
qf om) 
Feo 
SHE 
Ce ee 
Fae. a 
re he 
: 
d 436 8 
aw Fd 


[1 627) 


ceded, for the sun’s warm 


rays bearing down upon 


them baked and fissured 


“{( yoos-z}1vUug) 
souojg todiyg 


the slimy ooze ; and innu- 


merable 


these 


impressions of 


c 
\5 

) 

5 


still 


“sun-cracks ” 


"N Aq AA 


traverse the surfaces of 


186 THE GEOLOGIST. 


the beds, while myriads of little circular hollows remain,—the imprints 
of primeval showers. Strange that such fleeting incidents should be 
the most ancient records of the world, and stranger still that tracks of 
the soft worms and sea-weeds of the primeval shores should be the first 
organic fossils. Two holes in the sands upon our shores mark to the 
fisherman's eye the habitation of the lob-worm, On the wave-marked 
surfaces of these primitive shales, hundreds of such worm-burrows 
are crowded together in the greatest profusion. Some are small, 
others large, and in pairs, indicating the entrances and the outlets, as 
in those now living on our coasts. Sometimes the burrow-holes, oblite- 
rated by the rasping action of the waves on the flat shores, have been 
preserved in the hollows of the ripple-marks, or the furrows of the 
runnels, which during the recess of the tides had worked their pigmy 
gorges in the sand. 

As the breath of the primeval winds passed over the primeval 
shores, it ruffled gently up the fine sandy mud, which, hardening in 
the sun or drying in the wind when the waters receded, was, on their 
return, covered up bya coating of fine silt. Hach succeeding tide 
added layer to layer, and thus, by the gentle and successive deposit of 
films of mud, the records of the most evanescent meteorological 
phenomena have been retained and preserved. 

Thus have been preserved the ripple-marks ; and from them, more- 
over, we learn the direction and force of the wind that formed them. 
The particles of matter moved by its power would travel up the 
longest incline of the ripple-mound, and fall down by its own 
momentum on the steepest slope; and, as on our present shores, it 
will be seen that the general trend of the ripple-mounds and -furrows 
is at right angles to the point from whence the wind blows ; by the 
converse of the rule, a straight line drawn at right angles to the trend 
of the fossil ripple-marks must point to the quarter whence the 
breeze which formed it issued. 

In the same manner, by successive covering by pellicles of fresh 
mud, have the sun-cracks, the rain-drops, and the worm-holes been 
preserved. 


Tn the specimen figured in Plate VII. the rain-drops were much 


VOL. IT. PLATE VII. 


RIPPLE-MARKS, SUN CRACKS, RAIN-DROPS abraded by the Surf, and WORM-HOLES, 
in the Shelterea Hollows —From the ‘‘ Bottom-Rocks” of the Longmynd., 


In the Museum of PrRaoTicaL GEOLOGY, Jermyn-Street, 


S. J. Macxie del, 


MACKIE—ON THE BOTTOM-ROCKS. 187 


abraded before they were covered up and entombed ; the sun-crack 
shows the drying influences of the wind and sun; while in the hollow 


Lign. 2.—Sra-Rippies. The arrow indicates the direction of the wind. 


spaces where the moisture was retained, the worms perforated by 
scores the damp earth. 

“We may live,” says Mr. Binney, “among the grandest scenes of 
nature, or may visit the noblest monuments of art, and remain in- 
sensible to their beauty or sublimity. Differently affected, we may 
find in the barren sands of the sea-shore enjoyment of the purest 
character, and speculations which, rising from nothing more important 
than the trail of a sea-slug, will lead us to contemplate, and in some 
measure to comprehend, some of the most extensive operations of 
nature, and bring under review unnumbered ages, past, present, and 
to come.” 

The Arenicole construct no tubes on the surface of marine objects, 
they have no protecting cases nor shells, no solid skeletons, but their 
soft, ring-formed bodies, supporting on each segment tufts of bristle- 
feet, and feathery, vein-like, external lungs, lie buried in the sand, and 
there, by means of their terminal retractile proboscis, unarmed by 
teeth, these sightless beings suck in the watery sand, or ooze, and 
obtain their nutriment in the organic particles it contains. Dying, 
they leave nought but their burrows and their trails; of themselves, 
nothing. 

These old fossil worm-holes of the Longmynds are much smaller 
than the recent ones of the common Arvenicola piscatorum ; and in all 
cases that I have seen, there is in them an absence of those coils of 
sands at the vent-ends of the burrows, and of the conical cavities at 
the other extremities, which, everywhere on our sea-sands and shores, 
mark the existence below of the innumerable thousands of the fisher- 


188 THE GEOLOGIST. 


man’s bait. We have noticed this last point not from any desire to 
invalidate Mr. Salter’s determination, but for the purpose of drawing 
attention to a class of holes which appear to have been hitherto 
totally disregarded by palzeontologists,—I mean those made by the 
long siphons of many of the mollusca. I have frequently detected 
great colonies of Tellens, and other such shells, by the double 
proximate holes formed by their long, slender, siphonal tubes, and the 
inhalent and exhalent currents of water which pass to or from them. 

Mr. Hancock has recently shown many so-called fossil worms and 
worm-tracks to be the trails of crustacea, and I think at least some of 
the now-considered Arenicolites and worm-burrows will ultimately be 
attributed to some of the mollusca associated with them in the 
same beds. 

The most remarkable of the Church Stretton fossils, however, are 
the few fragments of a Trilobite, called by Mr. Salter Paleopyge 


Lign. 3.—Pyeipium or TriLoBite, Paleopyge Ramsayi, SALTER. 
From Callow Hill, Little Stretton. (From Plate IV. vol. xii. Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc.) 


Ramsayi, and allied to the Dikelocephalus Minnesotensis described by 
Dr. Dale Owen, from the Minnesota Territory, United States. The 
most intelligible of these fragments is a wortion of the pygidium, 
or caudal extremity, 21 inches broad, and 3ths of an inch long, 
the equivalent of the part marked yp, p”, of the American Dike- 
locephalus, fig. 4, p. 189. 

Some obscure traces of sea-weeds, Chondrites, have been found also 
by Mr. Salter at Moel-y-ci, a mountain near Bangor, upon the surface 
of a coarse sandstone ; but these remains are too imperfect for an 
exact description. And two species of Paleorchorda and two of 
Chondrites have been also described by Professor MacCoy from the 
Skiddaw slates. But with these exceptions, the only other locality in 
which Cambrian fossils have been found is Bray Head, in the county 


MACKIE—ON THE BOTTOM-ROCKS. 189 


of Wicklow. It was there, however, nine years before Mr. Salter’s 
discoveries in Shropshire, that the first relics of a primordial organized 
life were found by Dr. Kinahan. 


Of those fossils doubtfully an animal or a plant, we are as yet only 
acquainted with one genus; one species, the Oldhamia radiata,* I 


Lign. 4.—DIKELOCEFHALUS MINNESOTENSIS. (Two-thirds nat. size.) From the Lowest Sand- 
stones, at Stillwater, Minnesota. (Reduced from the figure in Dr. Dale Owen's ‘‘ Geological 
Report of Wisconsin, Lowa, and Minnesota.”) 


have already figured in Vol. I. (see Frontispiece) in connexion with 
these papers. The other, and common form—for in these old Irish 
schists they exist in myriads, the scaling surfaces of the rocks bein 

completely bespattered with their elegant forms—I now present to 
my readers in Plate VIII. | 


* Lately another peculiar and obscure form has been found, Haughtonia, 


190 THE GEOLOGIST. 


These Oldhamiz are supposed to be related to the horny zoophytes 
(Hydroid polyps), such as the Sertularia, and the other flexible, 
feathery, horny corals, which, drifted ashore by the waves, are blown 
about on our beaches. In each of the cells of these horny Sertularian 
polypidoms, when living, was an animal possessed of numerous 
tentacles, and of a simple stomach-sac. Hach was connected by a 
common stem to the others, so that each polypidom would be regarded 
as either a living animal mass with numerous heads, or, more 
properly, as a connected colony of individuals never completely 
separated from their parents, out of which, like the branches of a 
vegetable, they budded and grew. 

Some have thought these Oldhamiz to have been animals allied to 
the flexible branching Bryozoans, such as our common Salicornania 
farciminordes, which has a more highly organized system of digestive 
organs. 

Thus, if our first traces of it are to be depended upon, organic 
life has not begun with the lowest grades, nor with the highest. In 
the sediments of those first sea-washed shores, it is not the shapeless 
sponge, which, without locomotive capacity, lazily imbibed the briny 
fluid by one set of pores to drive it out in streams from others, nor 
the simple foraminifer, whose traces of existence we find ; nor was it 
man, of highest organization, who has left his footprints upon those 
first silent-shores. The ancient lug-worm, formed of rings, and 
not abhorrent, like the earth-worm, in its red and unctuous look, 
but radiant with gay colours, and beautiful to look at, like the 
Sea-worms and nereides of our shores ; and, from their food consisting 
of decaying vegetable and animal matter, indicating therefore the 
existence then of sea-weeds, or of the minuter forms of animal life— 
the Sertulian zoophytes, ever and anon protruding their beautiful 
circles of hyaline and feathery tentacles, grasping their tiny, almost 
microscopic prey,—and the crustaceous Trilobite, all well developed 
and by no means simple forms of animal construction. These, and 
simple but largish sea-weeds, are the first fossils the most searching 
inquiries have as yet discovered, and, as far as we yet know, these 
were all that lived or grew on those primeval shores, on which nor 
waves nor ripples landed the glittering fish; for, as far as we. yet 


MACKIE—ON THE BOTTOM-ROCKS. 191 


know, the wide expanse of ocean waters was then untenanted by the 
_ sealy tribe. 

And now I would say a few words why it is believed that these are 
the first traces of organized life upon our planet. 

While in Europe generally the older strata are much broken up and 
metamorphosed over some large tracts, they are still in others but very 
little altered from their original condition of sediments ; and certainly 
not more so than the newer, though still vastly ancient, Silurian fossili- 
ferous deposits which succeeded them. Fora thousand miles around 
New York, such ancient primitive strata stretch in a nearly level and 
unchanged condition ; and in Russia, vast plains and low hill-regions 
are similarly unaltered, until, in their range towards the igneous 
eruptive masses of the Urals, they become crystalline and meta- 
morphosed. 

In our own land, the old Cambrian rocks are not more altered in 
structural character than the Silurian beds above them, in which 
fossils are abundantly found. There is, therefore, no physical obstruc- 
tion to the preservation in the fossilized state of the living creatures 
and plants of the primeval lands or seas, 

We should bear in mind, however, that of these old rocks we have 
as yet but scauty knowledge ; that there are abroad, both in Europe 
and America, great masses of unfossiliferous rock underlying the 
Silurian strata which have never been searched for organic remains ; 
and that even in our typical region, the Longmynd, there are Cam- 
brian strata, both above and below the fossiliferous bands, in which as 
yet nothing has been found, and therefore we may still hope to obtain 
further and more correct evidence of the fauna and flora of that vastly 
remote era. 

We have then, in mental vision, Jooked through the long vista of 
past ages, to see the first-born lands of our mother-earth joyously bask- 
ing in the smiles of the sun, bathed in the tear-drops of the clouds, and 
searred with the blasts of the waves and the storms. We have looked 
back. at least, to perceive a world governed by the same natural laws 
as our own. But how little, after all, do we know of that primitive 
world! How hard, through the mists and obscurities of myriad ages, 
to trace out any of its features! As a babe unfolding its eyes to the 


192 THE GEOLOGIST. 


day stares vacantly around, so the most gigantic mind first gazes, by ’ 
God’s will mercifully, on the first aspect of creation. 

Like that of the child, day by day the mind of the student acquires 
strength, until at last it grasps within its own capacity the whole 
expanse, and bravely treads in fields unknown, undaunted, undeterred ; 
at every stride becoming more and more reverently and devoutly 
impressed with the mysterious powers and attributes of our great 
Eternal Father. 

We have spoken all that is known of the first world and its inha- 
bitants, and these are the legends of the Bottom-rocks. In one of the 
sweet tales bequeathed to us by our Saxon forefathers of the Venerable 
Bede, we are told that a boy in mockery once led the venerable old 
man, when blind with age, into a vale “that lay all thickly sowed 
with mighty rocks,” and in mischief told him “many men wanted to 
hear him.” Eloquently and long the gentle preacher expounded on 
the wonderful ways and goodness of God, until “the tears ran down 
his hoary beard,” and “when at the close, as seemeth always meet, 
he prayed ‘Our FaTHER,’ and pronounced aloud 

‘ Thine is the kingdom, and the power, THINE 
The glory now and through eternity,’ 
“at once there rang through all the echoing vale a sound of many 
thousand voices, crying, Amen! most reverend sire, Amen! Amen !” 

Truly, from the primeval rocks rings out the universal response, 
echoed and re-echoed from innumerable world-clusters, and from every 
portion of illimitable space through which the Creative Energy has 
passed in its eternal and ever-expanding progress, THINE is the 
kingdom, the power, and the glory. Amen, Amen. 


WETHERELL—ON NODULAR CONCRETIONS IN FLINTS. 193 


NOTICE OF THE OCCURRENCE IN FLINTS OF SMALL 
SILICEOUS NODULAR CONCRETIONS, CONTAINING 
DIFFERENT SPECIES OF FORAMINIFERA. 


By N. T. Weruerett, Esa., M.R.CS. 


I HAVE often observed in flints from the gravel-pits in the vicinity 
of Highgate, and at Finchley, Whetstone, and Muswell-hill, small 
rounded bodies, about the size of a pea. When the flints are fractured, 
these bodies are generally broken across, and in some instances I have 
found them to contain Foraminifera.* 


EXPLANATION OF FIGURES. 


Fig. 1.—Section of a flint with Cristellaria rotulata. a. Specimen not surrounded by a pea-like 

concretion. _ 5. Specimen surrounded by a nodular body.— Whetstone gravel-pit. 

», 2.—Portion of a flint with two nodular bodies having hollow centres; the fossils forming the 
nuclei having disappeared.—Musvwell-hill, 

os sais af a flint having externally nodular bodies with Foraminifera in their centres.— 

inchley. 

,, 4.—Portion of a flint with a smooth surface, on which is visible a water-worn nodular body 
exposing a Foraminifer in the middle. 

», 9.—Portion of broken flint with numerous sections of minute nodular bodies.— Whetstone. 


As yet, I have only seen one fossil in 
the centre of each of these small nodules, 
and I think it is probable that the major 
part, if not all, of them have an organic 
centre, although many, when broken, do not 

Fig. 6. exhibit the nucleus. This, I consider, can 

be explained as follows :—The nodule may 

be fractured above the centre, as along the line a a’, fig. 6; or below, 
as at 6 ’. In either of these cases, the fossil, c, in the centre, which 


* Mr. T. Rupert Jones has, with his usual kindness, given me the names of 
several of the species—Cristellaria rotulata, Nodosaria zippei, Lituola nautiloidea, 
L. wregularis, &e. NAT We 


194 THE GEOLOGIST. 


in general is very small, would not be visible. Again, it is a well- — 
known fact, that many organic remains in flint have been removed 
by natural causes, leaving very little or no trace of their former 
existence, so that, in this latter instance, the centre may be exposed 
without any of the original organic structure being discoverable. 
There is an interesting specimen, from Muswell-hill, fig. 2, having 
two of the nodules with the centres hollowed out ; the fossils having 
thus disappeared. 

These small concretionary bodies are in most flints very easily 
detected, from their having usually a very different aspect and colour 
from the flint which surrounds them. Different specimens vary in 
thickness, and some are opaque, others semi-transparent. 

On looking over a gravel-heap, flints are occasionally met with 
having rough and irregular external surfaces.. On such surfaces I 
have detected many of the pea-like concretions above alluded to. 
These have generally the upper or most exposed part flattened from 
attrition, and occasionally the concretions are so much water-worn as 
to expose the fossil in their centres. Sometimes these small bodies 
are found partly rubbed down on the flints with a smooth exterior. 
Although I have drawn particular attention to the fact that many of 
these bodies are of the size of a pea, I should observe that much 
larger, as also very minute, examples occur. They vary also in shape 
from spherical to oviform and subcylindrieal. 

I am induced to make this communication, as it bears upon the 
subjects noticed in my two recent papers read before the Geological 
Society respecting the organic centres of the nodular concretions in 
the London clay, and on the origin of the structure of some banded 
flints. 


ree 


GIBB—A CHAPTER ON FOSSIL LIGHTNING. 195 


A CHAPTER ON FOSSIL LIGHTNING. 
By G. D. Gres, M.D., M.A., F.G.S., Member of the Canadian Institute. 


b 


Tue expression “ fossil lightning” may seem somewhat paradoxical, 
but it is here employed in a figurative sense to designate a condition 
of things which we have good modern evidence to prove to have been 
the result of the lightning’s flash, myriads of ages gone by. Of late 
years vitrified sand-tubes have been discovered in Cumberland, in 
Prussia, South America, Natal, and other places ; and these have been 
very clearly made out as having been directly caused by lightning, 
and hence they have been called by mineralogists “ Fulminary tubes” 
or Fulgurites. All these would appear, so far as we can ascertain, to 
have been formed at comparatively a very recent period, and hardly, 
therefore, deserving of the appellation of “fossil lightning.” Never- 
theless, as I have come across some examples of such bodies on the 
surface of the flagstones which form our pavements, and of the an- 
tiquity of which there cannot be any doubt whatever, I have no 
hesitation in making use of the term which heads this chapter. 

If I had at one time any scruples upon this point, they were re- 
moved whilst attending the instructive lectures so eloquently delivered 
by that great philosopher and distinguished comparative anatomist, 
Professor Owen, at the Museum of Practical Geology, in the early 
part of the last year. He used this expression, in his first lecture on 
Fossil Birds, when particularly speaking of the various modes in which 
the evidences of evanescent things become recognisably preserved 
in rock, as illustrated by meteoric phenomena, footprints, soft and 
soluble plants, and animals. The “fossil lightning,” as exhibited in 
the British Museum, he lucidly described, and pronounced some of it 
even to be forked. As further illustrating evanescence, I may for the 
moment refer to some specimens of rain-prints and shrinkage-cracks 
on the under side of layers of carboniferous sandstone from Cape 
Breton (Nova Scotia), figured and described by Sir Charles Lyell, in 
the Geological Society’s Journal and in his “ Manual of Geology.” 
The large size of the rain-drops would indicate most probably a vio- 


196 THE GEOLOGIST. 


lent shower, lasting but a short period of time, and followed by a 
gleam of sunshine which was powerful enough to produce a rapid 
drying of the sand, and the formation of shrinkage-cracks, which, 
together with the depressions formed by the rain-drops, the latter 
often so strikingly marked as to indicate the very direction of the 
shower, became covered by a thin layer of sand on the next flowing 
of the tide. The shrinkage-cracks and the large drops of rain I have 
heard described as instances of fossil sunshine. 

Fulgurites were first discovered by the shepherd Herman in 1711, 
whose specimens are still preserved in the Museum at Dresden ; 
Hentzen next found them, in 1805, and he was the first to recognise 
their true nature. They are generally compressed in form, mostly 
hollow, and taper in their descent into the sand vertically. Some are 
distinctly furcated, and in many specimens lateral branches, also tu- 
bular and from two to three inches long, and not exceeding a quarter 
of an inch at the point of junction, proceed from various parts of the 
parent tube. These small branches gradually bend downwards, and . 
assume a more or less conical form, terminating in abrupt and closed 
points. If the lightning has encountered the resistance of pebbles, or 
has passed through wet sand, the tube becomes not only contorted 
and twisted in its course, but is also much flattened and compressed. 
Mr. Irton found a tube at Drigg, which was hollow for eight or nine 
inches, then became completely solid without any central perforation, 
while lower down it again assumed the rugged and tubular condition.* 

The extreme diameter (or bore (?) of the lightning) of these tubes 
is an inch and a half;+ the internal cavity is rarely circular, being 
either triangular, quadrangular, pentangular, oval, or some irregular 
figure ; their length, as stated before, is from a few feet to upwards 
of forty feet ; the thickness of their walls has reached -4,th of an inch, 
and their largest circumference from two to five inches, as I have 
determined by actual measurement. 

Nearly all the tubes met with have numerous longitudinal furrows 
and indentations on their external surface, and have not inaptly been 

* Trans. Geol. Soc. vols. ii. and v. 

+ The agglutinating power of the electric fluid sometimes forms a mass of 22 


inches diameter, with a tube above and below it ; many such interruptions have 


been found in the course of a single tube, from the lightning having met with 
obstacles in its passage. 


GIBB.—A CHAPTER ON FOSSIL LIGHTNING. 197 


compared to a shrivelled vegetable stalk, or the bark of certain trees, 
particularly the elm, the birch, and the cork. These furrows and 
creases are considered to be the result of the compression of the sur- 
rounding loose sand, while the tube was still softened from the effects 
of the intense heat. Perfectly cylindrical fragments, free from furrows, 
have, however, been discovered, with a circumference of four inches. 
By the aid of a small magnifying glass, the external surface of the 
tube is seen to be covered with a crust of agglutinated sand or quartz, 
each particle being visibly surrounded by vitreous matter, the grains 
being also round in form, some having a slightly glazed appearance. 
The internal surface of the tubes is quite smooth and glassy, and com- 
pletely vitrified, with a corresponding irregularity of form to that of 
the exterior. Extreme compressiom acting on the tube in its soft 
state, has in some cases caused the opposite sides of many of the 
furrows to come into contact and be welded together ; in this way the 
tube is occasionally so much flattened as to be obliterated. The in- 
‘ternal glassy smoothness is brilliant and porcellaneous, and resembles 
many mineral substances, particularly opal and hyalite. 

The colour of these tubes varies according to the nature of the sand 
into which the lightning has penetrated. Those from Drigg and 
La Plata are of a light-drab colour, and, if minutely examined, nume- 
rous black specks are seen, with what seem to be air-blebs, or 
perhaps bubbles of steam. It is the white quartzose grains which 
lave become vitrified in all the specimens, imparting to the tube-mass 
a sufficient amount of hardness to permit the scratching of glass, and 
even the striking of fire with steel ; they are nevertheless easily broken. 
All the vitrified tubes from Natal are of a dark ferruginous brown 
colour, owing to impregnation with iron; the largest of these are not 
quite so dark as the smaller. In certain localities the tubes have 
been found, firstly on passing through the soil almost black, then 
yellowish-grey, still lower of greyish-white, and finally colourless; 
these variations depending upon the purity of the sand from, or its 
admixture with, other substances. The electric fusion is not solely 
confined to the less refractory quartz, but in some instances at Drigg 
has extended to pebbles of hornstone-porphyry, many of which were 
partly vitrified. 

In the foregoing description of “ recent lightning,” I have confined 

VOL, Il. g 


198 THE GEOLOGIST. 


myself to those tubes which are hollow ; but, as I have stated, occa- 
sionally this character is wanting, and many of them terminate in the 
solid state, it is only necessary then to mention that even the vertical 
penetration is characterised by the same peculiarity; thus of the 
fulgurites from Natal, very small specimens do not appear to be 
tubular, but resemble the horizontal cylinders from Dresden. 

That the formation of fulgurites, whether recent or fossil, is due to 
the vitrification of the siliceous matter through which the electrie 
fluid passes, we have clear proofs by our knowledge not only of the 
meteoric phenomena of the districts in which they are found, but also 
by the results of various series of experiments which have been from 
time to time instituted to produce them artificially. In relation to 
the first, the neighbourhood of the Rio Plata, close to where Mr. 
Darwin found them, was known to be remarkably subject to electrie 
phenomena; and the sand-hillocks of Drigg, in Cumberland, from 
presenting thernselves as direct objects to clouds coming from the sea, 
the marshes of Irt cnly intervening, are favourably situated-for pro- 
moting electrical discharges. ‘The experiments made seem, too, very 
conclusive, and are full of interest. The Drigg-sand consists of quartz 
and hornstone-porphyry, and, when submitted to the action of a power- 
ful blow-pipe, formed a clear glass mingled with olive discolorations 
resembling the fulgurites.* MM. Hachette, Savart, and Beudant 
feebly imitated these bodies by the shocks of one of the most power- 
ful galvanic batteries in Paris on powdered quartz, the result being 
small tubes of an inch in length.t I have experimented upon various 
kinds of sand with a powerful blowpipe, and have produced glass 
varying in colour according to the composition of the sand. The 
majority of light-coloured sands I find to assumena slight rusty colour, 
on being submitted to a considerable heat, before actual fusion occurs. 
All these, however, are but feeble evidences of the power of electricity 
prepared by ourselves, when contrasted with that which constitutes 
the lightning’s flash, the intensity of which can be estimated by the 
descriptions given of these remarkable bodies. Were any further 
evidence required to prove these fulgurites to be the result of light- 
ning, it is only necessary to refer to descriptions given of trees struck 
by the electric fluid, when there have been found at the depth of from 


* Trans. Geol. Soe. vol. ii, + Annales de Chim. et Phy. tom. 37. 


GIBB—A CHAPTER ON FOSSIL LIGHTNING. 199 


twelve to eighteen inches from their roots, melted quartzose matter, 
and vitrified tubes, of a flattened form with zigzag projections. Our 
wonder is, that such manifestations of the effects of lightning are really 
not more commonly noticed than they seem to have been, when we 
call to mind the observation of Sir Charles Lyell, that “it is probable 
a moment never passes without a flash of lightning striking some part 
of the earth.”* 

In London, the reader may see fulgurites in the Museum of the 
Geological Society, including specimens from Drigg, from the shores of 
La Plata, and from Dresden. In the Museum of Practical Geology, 
Jermyn Street, are specimens from Natal, many of them larger in 
size than those from Drigg, as also a tray of small ones. The British 
Museum contains fulgurites from the Tuarie country, Africa; from 
the vicinity of Dresden ; from the Senner Heide, Westphalia; and 
from Drigg. 

Some of those’ from Africa are dark in colour, and more nearly 
resemble those I have seen ina fossil state. The fine state of pre- 
servation of most of these has been owing, no doubt, to the soft and 
dry character of the sand around them. 

The evidences of the power of atmospheric electricity are at times 
made fearfully manifest during thunder-storms, when the electric fluid 
shatters rocks and scatters immense fragments to considerable dis- 
tances, splitting and tearing up trees, levelling houses, fissuring thick 
walls, and melting substances which have been looked upon as infusible. 
Of the last, we have an illustration according to Saussure in the slaty 
hornblende on the Déme du Gouté, one of the summits of Mont 
Blanc ; he found in 1787 vitreous blackish beads, of the size of hemp- 
seed, which were attributed most clearly to the effects of lightning. 
Ramond observed the entire face of certain rocks on several summits 
of the Pyrenees, especially the Pic du Midi and Mont Perdu (the 
latter upwards of 11,000 feet high), and also the rock Sanadoire, in 
the Puy de Dome, varnished with a coating of enamel, and covered 
with vitreous beads, of the size of peas, the result of the same cause; 
the interior of the rock being found quite unchanged. Onthe summit 
of the Pico del Frayle, the highest pinnacle of the Volcano of Toluca, 


* Principles of Geology, 8th edition. 
Q 2 


“ 


200 THE GEOLOGIST. 


in Mexico, upwards of 15,000 fect in height, Humboldt noticed the 
electric effect of lightning. He brought away pieces of a mass of 
trachyte pierced by lightning, and glazed on the inside like lightning- 
tubes; in it the lightning had made cylindrical tubes three inches 
long, in such a manner that the upper and lower openings could be 
distinguished apart, the rock surrounding these openings being also 
vitrified. Avago refers to the vitrification of rock (without tubes), 
which has been seen at a vertical height of 26,650 feet, over an ex- 
tensive surface, at the Lesser Ararat and other places.* I possess a 
specimen of rock from Canada, which (being at the present time mis- 
laid, 1 cannot therefore say positively what it is, but I believe it to 
be syenite) is thus covered on its exposed surface by a distinct coating 
of enamel. Several well-attested facts have been collected by Arago, 
showing the actual vitrification of stones, bricks, and other bodies, by 
lightning. 

To illustrate the immense power of lghtning, in splitting and 
moving large masses of rock, I may be permitted to give the following 
quotation from the MSS. of the Rev. George Low, of Fetlar, in Hib- 
bert’s ‘Shetland Islands :”’— 

“ At Funzie, in Fetlar, about the middle of the last century, a rock 
of mica-schist, 105 feet long, 10 feet broad, and in some places 4 feet 
thick, was in an instant torn by a flash of hghtning from its bed, and 
broken into three large and several small fragments. One of these, | 
26 feet long, 10 feet broad, and 4 feet thick, was simply turned over. 
The second, which was 28 feet long, 17 broad, and 5 feet in thickness, 
was hurled across a high point to a distance of 50 yards. Another 
broken mass, about 40 feet long, was thrown still farther, but in the 
same direction, quite into the sea. There were also many smaller 
fragments scattered up and down.” 

It is in loose sand that we meet with the silicified tubes produced 
by lightning in the greatest abundance. Almost any substance is 
liable to be melted that contains even the smallest portion of silex. — 

My friend, Dr. Bigsby, informs me he has seen, many years ago, 
what he believes to be the effects of lightning in the chalk near 
Carisbrook, Isle of Wight. These consisted of tubes, perpendicular to 


* Humboldt’s Cosmos, vol. i. and vol. iv. 


GIBB—A CHAPTER ON FOSSIL LIGHTNING. 201 


the surface, which were vitrified and glassy in their interior, and the 
chalk itself affected for a short distance around them. They were. 
quite or nearly straight; in size, from half an inch to an inch in 
diameter, and were exposed in a fissure of the chalk. About three 
feet of these tubes were visible, and then they became lost. 

The finest examples of these lightuing-tubes which have come under 
my notice in the London museums are those from Drigg, in Cumber- 
land, in the Museum of the Geological Society, and which have been 
described in that Society’s Transactions. They appear to be the most 
perfect, although larger tubes have been found at Natal. In speaking 
of these I shall combine a general description of the whole. 

It is in banks, hillocks, or mounds of loose sand, that they are gene- 
rally met with, sometimes, however, in immense hollows, or occa- 
sionally on declivities of mounds of sand. At Drigg they were 
discovered in the middle of sand-banks forty feet high, between the 
river Irt and the sea, but projecting above the surface from the drifting 
away of the sand. ‘These sand-banks are exceeded both in extent and 
height by those at Eskmeols, in the same county. On the shores of 
La Plata, in South America, Mr. Darwin found them in the sand- 
hillocks of Moldonado, which were constantly changing their position 
from not being protected by vegetation. This circumstance caused 
them to be found projecting above the surface, as at Drigg, and Mr. 
Darwin inferred, from finding numerous fragments lying about, that 
they had at one time been buried at a greater depth.* These 
occurred in a level area of shifting sand, situated among some high 
sand-hillocks, distant about half a mile from a chain of hills 400 and 
500 feet high. In the Senne, Westphalia, similar tubes were found 
on the declivities of mounds of sand thirty feet high; but occasionally 
some were noticed in cavities, described as hollowed out in the heath 
in the form of great bowls, 200 feet in circumference, with a depth of 
from twelve to fifteen feet. 

The position in which these tubes are found is one of some interest 
and importance. As usually encountered, they run vertically into 
the sand, at a varying depth. On the banks of La Plata four sets 
entered the sand perpendicularly, and one was traced 5} feet into the 


* Darwin’s Journal, vol. iii. 1839, p. 69. 


202 THE GEOLOGIST. 


sand by Mr. Darwin ; but, as the diameter of the whole was nearly 
equal, it must have extended to a greater depth. He found one 
deviating from a right line at a considerable bend, amounting to 33°; 
and from this tube two small branches about a foot apart were sent 
off, one pointing downwards and the other upwards. This is an 
illustration of the forked character of the electric fluid, which, besides 
its division into two branches, would seem to have turned back in this 
case at an acute angle of 26° to the line of its main course. At Drigg 
many tubes were found dividing into two branches and pursuing a 
tortuous course into the sand. Some of the tubes gave off several | 
small branches, the diameter of which was not a fifth of the tube 
whence they sprang ; others, again, deviated almost at right angles, 
glancing off, as it seemed, by the interruption of a pebble, as in the 
example figured in the Geological Society’s Transactions (vol. v. First 
Series, pl. 3). | 

Tt is looked upon as a fact somewhat remarkable, that quite a 
number of tubes have been discovered to enter the surface of these 
sand-hills in comparatively limited areas ; at least, such was the case 
at Drigg, on the shores of La Plata, and also in Germany. Mr. 
Darwin counted more than four within a space of sixty yards by 
twenty. Three were noticed within an area of fifteen yards, upon 
a single hillock at Drigg ; and the same number were found in an 
equally limited space in Germany, as described by M. Ribbentrop. 
In considering this peculiarity, Mr. Darwin believes in the improba- 
bility of these tubes being produced by successive and distinct shocks 
—an opinion in which most persons will concur. Yet, whilst acknow- 
ledging the possibility of a division of the lightning into separate 
branches shortly before entering the ground, as suggested by him, I 
still think that the electric fluid may have run along the surface of 
the sand, and then entered it at different spots remotely situated 
from one another. This view is by no means irrational, when we 
reflect upon the truly singular peculiarities associated with this won- 
derful fluid, which may be seen at times to run along the surface of 
bodies and suddenly disappear. The intensity of its action, too, is 
oftentimes modified by the amount of resistance offered by substances 
struck by it. On the other hand, the electric fluid may divide into 


Se 


GIBB—A CHAPTER ON FOSSIL LIGHTNING. 203 


several distinct currents, which would enter the surface at the 
distance of many yards from each other. 

The greatest depth to which the electric fluid has penetrated verti- 
cally, as demonstrated at Drigg, is forty feet; but I should be 
disposed to estimate the length of horizontal fusion at a much greater 
amount. i 

The majority of the fulgurites which I have had the opportunity of 
examining, have entered the sand vertically ; but some, again, ran 
along the surface of the sand in a horizontal direction. And it is 
this latter form only that we can expect to meet with in a fossil state. 
As examples of horizontal recent tubes, I may refer to specimens from 
Dresden, in the British Museum and in the Museum of the Geological 
Society. In the former collection the tube is very small, and runs in 
a somewhat tortuous manner, giving off a small branch five inches 
long, the entire length being sixteen feet and two-thirds; but the 
original must have been very much longer, as this is but a portion of 
it. This example was presented by Dr. Fiedler, who has published 
a work on fulgurites in German, to which I have not had aceess ; 
but was obtained “on the confines of Holland, in a sandy country ; a 
shepherd, after having seen the lightning strike a hillock of sand, 
found, in the very point where it struck, a fulgurite.” The Geological 
Society's specimen is eighteen inches long, and as large as a lead- 
pencil. Both of these examples are solid, without any internal cavity, 
and it seems a question in my mind whether actual tubes are ever 
found in any other than a vertical position. ‘The examples in a fossil 
state which have come across my notice, and which first drew my 
attention to the subject, appear to have been found only in the solid 
form,* and partaking of the horizontal position. There are three 
flagstones on the eastern side of Tottenham Court Road which con- 
tain fulgurites of a lightish colour, running in forked directions. 
There is one on the eastern side of Russell Square, close to Guildford 
Street, on the surface of which a dark ferruginous tube of “ fossil 
lightning” runs diagonally across the stone, its diameter being about 
two lines. I have noticed them in three or four other places in the 


_* I state this with some reservation, because I have seen a section of what looks 
like a lightning-tube in a sandstone door-step. It has four irregularly compressed 
sides, and presents very much the appearance of one of these bodies. 


204 THE GEOLOGIST. 


same parish, and feel satisfied they are the actual results of lightning ; 
and whilst preparing this paper, I have come across a flagstone on thé 
northern side of the Marylebone Road, running on the south side 
of Park Square, Regent’s Park (two-thirds of the way towards the 
eastern end of the square), which contains one of the finest examples 
I have yet seen. The age of these flags I am unable to determine ; * 
but at any rate, by thus drawing attention to the subject, I hope it will 
lead to the discovery and preservation of fossil specimens, even in the 
oldest sandstones, for there is no reason to doubt the existence of 
electrical influences at the very earliest ages of our planet. 


LOCALITIES OF FULGURITES. 


Britarin.—Fossil in sandstone flags .. . . . . Dr. Gibb. 

Drieg, Cumberland - 20.0. 28 ve Oa 
EskMEALS, in larger sand-banks near the same placet. Mr. Richd. Falcon. 
LANCASHIRE, coasts of . Sa oeaae ere, . Greg and Lettsom. 


CaRisBrook, Isle of Wight ( Ges) Ee See Bigsby. 
Dover, Chalk Cliffs, i. :,.-,05 vyfer, yay oaeue eo eee i ackae: 
GERMANY. Premera i Si ibal air aay a) INL, Ja SOS MRO: 


Mass, Silesia’ 95420530. 8 EI a ES Sleletenmverine 

La Senne, Heath of Paderbarn, Westphalia . . . Dr. Hentzen. 
NietiLesen, near Halle on the Saale. 
ReGcenstern, near Blankenburg. 

Priuav, near Konigsberg, Eastern Prussia. 
Drespen, vicinity of Aisha arg eit 
TuaRtE Country, Africa. 


Dr. H. K. Fiedler. 


Navan do. 

Laxe or Two Movunrarns, Canada§. . . .,. . Dr. Gibb. 
Prnnacur or Touuca, Mexico... . |. 7. se eomboldits 
Manponapo, Rio de la ‘Plata =. > te) ie, arwine 


Banta, Brazil. 


* These flagstones are probably from the lower carboniferous rocks of Yorkshire ; 
atjleast, nearly all London is paved with such flags—Ep. Grou. . 

+ Near this spot are the remains of an old Roman encampment ; and occasion- 
ally coins, with other objects of interest, are turned up. 

+ This instance referred to by Dr. Gibb was a case of a double or furcated 
perforation in a thick layer of clay covering the Castle Hill at Dover, made by a 
powerful stream of lightning, which, when a lad, I saw strike the ground at an 
elevated point. It can scarcely be called a fulgurite, as the clay was only coated 
on the surface with bluish-grey beads and grains, powdered, as it were, like the 
bloom of a peach. The perforations forked at about nine inches from the upper 
surface of the soil, apparently divided by one of the numerous angular fragments 
of flint which abound in the subsoil, and were of sufficient dimensions for me to 
put my arm with my walking-stick into them. The branches had divergent 
directions, as nearly as I can remember, of 30° or 35° on either hand from an 
imaginary intermediate vertical line. Their forms were irregularly angular, with 
ridges, as in the fulgurites, but they were of far larger diameter than any of the 
latter objects I have ever seen. D—S. J. M. 

§ When strolling over the sand-banks of the hills at this place, when a youth, 


I discovered substances which I now believe were these tubes. 


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 205 


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 
By Dr. T. L. Parpson, oF Paris. 


Earthquake at Pavia—A Lesson to Astronomers—Supposed Relation 
between Larthquakes and the Phases of the Moon—Descloizeaux on the 
Optical Properties of Crystals—Delesse on Metamorphism by Granite- 
Rocks. 


A LETTER to the editor of the Corrispondenza Scientifica in Roma, by 
Sig. Zantedeschi, dated 20th January, 1859, informs us that on that 
day, at fifty-seven minutes past eight in the morning, three shocks of an 
earthquake were felt at Pavia. The undulatory movement of the 
ground was very great. Various objects in the houses were set in 
motion, bells were rung, doors burst open, &c. The duration of the 
phenomenon was about seven seconds. The undulations of the ground 
were nearly due north and south. The pendulum of a clock belonging 
to Sig. Zantedeschi, which oscillates from north to south, was not 
stopped by the earthquake ; but the clocks of the observatory, the 
pendulums of which oscillate east and west, were all stopped. This 
is a timely warning to astronomers, in countries where earth- 
quakes are common phenomena. It is of no little importance that 
the pendulums of clocks belonging to astronomical observatories 
should be placed in such a manner that they may oscillate in different 
directions ; so that, if a sudden commotion of the earth take place, 
one or two clocks at most will be stopped by the undulations of the 
ground. 

At Pavia, during the earthquake of which we speak, the atmosphere 
was calm and the sky serene. The moon was full on the 18th, two 
days before the earthquake. This is another observation to be added 
to those already collected by M. Perrey, of Dijon, with a view of 
proving that earthquakes are more frequent at the periods of the new 
and full moon than at the quadratures. According to M. Perrey, the 
greatest tides of the internal liquid mass of the globe must correspond 
with those of the waters on the surface of the earth. Apropos of this, 
Madame Caterina Scarpellini, who is at present occupied with meteor- 
ological observations on the Capitol at Rome, has attentively observed 
earthquakes throughout the year 1858, and writes to M. Elie de 
Beaumont that her observations, as far as they go, confirm the idea 
brought forward by M. Perrey, that there exists a certain relation 
between these phenomena and the phases of the moon. The question 
of the “ internal liquid mass” of the globe we feel inclined to leave 
alone for the present. 


206 THE GEOLOGIST. 


M. Descloizeaux, a distinguished mineralogist of Paris, who won 
himself some reputation by his geological mission to Iceland, has been 
studying for a long time the optical properties of crystals. He has 
lately addressed to the Academy of Sciences a new memoir on this 
subject, and hopes soon to have completed his numerous observations 
on double refraction, principal axes of refraction, their number, posi- 
tion, and relations to the optical axes, the laws of dispersion, &c., in 
transparent minerals. It appears that the number of transparent 
substances in the mineral world, including those which are transparent 
enough when taken in thin Jamine to give passage to a ray of light, 
is about 180. Of these, 166, of which eighty-one have one axis, and 
eighty-five two axes, have been completely studied by M. Descloizeaux. 
Twelve alone remain of which the optical co-efficients are not yet satis- 
factorily determined. 

We have alluded in former papers to the action of metamorphism 
by eruptive rocks on combustibles (lignite, coal, &ec.), also to the 
action of lava and trap-rocks on limestones, argillaceous strata, and 
sandstones. We have now before us a new memoir by M. Delesse, in 
which granite is the eruptive rock under consideration. 

When metamorphism is studied with respect to granite-rocks it is 
seen that their effects differ notably from those produced by the 
different varieties of trap. The following are the characters presented 
by strata that have undergone metamorphism by contact with 
granite. If the rock acted upon be limestone, it often happens that it 
has not been modified at all, even where it has been penetrated, or 
even where it has been covered over, by granite. The glauconite, so 
frequent in calcareous strata, remains also unaltered. More frequently, 
however, the structure of the calcareous rock has become crystalline, 
and of a paler colour, having passed into saccharoid limestone. If the 
limestone be argillaceous, it has become very compact and lithoid, but 
not silicified. -In some cases it has become cavernous, but has not 
passed into dolomite ; oftentimes, indeed, it contains less magnesia 
where it is in immediate contact with the upheaved granite. Among 
the minerals that have been developed in limestone under these cir- 
cumstances, we must name more especially spathic carbonates, quartz, 
and minerals common in metallic lodes. The latter form serpentine 
veins in the metamorphosed rock, or line some of its cavities. 

When a siliceous rock has been upheaved by granite, we observe 
that the metamorphism has been equally irregular ; sometimes com- 
pletely null ; sometimes so complete that the whole rock has been 
transformed into transparent quartz. Quartz must in this case be 
noted as the most important mineral developed in immediate contact 
with granite. Next comes sulphate of baryta, with which the quartz 
is often associated, fluor-spar, and the minerals of metallic lodes. 

When the rock modified by granite is argillaceous, its structure has 
become schistose or lithoid. In some cases this structure approaches 
to that of jasper; but it has not been observed to have taken a 
vitreous aspect (as if quartz had been formed). When the argillaceous 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 207 


rock contains carbonate of lime, its structure has become sometimes 
cellular or amygdaloid. 

Rocks or strata metamorphosed by granite are not observed to con- 
tain zeolites ; as we have before remarked is the case with strata in 
contact with lava or trap-rock ; but they often contain tourmaline 
and the minerals which generally accompany the latter. Numerous 
minerals are developed, however, by contact with granite, especially 
when the metamorphosed rock is argillaceous. Some of the most 
frequent are mica, macle, staurotide, disthene, dipyre, garnet, horn- 
blende, graphite, and spinelle. These minerals, although formed in- 
contestably by the metamorphic action of granite, do not owe their 
existence to the immediate contact of the eruptive rock. M. Delesse 
supposes them to have been formed in a certain zone around the 
granite at the moment the granite itself became crystalline. He 
refers them to his “ normal metamorphisms,”’ which we described in 
one of our previous papers; and he remarks that the metamorphic 
effects of granite extend to great distances, as normal metamorphism, 
but, that, as phenomena of wmmediate contact, they are very much 
more limited than we have hitherto been led to suppose. 

We have thus terminated our rapid sketch of the effects produced 
on the different stratified deposits by the upheaval of igneous or 
plutonic rocks. In a future article we will glance at the other side of 
the question—the action that the different strata have exercised upon 
the rocks that have uplifted them and modified their structure and 
composition. 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES, 


GEOLOGICAL Society oF Lonpon.—March 23d, 1859.—Prof. J. Phillips, 
President, in the chair. 

The following communications were read :— 

1. “On some Amphibian and Reptilian Remains from South Africa and 
Australia.” By Thomas H. Huxley, F'.R.S., Sec. G. S., Prof. of Natural History, 
Government School of Mines. 

The author described in the first place the remains of a small Labyrinthodont, 
Amphibian, which he proposed to call Micropholis Stowti. The fossil was dis- 
covered by Mr. Stow, and accompanied that gentleman’s paper “On some Fossils 
from South Africa,” read before the Society on the 17th of November last, on 
which occasion Prof. Huxley expressed the opinion that it would prove to be an 
Amphibian, and probably a Labyrinthodont. 

It had been found impossible to work out the back part of the skull, so as to 
exhibit the occipital condyles, but the characters of the few cranial bones which 
remain, of the teeth, and of the lower jaw, and the traces of a largely developed 
hyoidean apparatus, afforded sufficiently convincing evidence of the aflinities of 
Micropholis. 

The generic appellation is based on the occurrence of numerous minute polygonal 


208 THE GEOLOGIST. 


bony scutes on the integument of the under surface of the head; in which 
character Micropholis has a remote resemblance to Archegosawrus. The scutes, 
however, are very different in their aspect from those of the last-named genus. 

Micropholis has little resemblance with any Kuropean Labyrinthodonts, except 
Metopias, and the singular so-called ‘‘ Labyrinthodon Bucklandi,” from the Trias 
of Warwickshire, to the peculiarities of which the author alluded, proposing to 
consider it as the type of a new genus, which might be termed ‘*‘ Dasyceps.”__ 

On the other hand, there are two southern forms of Labyrinthodonts, which 
exhibit many similarities to Micropholis. These are the Bachyops laticeps of Prof. 
Owen, from Central India, and a new form allied to Brachyops, but distinct from 
it, from Australia. This last was described and named Bothriceps Australis. 

The author stated that he was not prepared to draw any very decided conclusion 
as to the age of the Karoo- or Dicynodon-beds, from the faet of the occurrence of 
Labyrinthodont Amphibia in them, inasmuch as the Labyrinthodonts range from 
the Lower Lias to the Carboniferous Formation inclusive; and Micropholis is 
unlike any of the Labyrinthodonts whose precise age is known. 

The fragmentary remains of a young reptile, which were found associated with 
Micropholis, were stated by Prof. Huxley to be undoubtedly those of a Dicynodon. 
Of this, however, and of a small Dicynodont skull from the same locality, he 
promised to speak on a future occasion. 

The second part of the paper consisted of a description of the structure of the 
cranium, of the sclerotic ring, of a fragmentary sacrum, and of the humerus of the 
new species of Dicynodon (D. Murray) from near Colesberg, which was charac- 
terised at a previous meeting of the Society (February 23). Particular attention 
was directed to the unusually complete ossification of the cranio-facial axis, and to 
the striking resemblance in the structure of the bony walls of the olfactory 
apparatus to that which obtains in Birds. Prof. Huxley, in conclusion, gave a 
sketch of the general proportions of the Dicynodon, so far as the evidence yet 
obtained allows a judgment to be formed, and particularly alluded to the existence 
of a long series of caudal vertebree. Specimens of the fossil-wood found with the 
remains of D. Murrayi had been submitted to Dr. Hooker, and declared by him to 
be coniferous. 

2. “On Rhamphorhynchus Bucklandi, a Pterosaurian from the Stonesfield 
Slate.” By Thomas H. Huxley, F.R.S., Sec. G.S., Prof. of Natural History, 
Government School of Mines. ; 

The author based his account of this Pterosaurian upon a fine fragment of a 
lower jaw, discovered by the Earl of Ducie in the quarries of Sarsden, near Chip- 
ping Norton,—on a coracoid bone from the Stonesfield slate, in the collection of 
the Museum of Practical Geology,—on a large fragment of a lower jaw in the 
Museum of the Society, and a very fine specimen of a lower jaw in the Museum of 
the College of Surgeons. The ascription of the coracoid to the same species as 
that to which the jaws belong was admitted to be hypothetical, but their propor-— 
tions agree sufficiently well to give probability to the supposition. Furthermore, 
the author did not suppose it to be absolutely demonstrable that the jaws and 
coracoid in question, supposing them to be of one species, were of the same species 
as those Pterosaurian remains discovered by Dr. Buckland in the Stonesfield 
slate many years ago, and (though never described) named after him Pterodactylus 
Bucklandi ; but, as a specific name unaccompanied by a description is of no 
authority, and as there is no evidence of the existence of more than one species of 
Pterosaurian in the Stonesfield slate, it seemed that the adoption of the specific 
name Bucklandi would have the least tendency to create confusion. 

These remains prove that the Stonesfield Pterosaurian belonged to the genus 
RKhamphorhynchus of Von Meyer, and that it had nearly twice the size of the 
liassic Dimorphodon macronyx. The mandible of R. Buck/andé is remarkable for 
its stoutness and the depth of its rami towards the symphysis, which is short and 
produced into a stout curved median edentulous rostrum. The teeth are similar 
in form, flattened and sharp-pointed, distinct, and not more than seven in number 
on each side ; the last tooth is situated rather behind the junction of the middle 
with the posterior third of the jaw. The author took occasion to refer inci- 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 209 


dentally to some undescribed peculiarities in the structure of the coracoid of 
Dimorphodon macronyx. 

3. “On a Fossil Bird and a Fossil Cetacean from New Zealand.” By Thomas 
H. Huxley, F.R.S., Sec. G.S., Prof. of Natural History, Government School of 
Mines. 

These remains were, the right tarso-metatarsal bone of a member of the Penguin 
family, allied to Hudyptes, but imdicating a bird of much larger size than any 
living species of that genus, larger indeed than even the largest Aptenodytes, and 
to which the name of Paleudyptes antarcticus was given,—and the left humerus 
of a small cetacean, more nearly resembling that of the common Porpoise than 
that of any other member of the order (Balena, Balenoplera, Monodon, Delphinus, 
Orca, Hyperoodon) with which the author had been able to compare it. Never- 
theless, as there are very marked differences between the fossil humerus and that 
of Phocena, Prof. Huxley named the species Phocenopsis Mantelli. Mr. W. 
Mantell, F.G.S., to whom the author was indebted for the opportunity of exam- 
ining these bones, stated that the beds whence they were obtained were certainly 
of Tertiary age, and of much earlier date than the epoch of the Dinornis, which 
he considered to have been contemporaneous with man. The Paleudyptes was 
from an older bed than the Phocenopsis. 

Prof. Huxley drew attention to the remarkable fact that a genus so closely 
allied to the Penguins which now inhabit New Zealand, and are entirely confined 
to the Southern Hemisphere, should have existed at so remote an epoch in the 
same locality. 

4. “On the Dermal Armour of Crocodilus Hastingsie.” By Thomas H. 
Huxley, F.R.S., Sec. G.S., Prof. of Natural History, Government School of 
Mines. 

The author, after briefly mentioning the very complete armour of articulated 
dorsal and ventral scutes which he had recently discovered (and described before 
the Linnean Society) in two of the three living genera of Alligatoride, viz. Caiman 
and Jacare, showed that similar scutes are found associated with the remains of 
Crocodilus Hastingsic, a very fine skull and some scutes of which reptile from 
Hordwell, kindly lent to Prof. Huxley by Mr. 8. Laing, F.G.S., were exhibited. 
With respect to the suggestion of Prof. Owen, that the Alligator Hantoniensis 
might possibly be a variety of Crocodilus Hastingsie, the author stated that he 
had observed in several specimens of the recent Crocodilus palustris, which by its 
straight premaxillo-maxillary suture and the general form ot its skull most nearly 
approaches C. Hastingsie, a tendency to assume the alligator character of a pit, 
instead of a groove, for the reception of the mandibular canine. Sometimes there 
is a pit on one side and a groove on the other, and sometimes incomplete pits on 
both sides in this Crocodile. Crocodilus Hastingsie still more nearly approaches 
the Alligatoride in the number of its teeth and in the characters of the dermal 
armour now described, so that the probability of its occasionally assuming the 
Alligatorian dental pits on both sides is greatly increased. 

[The foregoing Papers were illustrated by specimens and drawings. | 

April 6th, 1859. Prof. J. Phillips, President, in the Chair.—The following 
communication was read :- 

1. “On the Subdivisions of the Inferior Oolite in the South of England, com- 
pared with the Equivalent beds of the same formation on the Yorkshire Coast,” 
by Thomas Wright, M.D., F.R.S.E. (Communicated by T. H. Huxley, Esq., 
Sec. G.S.) With a Note on Dundry Hill, by R. Etheridge, Esq., F.G.S. 

The author first remarked that, since the publication of his memoir ‘‘ On the 
so-called Sands of the Inferior Oolite”’ in the Society’s Journal (vol. xii. p. 292), 
some geologists, both in England and on the Continent, had taken the Liassic 
character of these sands into consideration, and that Oppel, Hébert, and Dewalque 
had agreed with the author on palzontological grounds ; whilst in England Mr. E. 
Hull (of the Geological Survey) had also adopted his views. On the other hand, 
Mr. Liycett and Prof. Buckman in their recent memoirs still regard these sands as 
distinct from the Upper Lias. 

Dr. Wright then described the beds at Bluewick, on the Yorkshire coast, which 
he regards as the equivalents of the ‘ Cephalopoda-bed”’ or “ Jurensis-bed ;” 


210 THE GEOLOGIST. 


namely, some shales and sandstones underlying the rock which he regards as the 
basement-bed of the “ Dogger” or Inferior Oolite. en 

These are—l. (uppermost) Shales with Terebratula trilineata, Belemmnites 
compressus, B. irregularis, and Trigonia Ramsay. 2. Sandstone, yellow, 
with Turritella, Trigonia, Astarte, Ammonites concavus, A. variabilis, &e. 
3. Yellow Sandstone or Serpula-bed. 4. Grey Sandstone or Lingula-bed, 
with Lingula Beanii, Orbicula, Belemnites compressus, B. irregularis, Ammonites 
Mooret, &c. 

The author then observed that the Inferior Oolite in the South of England 
admits of a paleontological subdivision into three zones, having the Fuller’s Karth 
with Ostrea acuminata above, and the Cephalopoda-bed with Ammonites opalinus 
beneath :—1st (uppermost), the zone of Ammonites Parkinsoni ; 2d, zone of Am. 
Humphriesianus ; and 3d, zone of Am. Murchisone. He then described the lowest 
of these zones, that of Am. Murchisone, giving as synonyms “ Dogger” (part), 
Young and Bird, and Phillips ; ‘‘ the central and lower division of the Inferior 
Oolite,” Murchison ; ‘ Fimbria-stage of the Inferior Oolite,” Lycett ; ‘ Brauner 
Jura B,” Quenstedt ; ‘‘Calcaire ledonien” (part), Marcou; “‘ Caleaire 4 en- 
troques,” Cotteau; ‘die Schichten des Am. Murchisonz,” Oppel. The Leck- 
hampton section was then described, as illustrating this zone, which was also 
described in its details as seen at Crickley Hill, near Cheltenham, and at Beacon 
Hill ; also at Frocester Hill and W ootton-under-Edge. 

The preceding sections exhibit the lithological character and stratigraphical re- 
lations of the Pea-grit and Freestones, which, however, undergo great and very 
important modifications when examined over even a limited area,—the Pea-grit 
as regards its structure ; and the Freestone, its thickness. In the Southern 
Cotteswolds the Pea-grit loses its pisolitic character ; and in the eastern part of 
the hill district the Freestones thin out and finally disappear; the Inferior Oolite 
being represented at Stow-on-the-Wold and at Burford by the zone of Ammonites 
Parkinsoni, with its light-coloured ragstones, filled with an abundance of Clypeus 
Plotii, Klein, and forming a ‘‘ Clypeus-grit.” 

The fossils of the Pea-grit and Freestone, and of the Oolite-marl or Fimbria- 
bed, were then enumerated. The Oolite-marl was described as having been pro- 
bably derived from the débris of a Coral-reef: its Nerinzean limestone was parti- 
cularly alluded to. 

The section at the Peak near Robinhood’s Bay afforded the author the equiva- 

ay the zones of Am. Humphriesianus and Am. Murchisone, and was described 
in full. 
. The zone of Am. Humphriesianus was next treated of. Its synonyms are ‘ In- 
ferior Oolite of Dundry Hill,” Conybeare and Phillips; ‘‘ Grey limestone, Bath 
or Great Oolite” (Yorkshire), Phillips ; “‘ Kisenrogenstein (part) und Walk-Erde 
Gruppe,” Fromherz; ‘ Brauner Jura y und 8,” Quenstedt; ‘ Calcaire ferrugi- 
neux,” Terquem; ‘* Blaue Kalke, Korallenschicht, Giganteus-Thone, und Os- 
treen-Kalke” (Quenstedt), Pfizenmeyer. The best types of this zone, so well 
characterised by peculiar Gasteropods and Cephalopods and its ferruginous oolitic 
grains, are seen in the section at Dundry Hill, at Yeovil and Sherbourne in 
Somerset, and at Burton-Bradstock and Chideoak in Dorset. Just as the thinning- 
out of the Murchisone-zone and the absence of the Humphriesianus-zone near 
Burford and other localities in the N.E. parts of the Northleach district brings the 
Parkinsoni-zone nearly into juxtaposition with the clays of the Upper Lias, so the 
thinning-out of the Murchisone-zone at Dundry Hill brings the zone of Am. 
Humphriesianus into close relation with the “‘ Sands of the Upper Lias,” and has 
caused it to be mistaken for the ‘ Oephalopoda-bed” of Frocester and Leck- 
hampton Hills. In the northern Cotteswolds the Humphriesianus-zone is but 
feebly represented. 

The Dundry Hill section was then described in a note by Mr. R. Etheridge, 
F.G.S., as comprising,—1st (lowest), Lower Lias ; 2d, perhaps the ‘‘ Lias Sands ;” 
3d, the Shell-bed ; 4th, Ammonite-bed (not equivalent to the “‘ Cephalopoda-bed” 
of the Cotteswolds) ; 5th to 9th, shelly beds, ragstone, fine-grained oolite, and 
freestone ; some of the latter representing the Bate agoreeeel 

Dr. Wright then described the section in Gristhorpe Bay, from the Cornbrash 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 2h 


to the Millepora-bed;—equal to the zone of Am. Humphriesianus. The fossils of 
these marine and freshwater beds were noted as existing in the cabinets of Leck- 
enby, Bean, and others. 

The zone of Am. Parkinsont has the following synonyms, according to the 
author :—“ Trigonia-grit and Gryphite-grit,” Murchison and Strickland; “ Rag- 
stone and Clypeus-grit,’ Hull; ‘‘Spinosa-stage,” Lycett; ‘‘ Brauner Jura e” 
(pars), and ‘‘ Parkinsonthone, Bratuna Jura 6 und e” (pars), Quenstedt ; “ Calcaire 
a Polypiers,’ Terquem; ‘‘ Die Schichten des Ammonites Parkinsoni,” Oppel. 
This zone is the most persistent of the three subdivisions of the Inferior Oolite, 
and is its only representative in the south-eastern parts of Gloucestershire. 

The sections of Leckhampton Hill, Ravensgate Hill, Cold Comfort, Birdlip Hill, 
and Rodborough Hill afford the fossils and details illustrative of this zone. 

In this communication Dr. Wright endeavoured to show that the Inferior Oolite 
of the South of England admits of a subdivision into three zones of life, and that 
each zone is characterised by the presence of Mollusca, Echinodermata, and Corals 
special to each. 2d. That these three zones are very unequally developed in dif- 
ferent regions both in England, France, and Germany; the individual beds com- 
posing the zones being sometimes thin and feebly developed (or altogether absent) 
in some localities, but thick and fully developed in others; the zone of Am-Mur- 
chisone is the one most frequently absent; that of Am. Humphriesianus has a 
wider area; and the zone of Am. Parkinsoni is the most persistent, is widely ex- 
tended, and is very often the sole representative member of the Inferior Oolite 
formation. 3d. That many Lamellibranchiata and afew Gasteropoda are common 
to the three zones, and that most of the Ammonites, Brachiopoda, Echinodermata, 
and Corals are limited in their range to one of the zones ; but that each zone pos- 
sesses a fauna which is sufficiently characteristic of it. 4th. The Parkinsoni-zone 
possesses many species of Mollusca and Echinodermata in common with the Corn- 
brash; and the Murchisone-zone, in like manner, contains many Lamellibran- 
chiata, which appeared for the first time in the Jurensis-stage, although all the 
Cephalopoda of these two stages are specifically distinct from each other. 

April 20th, 1859.—Major-General Portlock, V.P., in the chair. 

The following communications were read :— 

1. “On some Reptilian Remains from South Africa.” By Professor Owen, 
F.R.S., F.GS. 

Fam. Crocopitra. Galesaurus planiceps, the Flat-headed Galesaur (from yuan, 
polecat, cavpos, lizard), a genus and species founded on an entire cranium and 
lower jaw. The skull in length less than twice the breadth, much depressed, and 
flat above. Occipital region sloping from above backward, divided by a high and 
sharp ridge from the temporal fosse, there wide and rhomboidal ; orbits small ; 


nostril single and terminal. Dentition, z a c =o M 35-453 all the teeth close- 
set, except the intervals for the crowns of the long canines when the mouth is 
closed ; canines of the shape and proportions of those in Mustela and Viverra, 
without trace of preparation of successors in the sockets ; of quite mammalian 
character. Incisors longish and slender, molars subcompressed, both with simple 
pointed crowns, of equal length, and undivided roots. Original transmitted by 
Governor Sir Geo. Gray, K.C.B. From the sandstone rocks, Rhenosterberg. 

Cynochampsa laniarius, the Dog-toothed Gavial (from kvwy, dog, and xauia, 
Hgyptian name for Crocodile, applied by Wagner to the Indian Gavial). This 
genus and species is founded on the rostral end of the upper and lower jaws of a 
Crocodilian Reptile, with a single terminal nostril, situated and shaped as in 
Teleosaurus, and indicating similarly long and slender jaws. Only the incisive and 
canine parts of the dentition are preserved ; but these closely correspond with the 
same parts in Galesawrus, the incisors being equal and close-set, of simple conical 
form, and the canines suddenly contrasted by their large size. In shape they 
resemble closely the completely formed canines in Carnivorous Mammals. There 
is no trace of successional teeth. Original transmitted by Governor Sir Geo. 
Gray, K.C.B., from Rhenosterberg, South Africa. 

Fam. Dicynopontia. Subgenus Ptychognathus, Ow. (mrvxos, ridge, yvados, 
jaw.)—This subgenus is founded on four more or less entire skulls, two retaining 
the lower jaw, referable to two species. 


912 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Ptychognathus declivis, Ow.—Plane of occiput -meeting the wpper (fronto- 
parietal) plane at an acute angle, rising from below upward and backward, as im 
the feline mammals; fronto-parietal plane bounded by an anterior ridge, ex- 
tending from one superorbital process to the other ; from this ridge the facial part 
of the skull slopes downward in a straight line, slightly diverging from the parallel 
of the occipital plane ; superoccipital ridge much produced and notched in the 
middle; the occipital plane, owing to the outward expansion of the mastoid 
plates, is the broadest part of the skull, which quickly contracts forward to the 
ridged beginnings of the alveoli of the canine tusks ; orbits oblong, reniform, 
suggestive of the reptile having the power of turning the eyeball, so as to look 
upward and backward as well as outward. Remains of sclerotic plates. Nostrils 
divided by a broad, flat, upward production of premaxillary, situated nearer the 
orbit than the muzzle, smaller than in type Dicynodon ; temporal fosse broader 
than long, and with the outer border longest ; palate with single large oval vacuity, 
bounded by palato-pterygoid ridges ; occipital hypapophyses proportionally thicker 
than in Dicynodon tigriceps ; no trace of median suture in parietal, which is per- 
forated by a foramen parietale ; frontals divided by a median suture ; support a 
transverse pair of small tuberosities ; anterior boundary-ridge of vertex formed by 
the nasals and prefrontals, the outer surface of both being divided into a horizontal 
and sloping facet: lacrymal bone extending from fore-part of orbit half an inch 
upon the face to the nostril ; premaxillary long and single, its median facial tract 
flat, with a low median longitudinal ridge ; maxillaries forming the lower boundary 
of the nostrils, and uniting above with the prefrontal lacrymal and nasal bones, their 
outer surface divided by the strong ridge suggesting the subgeneric name ; teeth 
of the upper jaw restricted to the two canine tusks, the sockets of which descend 
much below the edentulous alveolar border ; lower jaw edentulous, deep, and 
broad, with the fore-part of the symphysis produced and bent up to meet the 
seemingly truncate end of the premaxillary, a character indicating, with the 
angular outline of the skull, the subgeneric distinction. 

Ptychognathus verticalis—The skull of this species, repeating the subgeneric 
characteristics of the foregoing, has the facial contour descending almost vertically 
from, and at almost a right angle with, the fronto-parietal plane. Orbits propor- 
tionally larger and more fully oval. Ridged sockets of the canine tusks descending 
more vertically from below the orbits. Originals transmitted by Governor Sir 
Geo. Gray, K.C.B., from Rhenosterberg, South Africa. 

Subgenus Oudenodon, Bain (ovders, none, odovs, tooth). The skull in this sub- 
genus presents the divided nostrils, the structure and the rounded contours of 
that of the true Dicynodons ; also the same form, relative size and position of the 
orbits and nostrils ; but the zygomatic arches are more slender, straight and long ; 
and, although there be an indication of an alveolar process of the superior maxillary, 
the lower part of which projects slightly beyond the rest of the edentulous border 
of the jaw, it does not contain any trace of a tooth, so that both jaws are edentu- 
lous, a character which had attracted the attention of their discoverer, Mr. Bain, 
who, in indicating it, proposed the name Oudenodon. 

It is permissible to speculate on the possibility of these toothless Dicynodontoids 
being, after the analogy of the Narwhals, the females; or of their being in- 
dividuals which had lost their tusks without power of replacing them, as 
the known structure of the true Dicynodons indicates. But there are 
characters of the zygomatic arches and temporal fossee which differentiate the 
oes skull sufhiciently to justify their provisional reference to a distinct 
subgenus. 

Hyoid apparatus of Oudenodon.—Beneath one of the skulls, and imbedded in 
the matrix between the mandibular rami, were the following elements of the 
hyoid apparatus :—basi-hyal, cerato-hyals, thyro-hyals (or hypo-branchials), cerato- 
branchials, and uro-hyal. 

The cerato-hyals are long, subcompressed, expanded at both ends; the thyro- 
hyals shorter and more slender ; the cerato-branchials with a sigmoid flexure ; the 
uro-hyal symmetrical, broad, flat, semicircular, with a production like a stem from 
the middle of the straight anterior margin. This apparatus shows the complexity 
by which that in Lizards and Chelonians differs from the hyoid in Crocodiles, and 


“ 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 2s 


combines Chelonian with Lacertian characters. Transmitted by Mr. Bain from 
South Africa. 

Dicynodon tigriceps—Pelvis: Ilium, ischium, and pubis coalesced to form an 
oS innominatum, with the suture at the symphysis obliterated. At least five 
sacral vertebr, the first with a broad, thick, triangular, terminally expanded 
pleurapophysis. The strong, straight, trihedral ium overlies the above sacral 
rib, and extends forward to overlie also the last long and slender rib of the free 
trunk (thoracic) vertebre. There are no lumbar vertebre. 

Pubis very thick, strong, with a broad inferior convexity resembling that of the 
Monitor in its internal perforation and external apophysis ; ischium receiving the 
abutment of the last two pairs of sacral vertebree. 

The form of the anterior aperture of the pelvis is oval, with the sides broken by 
a slight angle at the middle, and the small end encroached upon by the right 
angular preminence of the symphysis pubis. The long diameter is 11 inches (from 
the fore-end of the first sacral vertebra), the transverse diameter is 10 inches. 
The fore-half of this aperture is bounded by the first sacral vertebra exclusively, 
at the middle by its centrum, at the sides by its nbs; the hind-half of the 
aperture is bounded by the pubic bones. From the penultimate sacral vertebra 
to the symphysis pubis it measures 5 inches. 

The outlet of the pelvis is of a semi-elliptic form, 9 inches in transverse, and 4 
inches in the opposite diameter. Original transmitted by Mr. Bain from East 
Brink River, South Africa. 

Crocopiita (?). Genus Massospondylus, Ow. (Gr. wacowy, longer ; smovdvAos 
vertebra)—The author exhibited diagrams, and pointed out the characters on 
which he had founded (in the Catalogue of Fossil Remains of the Museum of the 
College of Surgeons) the genus Massospondylus, exemplified by the M. carinatus. 

Genus Pachyspondylus, Ow. (Gr. maxus, thick ; omovdvAus, vertebra.)—The 
fossils exemplifying this genus form part of the same collection, obtained by 
Messrs. Orpen from sandstones of the Drabenberg range of hills, South Africa, 
and presented to the College of Surgeons. 

2. “On the South-easterly Attenuation of the Lower Secondary Rocks of 
England, and the probable depth of the Coal-formation under Oxford and North- 
amptonshire.’ By Edward Hull, Esq., A.B., F.G.S. 

by a series of comparative sections, made by actual admeasurements by the 
officers of the Geological Survey, it was shown that all the Lower Secondary 
formations attain their greatest development towards the north-west of England, 
and, on the other hand, they become attenuated, and in some cases actually die 
out in the opposite direction. For example, it was shown that the Bunter Sand- 
stone in Cheshire reaches a thickness of 2,000 feet, in Stafiordshire 600, and in 
East Warwickshire is absent ; and a similar law of south-easterly attenuation was 
shown to maintain in the case of the Keuper, Lias, Inferior Oolite, and lower zone 
of the Great Oolite. 

It was shown that the upper zone of the Great Oolite (the White and Grey 
Limestones of Wilts, Oxford, Lincoln, and Yorkshire,) forms the first exception 
to the law ; and from the fact of its occurrence in the Bas-Boulonnais below the 
Chalk, and resting on Carboniferous rocks, the author inferred that it extends more 
or less uninterruptedly from England to France and Belgium, and southward to 
Mr. Godwin-Austen’s paleeozoic axis. The cause of this superior degree of per- 
sistency was referred to the organic, as distinct from the sedimentary nature of the 
formation, and its accumulation (like the White Chalk) on a deep sea-bed by the 
agency of Molluscs, Corals, and Foraminifera. 

It was shown that the Lower Permian beds are scarcely represented in Lancashire 
and North Cheshire, but that they attain their greatest development. (1,800 feet) 
along a band of country stretching west and east from Salop to Warwickshire, 
and the author traced the margin of the basin in which they were formed along 
the west, north, and east. The local origin of these Permian beds, as having been 
derived from the Old Red and Silurian lands by which they were surrounded, was 
insisted upon, and especially as agreeing with the observations of Murchison, 
Ramsay, and other authors. P 


VOL. II. R 


214 THE GEOLOGIST. 


As contrasted with this local origm of the Lower Permian rocks of Central 
England, it was shown that the sedimentary materials of which the Triassic 
Rocks are formed must have been drifted by an ancient oceanic current from a 
continent or large tract of land occupying the position of the North Atlantic, and 
that the sediment was spread over the plains of England as long as it was mecha- 
nically suspended. The increasing distance towards the south-east from the 
source of supply, accounted for the tailing out of the sediment. During the 
Bunter Sandstone period, this sediment was drifted through the channel formed 
by the great headlands of Westmoreland and North Wales; but, as the whole 
area was gradually sinking (with occasional interruptions) during the periods of 
the Upper Trias and succeeding formations, the Welsh and Cumbrian mountains 
must have been nearly covered by sea at the close of the Liassic period. 

The author adduced the following reasons for considering that the Bunter 
Sandstone of England formed dry land during the deposition of the Muschelkalk 
of Germany. 

Ist. That the Lower Keuper Sandstone rests on an eroded surface of the 
Bunter ; 2d, that the basement-bed of the Keuper is frequently a breccia or 
shingle-beach ; and 3d, that there is a local unconformity observable in Stafford, 
Leicester, and Lancashire, between these formations. 

The author described the distribution of the quartzose conglomerates which 
form the middle division of the Bunter, and considers it probable that they are 
the reconstructed materials of the Old Red Conglomerate of Scotland. 

The probable extension of coal-measures from the coal-fields of England to those 
of Belgium and France was considered, as also the bearmg of the whole subject 
on Mr. Godwin-Austen’s theory of the extension of coal-measures under the chalk 
of the Thames Valley ; and it was inferred that coal-measures might possibly be 
found at not unapproachable depths under parts of Oxford and Northamptonshire. 
It was also shown, that, from indications presented by the coal-formation at the 
southern borders of the Staffordshire and Warwickshire coal-field, there was reason 
to suspect that the formation becomes attenuated and less productive of valuable 
coal-beds in its extension towards the south-eastern districts. 

The paper was illustrated by a series of comparative horizontal sections across 
the midland counties. 

GroLogists’ AssocraTtion.—A pril 4.—The fourth ordinary meeting was held at 
the Society’s Rooms, 5, Cavendish Square, Dr. Hyde Clarke, V.P., in the chair. 
A very interesting paper was read by the Rev. T. Wiltshire, M.A., F.G.S., Presi- 
dent of the Association, on ‘The Red Chalk of England.” It was stated that 
the red chalk occurs in situ only in the counties of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and 
Norfolk. It is first seen at Speeton, about six miles from Flamborough Head, in 
Yorkshire, where it rests unconformably upon the Speeton clay and underlies the 
white chalk. It is there about 30 feet, which appears to be the greatest thickness 
it attains, and is traceable from Speeton in a westerly direction for about 20 miles, 
when, turning at a sharp angle, it proceeds across Yorkshire towards the south- 
east, and disappears below the marsh-land, about seven miles to the west of Hull. 
It re-appears at Ferraby, in Lincolnshire, and there may be traced across Lincoln- 
Shire until it is cut off by the Wash, on the south shore of which,—at Hunstanton, 
in Norfolk,—it is again found, and may be traced from that place to a few miles 
north of Lynn, after which it is seen no more. In Lincolnshire and Norfolk it 
underlies the white chalk, and rests upon a dark pebbly mass which is supposed to 
belong to the lower greensand. At Hunstanton it is only 4 feet in thickness, and 
assumes a different character from that which it presents at Speeton, being much 
harder, darker in colour, and containing pebbles, which are not seen in the red 
chalk of the latter place. The red chalk appears to be very fossiliferous, containing 
serpulee, terebratule, corals, sponges, belemnites, &c.; and from the circumstance 
of some of the belemnites being of species characteristic of the gault, the author 
considered the red chalk as the equivalent of that formation. Fragments more or 
less rolled had been found in the drift at Muswell Hill; from which it was inferred 
that the red chalk must have at one time existed in large masses over a consider- 
able tract of country. These fragments appeared to be, in mineral character, and 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 215 


by the fossils contained in them, identical with the red chalk of Hunstanton. The 
paper was illustrated by some admirable diagrams, and by specimens from the 
cabinets of Dr. Bowerbank, N. T. Wetherell, Esq., and the author. 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 


THICKNESS OF CHALK-STRATA AROUND-THE WerauprEn AreA.—The Editor 
will be obliged by notes on the local thickness of the Chalk and Lower Greensand in 
Surrey, Kent, Sussex, and the contiguous counties ; as obtained by well-sinkings 
and other sources. 

GroLocicaL TopocrapHy.—‘Srr,—Would it be worth the trouble to publish 
a list of the towns of England, with their strata?—I send a specimen of what I 
mean, as you will understand it better from that.—Yours, &c. G. H. West, 
Blackheath.” 


Nume. | Latitude. Longitude. Strata. 
Abbots Bromley. | 52 deg. 49 min. N. | 1 deg. 45 min. W. | New red sandstone. 
Character. | Fossils. For what used. | Avge. Depth. Division. 
Clays, coloured sandstones, Few discovered, foot- | Architectural | 900 ft Mesozoic or 
and conglomerates. | prints. | - purposes. | * | Secondary. 


We think in a modified form such a list might prove very useful, especially 
one of the chief towns with their prominent geological features, of those noted 
for the occurrence of particular fossils, and of those where good sections of 
particular rocks are to be seen. If our readers and correspondents will supply 
the information, we will revise, arrange, and print the matter thus accumu- 
lated.— Ep. Got. 

SHELIS IN PLEISTOcENE Deposit at CamBripas.—‘ Str,—Would you in- 
form me, through the medium of your valuable ‘ Notes and Queries,’ if it be usual 
for the drift to contain shells of such fragile forms as those which I have inclosed 
for your inspection ; and also whether these are freshwater or marine? Also, could 
you tell me of any work of moderate price devoted exclusively to the drift forma- 
tion? The shells forwarded were found in the drift, about 10 or 12 feet below the 
surface, in a thin layer of fine sand about 4 inches thick, resting upon a sort ef 
clayey sand about 18 inches thick, which last also contained shells, but not in such 
abundance as the other.—Yours, &c. A Brainner, Cambridge.”—The deposit in 
which the shells forwarded were found, we should consider to be a Pleistocene 
freshwater deposit, and not drift. The species we recognise are :— 


Helix nemoralis, Cyclas cornea, 

—— arbustorum, Pisidium obliquum, 
Lymnzus pereger, Clausilia, 

Valvata piscinalis, Unio, &c. 

Bythinia tentaculata, 


Land and freshwater shells are by no means unusually found in such deposits, 
which should be searched also for mammalian remains, the newer forms of which 
may occur, though not the hippopotamus and older species. 

CemEentT FoR CHALK Fossitus.—‘ Dear Sir,—Can you kindly give me the © 
receipt for making the ‘ diamond cement’ used in repairing chalk fossils ?—-Yours 


216 THE GEOLOGIST. 


‘aithfully, J. R. 0.”—‘¢ Srr,—I have collected fossils for the last two years, more 
eae those from the chalk, but I find it extremely difficult to prevent teeth, 
éc. from breaking off. I have used thick gum-water for sticking the specimens 
together, but I find it very unsatisfactory, in consequence of gum being acted upon 
by the weather. Ist. Can you recommend me any good cement of which chalk 
will not absorb all the moisture, and which will not show a black mark where the 
specimens are joined? 2nd. Have geologists ever found any fossil pearls among 
the oyster and other beds of fossil shells?—Yours, &c. Enqurrer.’—Ist. All 
chalk specimens should be saturated in a weak solution of gum, size, or other 
similar material, before the joining of the fragments is attempted. Ackerman’s 
cement, procurable at those well-known artist’s colourmen’s establishment in the 
Strand, is a very useful preparation for repairing chalk and other fossils. 2nd. 
Fossil pearls have been, although rarely, found. Specimens from the large Inoce- 
rami of the chalk have been long known. One very large and beautiful specimen 
is in the collection of N. T. Wetherell, Esq. of Highgate, and has been described 
in the “‘ Annals of Natural History.” 

OrniIGInAL THICKNESS OF THE PurBEcK Dirt-BEp.— Sir,—In the volume of 
Tue Gronoarst for 1858, is an article on ‘ Voices from the Rocks,’ (p. 543). 
It is admitted by the author of that book, that the dirt-bed in the Isle of Portland, 
from whence so many fossil trees have from time to time been extracted, is from 
12 to 18 inches in thickness. 

“‘ T had the pleasure of visiting that interesting dirt-bed a few years ago, and it 
struck me at the time that the bed of mould was originally very much thicker 
when it formed part of the surface, and when the trees were growing upon it, and 
before the bed of hard and compact limestone, 9 feet 7 inches thick, was depo- 
sited over it. ~ 

‘“¢ The enormous pressure of such a mass of stone upon such a bed of vegetable 
soil as the dirt-bed then was, must have greatly reduced its thickness. 

‘We ought also to consider the effect which long periods of time would have 
on such soil, from the escape of the various gases which compose the humus 
always present in larger or smaller quantity in all soils. 

“‘ With regard to trees thriving on a thin soil, I beg to observe that about seven 
or eight years ago, at a slate-quarry at Swithland, near Leicester, I saw a thrifty 
young oak having a trunk 2 feet in diameter, growing upon a large accumulation 
of fragments of slate, the refuse of the quarry, and thriving apparently without 
any soil except that formed of the fragments of slate. 

““This oak I thought was also a good memorial of the ancient date of the former 
working of the slate-quarry.—JoHun Brown, F.G.S., Stanway.” : 

SHOAL OF FIisH BURIED IN Sanv.—The following extract is from a paper 
entitled “A Week in Gaspe,” by Dr. Dawson, in the Canadian Naturalist, for 
October last :— : 

‘* On the long sand-point that, stretching far into the bay, shelters the harbour 
along which we walked in search of whales’ bones and shells, I observed an 
appearance new to me, and of some geological interest. Shoals of the American 
‘Sand-Launce’ (Ammodytes Americanus), a little fish three or four inches in length, 
had entered the bay, and either seeking a place for spawning or for sheltering 
themselves from their numerous enemies, had run into the shallow water near the 
point, and, according to their usual habit, had in part buried- themselves in the 
sand, which they throw up by means of their long pectoral fins. In this situation 
countless multitudes had died or been thrown on shore by the surf, and the crows 
were fattening on them, and the fishermen collecting them in barrels for bait : 
acres of them still remaining, whitening the bottom of the shallow water with 
their bodies. It was impossible not to be reminded by such a spectacle of the beds 
full of capelin in the post-pliocene clay of the Ottawa, and the similar beds 
filled with fossil fishes in other beds as far back as the Old Red Sandstone. 

teologists have often sought to account for such phenomena, by supposing sudden 
changes of level or irruptions of poisonous matter into the water; but such 
catastrophes are evidently by no means necessary to produce the effect. Here, in 
the quiet water of Gaspe Bay, year by year, immense quantities of the remains 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 217 


of the ‘ sand-launce’ may be embedded in the sand and mud without even a storm 
to destroy them. Similar accidents, I was told, happen to the shoals of capelin ; 
so that there is nothing to prevent the accumulation here of beds equally rich in 
the remains of fishes with those other deposits of ichthyolites that have excited 
so much interest and wonder.” ) 

Mastropon RemAINns In CanapAa»—Some fossil remains of a monster animal, 
supposed to be those of a mastodon, have lately been discovered in the county of 
Elgin, C.W. The St. Thomas Despatch describes them as follows :—‘‘ We were 
shown on Tuesday last, by Mr. Freeborn Berdan, the gigantic tooth of a monster 
animal, which was found on the farm of Mr. Samuel Berdan, two miles west of 
Five Stakes, some time last week, while digging in a light sandy loam on the edge 
of a small marshy spot, about twenty inches below the surface. The tooth shown 
us was about seven or eight inches in length across the face, by four or five in width, 
and seemed to have been broken out of the jaw. The surface was perfectly smooth, 
and appeared to us as if it had been petrified or very heavily enamelled. It was of 
a mottled grey colour at the upper part, running down to a dark brown at the 
base. The interior was similar to a white calcined bone. Mr. Berdan also found 
two enormous tusks, eight and a_half feet from one end to the other, and curving 
back so that the two ends are nearly parallel to each other ; also two thigh-bones, 
three feet long, an under jaw-bone over three feet long, several ribs from three to 
four feet in length from point to point, and six teeth, weighing six pounds or more 
each. These bones, as near as can be ascertained, are supposed to belong to a 
mastodon, an extinct species of the elephant, and have probably remained undis- 
turbed where they were found for centuriés before the continent was discovered. 
Some parts of them were in a high state of preservation, while others would 
crumble to pieces by the slightest touch, and their places have been filled by a 
substitute.” 

GroLogicaL Excurstons.—During the past month a series of practical field- 
lessons on ary have been given by Professor Morris to the students attending 
the Geological Class at University College, London ; the chief attention in these 
excursions being directed to the method of describing sections of the strata, the 
tracing their boundaries, and mapping their extent ; to the mode of occurrence of 
fossils in the different layers, whether entire or broken, as indicating the condition 
under which they were deposited, and the natural history and characters of the 
animals, as evidencing the medium (i.e. marine or freshwater) in which they 
lived and died. 

The environs of London present many localities for studies of this nature. 
One excursion included the Woolwich and Charlton pits, where the fluvio-marine 
series of the Lower Tertiaries are well exhibited ; and their infraposition to the 
marine bed of London clay was shown by a traverse made to Plumstead Common, 
where the superposition of the lower beds of the London Clay is exposed. The 
mammalian deposits of the Wickham Valley were also visited. Another excursion 
included the examination of the freshwater and mammalian deposits of Crayford 
and Erith, which show how these fluviatile accumulations of brick-earth were 
deposited upon an eroded surface of the Lower Tertiaries (Thanet sands) and the 
chalk ; the rich mammalian and molluscan fauna obtained from these pits being 
examined in the collection of Mr. F. Spurrell, of Bexley, who kindly offered every 
facility for the inspection. A third excursion embraced the more interesting 
geological features of the Isle of Wight, as exhibited in the fine sections of the 
Tertiary strata at White Cliff, and Alum, and Colwell Bays, and in the interesting 
section of the Wealden and Cretaceous series as exposed in the traverse made 
along the south part of the island, from Sandown to Compton Bay. 

Denpritic Marxines ; MoveMEnts or PEnTACRINITE PLATES IN VINEGAR. 
—‘“ Dear Str,—If you, or some of your numerous correspondents in the ‘ Notes 
and Queries’ department of your most excellent Magazine, will have the kindness 
to answer the following questions, I shall feel much obliged. 

“1. What is the cause of the Dendritic appearances on Chalk ? 

“‘T have some fossils from a quarry at Benereuagh (County Derry), which are 
beautifully marked, especially the Echini. This appearance is not confined to the 


218 THE GEOLOGIST. 


fossils only ; the chalk itself is of a creamy colour, and the drawings on it look as 
if done with Indian ink by a very fine pencil. I have observed the same descrip- 
tion of markings on the chalk and fossils of the White Rocks, near Dunluce 
Castle, County Antrim. i ; ! ; 

“T send you a small quantity of the dendritic grains, and a little bit of chalk. 
The drawing upon it is not so distinct as I could wish ; in some chalk it is per- 
fectly black, and very beautiful indeed, and in all such instances I observe that the 
chalk is of peculiar hardness, while at the same time the markings penetrate 
deeper, with increased depth of colour as they proceed ; but in the softer chalk the 
tintings are brownish, and more on the surface. 

<< Aye those moss-like figures common to all chalk ? 

“9. Why do those portions of Pentacrinites, commonly called ‘ star-stones,’ 
move with a sensible rotatory motion in a vessel of vinegar ; or why do they move 
at all? And why will not a portion of Belemnite, or plain limestone, both from 
the same rock, and of the same size as the ‘ star-stone,’ move also /—Very truly 
yours, A. bE S. M., Port Stewart.” 

lst. The beautiful feathery dendritic markings in chalk and on chalk fossils are 
due to a crystallization of manganese either on the planes of cracks and fissures, 
in the fine interstices between the rock-matrix and the fossils, or filling up minute 
cracks in the structure of the rock itself. Such dendritic markings are found in most 
solid rocks, and have been very commonly attributed to iron. We believe, however, 
that when iron puts on the dendritic form it is due to the admixture with it of 
manganese. Where the proportion of iron is larger, the dendritic markings are 
dingy and obscure, and by a few days’ exposure to the air diminish to a brown 
stain. Where the manganese predominates, the dendritic ornamentation is sharp, 
clear, and defined, and of a dense black colour. 

We have analysed the sample forwarded, and find that it contains the larger 
proportion of manganese with traces of iron. 

The quantity sent was quite sufficient for a qualitative, but not for a quanti- 
tative, analysis ; so that we cannot state the exact proportion of the two ingte- 
dients. These dendritic markings therefore are due to manganese. 

Very pretty dendritic sculpturings are to be made artificially, by mixing clay with 
a solution of sulphate of copper, and baking or otherwise quickly drying the mass. 

2d. The ‘‘ Star-stones” move on account of the evolution (by the action of 
the vinegar upon the carbonate of lime of which the pentacrinite plates are com- 
posed) of small globules of carbonic acid gas. Sometimes these may be seen 
clustered round the “‘ star-stone,” but often they are so minute, from the very slow 
action of the vinegar, as to be scarcely visible with a pocket-lens. 

Why bits of limestone or belemnites do not likewise move, may be thus 
explained :— 

The star-stones are of very hard and compact structure, and the gas therefore 
is very slowly evolved by the weak action of the vinegar. From this cause the 
minute bubbles congregate under the star-stone, where they are, by the hollows 
and sculpturings of which they are retained, and the star-stone, rendered slightly 
buoyant. Then as the bubbles burst into each other, and become confluent, or as 
they tilt up first one edge then another of the starstone in escaping, a slight 
mechanical action is set up sufficient to cause the rotatory motion alluded to by 
our correspondent. In the case of common belemnites, limestone, é&c., the carbonate 
of lime being softer, the gas is generated more quickly and in larger bubbles, 
and consequently readily escapes without at all serving to float, by clinging to 
ae chi a Bite - emanates. 
EAR Str,—I am frequently applied to by stranger geologists, respecting 
information on the Ledbury aids Meduers districts. Voucwatie I think, be 
rendering ramblers a service by informing them that they will find Henry Brooks, 
Shoemaker, the Homend, Ledbury, a most intelligent and efficient guide. He 
has lately discovered there ‘ Auchenaspis Salterrii,’ one of the rarest of the Tilestone 
fossils. —Yours very truly, W. 8. Syatonps, Pendock Rectory, Ledbury.” 

THE GREAT IcHTHYOSAURUS PLATYODON (?) AT THE YorK Musrum.—‘ Sin,— 
1 was glad to see your correspondent, Mr. 8. R. Pattison, bringing forward the subject 


~ 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 219 


of Provincial Museums in the pages of Tue Grotocist. I should have sent you 
a communication on this subject six months ago had I not entertained the idea 
of publishing, as a separate pamphlet, some observations upon the Condition of 
Natural History Museums throughout the kingdom, with suggestions for putting 
some of them in a more eflicient state. I have lately visited the Museums of 
Newcastle, West Hartlepool, Whitby, Scarborough, Hull, Leeds, Kendal, Lan- 
caster, Preston, Warrington, Manchester, and Ipswich, and in the course of a few 
days I purpose visiting those of Bristol, Bath, Liverpool, &c. I have only 
time now to call the attention of your readers to the noble room which has just 
been added to the Museum at York, and for the erection of which nearly a 
thousand pounds has been subscribed. Some time since an enormous Ichthyo- 
saurus was discovered in the neighbourhood of Whitby, and, after a good deal 
of negotiation with the persons into whose hands thiseextraordinary Saurian 
remain had fallen, 1 became the possessor of it for the sum of one hundred and 
ten pounds. My object in making the purchase was the hope that, when brought 
to York, the members of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society would raise by 
subscription the above sum, to take the specimen off my hands and place it in the 
Museum. We had just started a subscription when the Rev. D. R. Roundell, of 
Gledston, Skipton, sent me a cheque for the whole amount, that he alone might 
have the satisfaction of presenting so grand a fossil to the York Museum. It was 
this acquisition that led to the building of the new room. If you have space for 
its insertion you shall have some more Provincial Museum information for your 
June number.—EpwarD CHARLESWORTH (of York).” 

Mammantan Remarns.—‘In the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ for 1757 several 
extracts from letters communicated by Mr. Collinson, concerning mammalian 
remains, are printed, of which I append a summary :— 

““At Barton, in Sussex, in July, 1740, some bones of elephants were found. These 
remains were nine feet deep in the ground, and were discovered by some men 
digging a trench in the park. The remains found consisted of various bones, 
“a, large tooth (tusk), seven feet six inches in length, which, as it lay on the 
ground, was entire, but on taking it up, broke all to pieces.” After this several 
more were found in carrying on the trench, particularly the fellow to the before- 
mentioned ivory tooth, exactly of the same length, which being taken up with 
more care, is now to be seen, though both ends were broken off. Also two more 
shorter tusks, of about three feet in length ; a thigh-bone, forty inches long, and 
thirty-one inches in the thickest part. There were several other bones, as the 
knee-pan ; but the most perfect of all was one of the grinders, not in the least 
decayed, with part of the jaw-bone, which together weighed above fourteen pounds ; 
the upper part of the tooth, where it meets its opposite, was six inches and a half 
long See three inches broad. There were several other bones not here men- 
tion 

““¢ But what is very remarkable is that these teeth, bones, &c. did not lie close 
together, as one might suppose those of a skeleton to do, but at some distance 
asunder ; and the larger aa were full twenty feet apart. 

“<The Rey. Dr. Longwith, minister of Petworth, has most of them, excepting 
one of the largest-tusks and one large bone. He was here at the taking of them 
up, and reasonably concludes they were not thrown in by hand, but buried in the 
universal deluge. 

“<P.S. In the past hard winter there was killed a swan at Emsworth, between 
Chichester and Portsmouth, lying on a creek of the sea, which had a ring round its 
neck, with the King of Denmark’s arms on it,’ 

“The following are from Letter II. by Mannock Strickland, Esq., April 4, 1741: 
—‘ A few months after the foregoing letter was written, being near Mr. Bid- 
dulph’s, I paid him a visit, when I saw the greatest part of one of the great teeth ; 
it was seven feet and a half long; and at Dr. Longwith’s I saw the other, with 
the rest of the bones mentioned in Mr. Biddulph’s letter, all things agreeing 
exactly with his descriptions. I saw also the pit it was digged out of, and 
observed the various strata which run parallel and had never been disturbed. 

“¢ Within a quarter of a mile south runs a vast mountainous ridge of hills, called 


220 THE GEOLOGIST. 


the South Downs of Burton Hills, from the name of the parish Mr. Biddulph 
$ in.’ 

etches from Letter III. by a Rev. Clergyman to Peter Collinson, Esq., F.R.S. 
Bristol, October 23, 1756°:—* L had also forgot to tell you of a noble acquisition. 
since my tour to Wales. A gentleman who was digging, upon a hill near Mendip, 
for ochre and ore, found at the depth of 52 fathoms, or 3153 feet (as he measured 
himself by direct line), four teeth, not tusks, of a large elephant (which I think 
is the whole number the creature has), and two thigh-bones, with part of the 
head ; all extremely well preserved ; for they lay in a bed of ochre, which I could 
easily wash off. When they were brought to me, every crevice was filled with the 
ochre, and as I washed it off from the outside, a most beautiful white surface 
appeared ; and they make a fine show in my cabinet. I propose going down into 
the pit myself soon ; for the men have left several small pieces behind, which they 
did not think worth bringing up, and I make no doubt, if that be the case, but 
shall procure the whole, or great part of the animal. I have also, since I saw 
you, got part of an immensely large stag-horn, undoubtedly fossil, dug up ten 
miles from Bristol.’ 

“ OBSBRVATIONS BY PETER Coniinson, Hsq.—‘ In England the teeth and bones 
of elephants have been often found fossil ; and yet it is allowed on ail hands that 
so many elephants were never brought hither by men, as have been dug up. In 
particular, besides the above accounts, I had a large grinder from Norfolk, which 
was found with other teeth and bones. From Mersey Island, in Essex, were sent 
me a large grinder and part of a thigh-bone; these were found with the entire 
skeleton, which was destroyed by the country people. Mr. John Luffkin, in the 
‘« Philosophical Transactions,” No. 274, mentions bones and teeth of an elephant 
found near Harwich, in Essex. Myr. Somner, in No. 272, mentions an elephant 
found at Chartham, near Canterbury ; the teeth were all grinders, four in number. 
Dr. Woodward mentions two large tusks of an elephant, found at Bowden Parva, 
in Northamptonshire. He had besides several pieces of elephants’ teeth, dug up 
in a gravel-pit at Islington. Unless we allow Dr. Woodward’s hypothesis of the 
deluge, it is difficult to conceive how the teeth, bones, &c. of this vast animal 
come to be found so frequently in this island. The Romans were the only people 
who could bring any to intimidate the Britons in their wars; but we have not the 
least account of any such thing.’ 

““ Kerrerine, NortHAMPTONSHIRE.—‘ Here we discovered a tooth, vertebra, 
and jaw-bone of some animal of an enormous size, and of a species different from 
any creature that is now bred and supported in our climate; these, with the 
thigh-bone of a beast of more moderate size, were found in the aforesaid gravel-pit, 
at the depth of about seven feet, in places which had never before been opened, &c.’ 
—Gent. Mag. 1757, p. 21. 

““ he following I met with in the ‘ History of the County Palatine of Durham,’ 
Mackenzie and Ross. At Maineforth, a hamlet three miles N.W. of Sedgefield, 
‘about the year 1740, the horns of a moose-deer were dug out of a pond here, one 
of which is preserved, measuring from root to tip.three feet eight inches, and ten 
inches in circumference above the root; the greatest breadth fourteen inches. 
ee of the branches are evidently broken off’—I am, dear Sir, Yours truly, 

CLINOMETERS.—OBSERVER asks what is the best form of Clinometer, and 
where such instruments are to be obtained 2—A useful form of Clinometer is a 
little square box-compass, having a pendulum attached to the axis, so that when 
the box is opened and set on edge, the pendulum swings against the graduated 
card. A little spirit-level can easily be fixed in one edge of the box ; and brass 
sights can be also added. Such ani apparatus is prepared by Knight, Foster Lane ; 
and probably can be procured also at Fenn’s and Buck’s, Newgate Street, and 
Marryatt’s, King William Street. 


THE GEOLOGIST. 


JUNE, 1859. 


ON ROCKS ; THEIR CHEMICAL AND MINERAL COMPOSI- 
TION, AND PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS. 


By H. C. Satmon, Esq. Plymouth. 
(Continued from page 59.) 


XXI. RELATION BETWEEN THE PuHysicaL CHARACTERS OF A 
Mineran anp its Cuemican Composition.—In the definition which 
I have given, a mineral is described as a body possessed of a definite 
chemical composition and a regular physical form,—meaning by the 
latter particularly crystalline structure. But, while the crystalline 
relations of each species only vary within the narrowest limits, the 
chemical composition has a much wider latitude. Many individuals 
of the same mineral species are found, by analysis, to differ most 
widely in their chemical components, while the crystalline form is 
quite unaltered. Now, although we are as yet unable to trace the 
relation between the form of a mineral and its composition, there can 
still be little doubt that some such relation does exist, regulated by 
laws yet to be discovered; consequently, when we find the same 
mineral species differing widely in chemical proportions, we recognise 
a departure from regular although unknown laws, and seek for a 
cause. This we find in the doctrine of Jsomorphism. This, simply 
stated, is the capability of two or more substances, of analogous 
chemical constitution, to crystallize in similar forms. Thus, as a few 
| examples in the mineral kingdom, we find that Corundwm (Al) and 
VOL. IL, S 


222 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Hematite (He) crystallize in nearly identical forms: the same is the 
case with Rock-sait (Na Cl) and Fluor (Ca Fl) : and the Carbonates of 
Lime, Calcite (Ca ©), of Magnesia, Magnesite (Mg ©), and of Protoxide 
of Iron, Chalabite (Fe C), have also similar crystalline relations. What 
is the case with these, and numerous other minerals occurring 
naturally, also holds good with many other bodies, which are only 
produced artificially in the laboratory. 

As isomorphous bodies are found to have the same form when they 
crystallize in an uncombined state, so it is likewise found, when they 
enter into combination as the components of substances of a more 
complicated chemical nature, that the isomorphic property is still 
continued, and that they are capable of mutually replacing each other 
without causing any essential change in the crystalline relations of the 
compound substance. For example, Al and Fe are isomorphous, as 
are likewise Ca and Fe. In the mineral Garnet, one variety is thus 
composed : Si 40 per cent., Al 25 per cent., and Fe 33 per cent. In 
another variety the Al and Fe are wholly replaced by their respective 
isomorphs Fe and Ca, the composition of the mineral being Si 40 per 
cent., He 29 per cent., and Ca 30 per cent.: and all this substitution 
without any change of crystalline form. : 

Although isomorphic replacements do not alter the essential form 
of a mineral (which is its crystalline form), they often give rise to 
considerable changes in its other physical characters. This is pecu- 
liarly the case when the oxides of the heavy metals replace the earths 
and alkalies, giving rise to changes particularly in colour and specific 
gravity. The many varieties which characterise some mineral species 
are generally due to this. See the cases of Epidote, Garnet, Augite, 
Hornblende, &e. 

Among the large number of isomorphous bodies enumerated by 
mineralogists and chemists, those that concern us in rock-minerals are 
comparatively few. Those most worthy of attention are :— 

Elements Finnie > poy ch. Reemuaceaees pat ama epee Oe 
Compounds of 1 atom of base united ¢ a.—Ca, Mg, Fe, Mn, K, Na, Li. 
with 1 atom of oxygen . . . . b6.—Ca (as Arragonite), Ba. 


Compounds of 1 atom of base united ae 
bay Ee, Mn. 


with 3 atoms of oxygen. . . . 


SALMON—ON ROCKS. 923 


While in many minerals these isomorphs replace each other to a 
large extent, the student must guard against supposing they can do 
so ad infinitum, or in all instances. The example which I have given 
of garnet is an extreme case. In the majority of minerals iso- 
morphism can only take place within narrow limits, and is confined 
to certain constituents: any increased alteration carrying with it a 
change of crystalline relations. No definite laws can be laid down, 
each group of minerals being characterised by particular powers of 
substitution. | 

XXII. Pseuwdomorphism is another incident of crystallization im- 
portant in its bearing on the study of rocks. A pseudomorphic crystal 
is one with a form foreign to the substance which composes it. For 
instance, we find Quartz in crystals which differ entirely from its 
proper form, aud which on examination we discover to be charac- 
teristic of various other minerals, among them Fluor, Gypsum, Calcite, 
Pyrite, &c. These forms are not true crystals, and the quartz has 
acquired them in a way entirely different from crystallization. The 
- number of pseudomorphs already known is considerable, and will 
probably be yet increased. They seem principally, if not entirely, to 
have been brought about by slow aqueous agency gradually removing 
the original mineral, or some normal constituent, and substituting in 
its place either an entirely different body, or such a constituent as to 
alter essentially its original chemical character ; the whole operation 
occurring so slowly as not to admit of the substituted or altered 
substance taking its proper crystalline form, thus retaining the form 
of a substance passed away. Petrifaction is a familiar instance of 
pseudomorphic change ; there the original animal or vegetable sub- 
stance is removed, and entirely replaced by a foreign mineral substance, 
although the original form in all its details is little altered. 

Blum* classifies pseudomorphs as— 

1. Alteration-pseudomorphs ; produced by 
a. Removal of constituents. 
6. Addition of constituents. 
c. Exchange of constituents. 


_ * J. R. Blum,— Die Pseudomorphosen des Mineralreichs, mit N achtrag. 
Stuttgardt, 1843-7. A very complete list of pseudomorphs, from Blum, is given 
in Brooke and Miller’s edition of ‘ Phillips’ Mineralogy.” 


s 2 


224 THE GEOLOGIST. 


2. Displacement-pseudomorphs ; produced by 
a. Incrustation. 
6. Replacement. 

Magnesite (Mg C) in the form of Calcite (Ca C) is an example of an 
alteration-pseudomorph by exchange. The Ca of the Calcite is gra- 
dually removed and replaced by Mg ; thus converting the substance 
of the crystal into Magnesite, while it still retains the form of Calcite. 
The example given of quartz in the form of fluor, gypsum, &c., are 
instances of displacement-pseudomorphs, the entire substance of these 
minerals being removed and replaced by the quartz. 

The great importance of pseudomorphs consists in this: that they 
furnish us with a record of changes which have taken place in the 
rock-world, of which without their help we should have remained 
entirely ignorant. If in a certain district we meet with a great series 
of veins filled with quartz, a considerabie guantity of this quartz 
having the form of calcite, we have at once revealed to us the impor- 
tant fact that the veins were once filled with carbonate of lime, 
which had been removed and replaced by quartz. If the removal and 
substitution had taken place under circumstances favourable to the 
development of the quartz in its own proper form, we should have 
found no pseudomorphs, and have remained entirely ignorant of the 


change that had taken place. And this is probably more frequently - 


the case in nature,—the form alters with the alteration of the sub- 
stance ; but when this is not so, and the form remains while the 
substance is altered, that pseudomorphous form becomes an important 
geological monument. 

XXII. Genera Cuemican Revations oF Mineran Sats. — 
When two binary compounds unite together to form a higher one, 
chemists call the electro-positive of the uniting compounds the base, 
and the electro-negative the acid. The higher compound made by the 
union of this base and acid is called a salt. 

The four earths, three alcalies, and four oxides given in the list in 
XIII. are the-only bases, and the four acids given in the same list are 
the only acids, which at present concern our subject. The acids com- 
bine with the bases to form the (1) Stlicates, (2) Carbonates, (3) 
Sulphates, and (4) Borate described ; the comparative importance of 
which in rock-forming minerals is there explained. 


eae a? - 


a 


ae emaneneteescene 


eee eee ee er eee eee eee eee 


is supposed similarly to act as an acid. 


SALMON—ON ROCKS, 225 


These bases are classed, according to the relative amount of oxygen 
they contain, into monowide bases (Ca, Mg, Ba, K, Na, Li, Fe, and Mn) 
symbolized by the general formula R; and sesqui-oxide bases (Al, Fe, 
and Mn) symbolized by the general forbula B.* 

The terms acid and base are only relative. One substance may be 
electro-positive with regard to a second, but electro-negative with 
regard to a third: in the first case it is a base, in the second an acid. 
In rock-minerals Al is usually a base, with respect to the acid Si, but 
in Spinelle (Al Mg) it acts as an acid, with regard to the base Mg; 
and in many of the compound silicates, the variety of which in com- 


position cannot be accounted for by the doctrine of isomorphism, Al 


‘ 


If one equivalent of a base always combined with one equivalent of 
an acid to form salts, the chemical relations of these latter would be 
simple enough. But this is not so: the acids and bases combine in 
very variable proportions, particularly in the silicates. The salt re- 
sulting from the union of one equivalent of base and one of acid is 
termed a neutral salt; those in which the base preponderates, basic 
salts ; and those in which the acid, acid salts. 

As the only salts connected with rock-minerals which present any 


complication are silica-salts, I shall now proceed with the subject 


under that head. 

XXIV. Chemical relations of Silicates—I have already mentioned 
in XIX. the bases which unite with Silica to compose rock-forming 
Silicates. They are three sesqui-oxide bases B (Al, Fe, and Mn.) 


isomorphous with each other, and seven monoxide bases, R (Ca, Mg, K, 


Na, Li, Fe, and Mn), isomorphous with each other. 


* When the monoxide happens to be a protoxide, the base may also be called a 
protoxide base ; and similarly when the sesqui-oxide is a peroxide, that base may 
be called a peroxide base. 


+ Salts are often named from their bases. Thus salts of monoxides or protoxides 


-are called monoxide and protoxide salts ; and salts of sesqui- or per-oxides, sesqui- 


oxide or peroxide salts. Some have alse been named kaloid salts, and consist of 
(1st) certain alcalies and earths united with the soluble acids (carbonic, sulphuric, 
and boracic); and of (2d) chlorine and fluorine with their metals (that is, the 
metals of the alcalies and earths). Of the 1st are—Calcite, waynesite, dolomite, 
anhydrite, gypsum, baryte and boracite; of the 2d—Rock-salt and fluor. ‘This 
grouping is useful in considering the rocks made up of these minerals, which form 
a natural family. see ce 


226 “THE GEOLOGIST. ~ 


The combination of one equivalent of one of these monoxide bases 
with one equivalent of the acid (R Si) forms a neutral Silicate. If the 
Silica preponderates and the salt is an acid salt, then, when the Si is 
to the base as 2:1, it is called a bisilicate ; when 3:1 a trisilicate, 
and so on. Conversely, when the base preponderates and the salt is 
basic, then, when the base is to the Si as 2:1, it is called a bibasie 
silicate, when 3: 1 a tribasic silicate, and so on. This nomenclature 
is only applicable to the monoxide salts ; but it is also applied to the 
sesqui-oxide salts in the manner explained below. 

It is found, however, that the chemical relations of siliea-salts are 
not so adequately or simply expressed by a statement of the propor- 
tionate combination of these equivalents of bases and acids, as by 
tracing the ratio of the oxygen contained in the base to that contained 
in the acid. If we take } to be the number of equivalents of oxygen 
in the base, and @ the number in the acid, the ratio between those 
(6 : a) will always express the most important chemical relations of a 
silica-salt. For instance, in the simple silicate Wollastonite (Ca) Si 
there is one equivalent of oxygen in the base and two in the acid, hence 
b:a::1:2. In the compound silicate Orthoclase (K Si® + Al Si?) 
bisa’ 12. 

This relation can be expressed more compactly by dividing out. the 
ratio, and taking the quotient, which we call the oxygen-quotient 


{abbreviated 0.Q.). In Wollastonite 0.Q. would equal : = ; = Ons 
Be aed 
in orthoclase 0.Q. = oT ‘B00. 

The following table of the principal orders of silicate-salts will give 
a general idea of their relations—and particularly of the relation of the 
monoxide (R) salts to the sesqui-oxide (R) salts. It must be under- 
stood, however, that it is to a great extent theoretical,—many of the 
salts having no natural existence. It will be seen by this that a 
nomenclature devised for, and only strictly applicable to, the R salts is 
likewise applied to the & salts, which are arranged upon the others 
according to their 0.Q. It will likewise be observed, and should 
always be borne in mind, that minerals of the same per centage of Si, 
may belong to very diferent orders of combination. 


SALMON—ON ROCKS. 22% 


LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL SILICA SALTS. 


Formule | Formule 


BES 4 = Monoxide Sood 
bases. bases. 
ae S31 3.0 Sexbasic RS Si R? Si 
oe ae | 2.0 Quadribasic. | R‘ Si R Si 
= ee ee 1.5 Tribasic. R3 Si RS 
Aas Basie. hig aay Lom 
so me RE | 1.0 Bibasic. R2 Si R? Si3 
oe PSE! 15 Sesquibasic. R3 Si? BR Si? 
hol aa ae 666 | Four-thirds basic. R14 Si3 Rt Gis 
a ee ae 5 Monosiuicate. Neutral. R Si R Sis 
aye 2-5 A Five-fourths silicate R4 Si8 R4 Gils 
9| 3:8 375 | Four-thirds silicate. R3 Sit R Sit 
ss am Be .333 | Sesquisilicate. \ Acid. R2 Si? Re Sis 
14 25 Bisilicate. R Si? R Sis 
Cy .4':6 166 | Trisilicate. | R Sis R $i 
13 | 1:8 125 | Tetrasilicate. R Sis R Sik 


It will be remarked that the O0.Q. of a neutral silicate is ‘5 ; and 
that it increases as the base increases, and decreases as the silica 
increases : or varies inversely as the acid. 

Besides its compactness, the expression of the order of silicate 
minerals by means of the O.Q. has many other advantages. (1) It 
affords a ready means of avoiding the confusion of the different 
formulz of silicates arising from the acid having been assumed 
until recently as a teroxide (Si) by the principal mineralogical 
chemists. (2) It enables us to express exactly the condition of a 
large class of intermediate and altered minerals, to which no regular 
formule could be applicable ; and thus to trace the metamorphoses 
and genesis of many minerals and rocks. (3) And, generally, in the 
case of complicated minerals, it avoids the necessity of setting up 
formulze which are not statements of facts, but merely “the expres- 
sion of the individual views of the chemist who devised them.” 

Next to the 0.Q., which expresses the general bearing of the base 
to the acid, the most important relation is the ratio, in compound 


928 THE GEOLOGIST. 


salts,* that the O (oxygen) in the B® bases bears to the O in the R bases, 
—which are combined together so frequently in silicate minerals. 
Taking Orthoclase again as an example (K Si® + Al Si’), here the O 
in @:Oin R::3:1. In Garnet, a mineral of most variable consti- 
tution, this ratio is also constant at 1:1. In all minerals, however, 
this relation cannot be accurately ascertained ; for in those containing 
Iron or Manganese, the determining of the state of oxidation in which 
they exist + in combination is a point attended with much difficulty. 
This relation of the O in R:O in R we may call the Oxygen ratio. 

XXV. MINERAL SPECIES AND THEIR CLASSIFICATION.—The grouping 
together of mineral species, on a scientific system, is attended, as I 
have already mentioned, with no small difficulty. In the descriptive 
list of rock-minerals which follows, I have arranged them, as already 
indicated, into (1) Elements and Binary-Compounds ; (2) Carbonates, 
Sulphates, and Borate ; and (3) Silicates. 

Elements; Binary- Conde ; Carbonates, Sulphates, and Borate. 
—TI have already, in XIV and XVI., given a list of seventeen of these — 
substances as forming rock-minerals. I have now to extend this 
number by the addition of five others, making in all twenty-two. 
These five are: 4rtumen, the variety of carbon containing hydrogen ; 
Opal, cr the hydrated variety of quartz; Lrown-Hematite, or the 
hydrous jecr-oxide of iron ; Magnetite, or magnetic-iron, a combination 
of protuxie and per-oxide of iron; and Pyrrhotine, the magnetic 
variety of Pyrite. 

XXVI. Silicates.—The leading silicated minerals naturally fall into 
several groups or. families—characterised by determinate’ physical 
characteristics and certain general chemical relations,—such as the 
felspar group, the garnet and tourmaline group, the mica group, the 
hornblendic and augitic group, and the talc and olivine group. But the 
connexion of these groups together in such a manner as to bring the 
whole of the silicates into one general series is a very different matter, 
and in a strict sense is not possible. But, if not strictly possible, 
there does yet seem to be in nature, with respect to these minerals, 


" “The vast mass of minerals are made up of compound silicates.” See XIX. 
p. 57. 


t That is, whether they exist as #e, Mn, or Fe, Mn. 


SALMON—ON ROCKS. 229 


a marked series, at one pole of which are the silicates of the alcaline 
bases (K, Na, Li),—and at the other pole the silicates of the bases 
Mg, Mn, and Fe; the bases Al and Ca being in a certain sense inter- 
mediate. If the simple alcaline silicates existed in nature (which, as 
stated, is not the case by reason of their extreme solubility), they 
would occupy the one pole, now occupied by the compound silicates 
of the alcalies with A (felspars) ;—with tale and olivine (silicates of 
Mg and Fe) at the other pole. Between these extremes we may 
place, next the felspars, the garnet group; then the micas; and, next 
the tale group, the hornblendes and augites: — 

Felspar group.—The felspars are essentially silicates (of various 
orders) of Al and the R bases, K, Na, Li, and Ca, having the constant 
oxygen ratio between the -Al and the R bases of 1: 3. The order of 
these silicates, and the consequent proportion of acid, varies very 
widely ; in Petalite, containing the most Si, the 0.Q = -25; while 
in Anorthite, containing the least Si, it is as high as 1.0. Thus the 
felspars differ among themselves in the proportion of Si they contain, 
and in the replacement of the alcaline bases and Ca for each other ; 
the only constant relation being the oxygen ratio of the Al and the R 
bases. ‘The most recent analyses show that all felspars contain both 
K and Na, but the proportions are very variable, the Na almost dis- 
appearing in some, as orthoclase, and the K in others, as albite. The 
Ca felspars seem to be the source of a class of hydrous silicates called 
zeolites. The species of the felspar group have a very striking physical 
similarity, unmistakeable in practice, but not very readily defined.* 

Garnet and Tourmaline group.—This group, in the list of minerals, 
extends from Andalusite to Cordierite. It is characterised by the 
absence, or only trifling quantities, of alcalies in its species. | 


* L’expression de famille de felspaths est défectueuse. En effet, les espéces 
qui la constituent n’appartiennent pas au méme systéme crystallin ; la compo- 
sition, différente pour quelques-uns sous le rapport des éléments, est. atomique- 
ment difiérente pour la plupart: en sorte qu'il n’existe de rapprochement entre 
eux ni par la forme ni par la composition. Les caractéres extérieurs sont, il est 
vrai, tellement analogues, que la reconnaissance de ces espéces est une des plus 
grandes difficultés de la minéralogie. Hn outre, les formes quoique differentes. 
sous le rapports des systémes auquels elles appartiennent sont trés-rapprochées par 
leurs angles. a couleur, léclat, la dureté, le poids spécifique, presque les mémes 
pour ces minéraux, augmentent leur analogie: leur réunion en un greup est donc 
fondée plutot sur la difticulte qu’on éprouve & les reconnaitre que sur les principes 
philosophiques. Coquand, p. 4. i 


230 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Mica group.—The most diverse compounds may occur in the form’ 
of mica. The following table (from Bischof) of maximum and mini- 
mum contents shows how great this diversity may be, combined with 
great uniformity of physical character. 


Maximum. Minimum. 

Slt ea uote pe 2s walagee Ve, ta ek ee eae Om 
Aduimntinay Sea a Te ke Sto RMR LARS i sk he (1) 
Protoxide Iron 36 iyi 
Peroxide Iron ; 

Magnesia pes eg 0 
Po tais liteel Ih fer oie tes 25 14 2 
Tehigi 2 eae en Se Oe Oey 0 
Mluorine) isc 4s cextiroea LOA 0 


The three regular mica species are Potash-mica, Magnesia-mica, and 
Lithia-mica. They contain essentially Al, and K, and (in the two 
first-named varieties) Fe, and usually some water. COhlorite and Ripi- 
dolite are physically allied to the micas, but they differ chemically in 
not containing an alcaline base. 

_ Hornblendic and Tale groups.—These extend from Wollastonite, a 
simple silicate of Ca, to Zale and Olivine, essentially silicates of Mg 
with a small proportion of Fe. The minerals of these groups occupy 
the opposite end of the series to the felspars, and in geological 
importance are next to that group. 

XXVII. Lnstability of Mineral Species.—Within the narrow limits in 
which these papers are necessarily confined, it is impossible even to 
indicate many of the important physical and chemical relations of 
minerals, and the different theories of genetic origin deduced from 
them. I shall, however, give a few extracts illustrating Bischof’s 
theory of the instability, and consequently slow cyclical changes, of 
mineral species, which of late years has attracted so much attention 
and discussion in Germany ; and which, if established, will throw so 
much light upon the genesis and metamorphism of rocks. The ex- 
tracts are from the Cavendish Society’s translation of his “ Chemical 
and Physical Geology.” 

_ “Strictly speaking, we do not know with regard to any single mineral whether 
it is still in its origmal condition, or has been more or less altered. . . . The 
alteration of a mineral is an extremely slow process. The material changes go 
on so gradually that they are not chemically recognisable until after long periods 
of time. In the analysis of a mineral in which such changes have already com- 


menced, especially by the addition of new constituents, although in very minute 
quantities, if is not unlikely to happen that they may be considered as accidental. 


SALMON—ON ROCKS, 231 


These new constituents, introduced in the course of time, are certainly foreign to 
the mineral in its original condition, and are on that account to be deducted. 
Since, however, alterations seldom take place merely by addition, but more fre- 
quently by loss of constituents, it is likewise requisite that, in the latter, case, 
the quantities lost should be added . . this is seldom possible. . . These examples 
will suffice to show the importance of the minute quantities of substances present 
in minerals, and generally considered as accidental. ... They then no longer 
appear as accidental, but indicate the transition of one mineral into others, and lay 
before us clearly the genetic part of the conversion-process. . . . It is but rarely 
that the chemist is able to produce artificially the changes observed in nature ; 
- and, in order to trace the various stages of these natural processes, there remains 
no other course for him to pursue than to ascertain by analysis the increase of the 
non-essential and the decrease of the essential constituents ; and, from the nature 
: of the former, to draw conclusions as to the processes which were going on in the 
mineral when formed. . . . Cordierite is the starting-point of a whole series of 
alterations, finally ending in Mica. . . . It will scarcely ever be possible to convert 
Augite, Olivine, and Hornblende into Serpentine in our laboratories ; but, when 
we find Serpentine in the form of these minerals, this fact is sufficient evidence that 
_ such a conversion can take place. . . . The Silicates that are most readily decom- 
_ posed are generally those containing lime, protoxide of iron, and manganese. . . . 
_ Minerals consisting chiefly of Silicates of Alumina and Magnesia, which are the 
most stable of minerals, are less hable to decomposition. . . . The Silicates least 
liable to decomposition are chiefly such as have originated from the alterations of 
the less stable Silicates ; so that they may be termed the final products of altera- 
tion. ‘They are not liable to undergo any further alteration by means of the 
atmospheric agents. They may be either compound or simple Silicates,—Mica, 
Chlorite, Serpentine, Asbestos ; Steatite, Talc, Clay, or Kaolin. * * * The most 
remarkable product of mineral alteration is unquestionably mica. . . . It is scarcely 
inferior to any in stability. . . . These minerals are not the only jinal products of 
alteration ; there are, besides, Quartz in its various modifications, oxides, hydrates, 
-and carbonates, incapable of higher oxidation. 

“‘ The cyclical character which is so generally recognisable in the alteration of 
minerals suggests the question, whether the last-mentioned minerals, which have 
been spoken of as jinal products of alteration, may not really be particular stages 
of wider cycles of alteration. It is certain that there is a limit to their duration ; 
those that are most stable among them—the silicates of alumina and magnesia— 
may under certain conditions become the starting points of other metamorphic 
processes. If the silicates of magnesia were dissolved and carried away by water, 
they would take part in the formation of new minerals. There are likewise means 
hy which the peroxide of iron and quartz may be again brought within the cycle 
of alteration.” 


Descriprive List or tHE Rock-rormine MINERALS. 

The oxygen-quotient is placed after the name of the species in square 
brackets, thus [ ]. 

The name of each species is followed by its synonyms and varieties. The 
synonym is separated from the name of the mineral by a comma ; the 
variety by a semicolon. 

The per-centage of constituents is put in brackets after the chemical symbol 
of the constituent. Thus K (5) means that the per-centage of soda 
is 5 per cent. 

A. Exements anp Binary Compounps. 

1. Grapuits. The only regular rock-mineral formed of Carbon is Graphite, 
of which Diamond is the transparent variety. It often contains a 
variable quantity of iron, and even the purest varieties have: traces of 


232 


THE GEOLOGIST. 


earthy matter: in the impure varieties the quantity of iron, lime, and 
alumina amounts, at times, to as much as 37 per cent. But Carbon 
is most important as the foundation of the Ooad family, divided into 
three species,—A nthracite, Common-coal, and Brown-coal or Lignite : 
these, however, are more rocks than minerals, and will be described 
as such. The bituminous variety of carbon, formed by its combi- 
nation with hydrogen, is classed separately as 

2. Bitumen ; Naphtha; Petroleum; Asphaltum. Contains about 12 per 
cent. of hydrogen. Naphtha, the purest variety, is liquid; it becomes 
thick by exposure, and is converted into Petroleum. Asphaltum is 
the solid variety. 

3. SULPHUR. 

4. Water; Ice; Firn or Névée. H. 

5. Corunpum ; Emery. Al. The granular and massive variety is Emery. 
The opaque crystalline variety is Corundum ; the transparent crys- 
talline blue and red varieties are respectively Sapphire and Ruby. 

6. Quartz; Jasper, Hornstone or Chert. Si. One of the most abundant 
minerals in nature. The pure transparent variety is Reck-crystal, and 
the blue and yellow Amethyst and Topaz. Jasper is the variety 
variously coloured by the oxides of iron principally. Hornstone or 
Chert are names given to compact quartz substances. 

7. Opau; Chalcedony; Flint. Si + H. Compact or uncleavable quartz. 
Silica with 5 to 12 per cent. of water. Ayalite is- the glassy trans- 
parent variety, and there are various coloured ones. The siliceous 
deposits from geysers and other hot springs are of this mineral. Opal 
differs from quartz, besides its containing water, by its much lower 
specific gravity, inferior hardness, simple refraction, and other chemical 
characters. Chalcedony and Flint are usually classed as anhydrous 
silica, but Fuchs considers them to be a mixture of quartz and opal. 
He consequently divides compact quartz into two kinds: the one 
containing opal, like chalcedony and flint; and the other free from 
opal, like chert. Bischof considers rock-crystal and opal as the final 
members of a series of siliceous minerals ; the former perfectly crys- 
tallized, the latter perfectly amorphous. 

8. Hematite, Specular-iron. Fe. The crystalline variety with metallic 
lustre is usually called — specular-iron (Fen olgiste). It is an 
abundant form of iron, and has many sub-varieties passing into each 
other. ; 

9. Brown Hematite, Limnite; Goethite; with many sub-varieties. 
¥e + H. Hydrous per-oxide of iron. Limnite and Goethite are 
strictly different minerals, the former containing 14, and the latter 10 
per cent. of water. 

10. Maanetite, Magnetic Jron. A combination of 1 atom of per-oxide 


SALMON—ON ROOKS. 233 


and 1 atom of protoxide of iron. Fe Fe. An important and widely 
distributed rock-constituent. 

11. Rocx-saut. Na Cl, but often mixed with many impurities. A most 
widely distributed mineral. Haloid. 

12. Fivor, Fluor-spar. CaF. A haloid mineral, more a vein- than a 
rock-constituent. 


13. Pyrite, Jron-pyrites. Fe. 


14. PyrrnoTine, Magnetic pyrites. Fes Fe. Unimportant as a rock- 
mineral. 

B. Carvonates, SULPHATES, AND BorATE. 

15. Caucrre, Cale-spar, Arragonite. Ca C. This important mineral has 
many varieties. The transparent one is Iceland-spar. <Arragonite is 
strictly a different mineral, although identical in chemical compo- 
sition : it is not a rock-forming mineral. Haloid. 

16. Macnesttr. MgC. A haloid mineral. Unimportant. 

17. DoxomirE, Bitter-spar. Ca C Mg ©. Haloid mineral ; very important, 
forming the base of whole mountain-masses of Magnesian Limestone. 

18. CuanaBire, Siderite, Sparry-iron. Fe CG. An important ore of iron, 
but always mixed with some impurities. . 

19. Anuyprite, Karstenite. Ca 8. Haloid mineral. Occurs generally 
with gypsum. 

20. Gypsum. Ca 8 + H2 Haloid mineral ; very important ; the most 
abundant of the sulphates. The transparent variety is Selenite ; and 
the white compact variety, Alabaster. 

21. Baryts, Heavy-spar. BaS. Haloid mineral; more vein- than rock- 
forming. Not to be confounded with Witherite, Carbonate of 
Baryta. 

22. Boracttz. Mg? 84 An unimportant rock-mineral. Haloid. 

C. SILIcATEs. 

23. ORTHOCLASE, Potash-felspar ; Adularia ; Sanidine [.333]. Is the most 
important felspar species. K Si?+Al Si? where K =15 per cent. ; 
but it always contains more or less Na. The transparent variety is 
Adularia ; Sanidine, or glassy felspar, is characteristic of the volcanic 
rocks, and contains more Na than Orthoclase. This felspar de- 
composes into kaolin ; the. alteration consists in the removal of the 
alkalies together with a portion of the Si, while water is introduced, 
producing a hydrated silicate of Al. The gradual decomposition of 
the original orthoclase is indicated by the increase of the 0O.Q., 
which in Kaolin reaches .75. 


rally contains some Na. This mineral is almost exclusively found in 


234 THE GEOLOGIST. ~ 


volcanic rocks. From pseudomorphs, we find Teucite is often con- 
verted into Sanidine. In this alteration the Si remains untouched, 
and the Al and alcalies are removed in combination as alcaline 
aluminates. 

25. ALBITE, Soda-felspar, Pericline [.333]. A very important felspar species. 
Composition Na Sis + Al Si3. Na (10); but almost always con- 
taining some K. From the preponderance of Na, this felspar is 
more liable to decompose than Orthoclase; and is consequently 
readily converted into Kaolin, the O.Q. increasing as decomposition 
advances. ; 

26. NepHELine; Lleolite [1.0]. Essentially a silicate of Al, Na (15), 
K (5) with a small quantity of Ca. The white variety is Nepheline 
and the coloured Elcolite. They are not abundant minerals. 

27. Ryacontte [.666]. A glassy felspar. A silicate of Al, Na (10.5), 
K (6), and Ca. 

28. OLIGOCLASE, Soda-spodwmene [.444]. Essentially a silicate of ‘Al, 
Na (8), Ca (2—3), almost always some K. Like orthoclase and albite, 
is decomposed into kaolin. An important felspar species. 

29. AnpEsinE [.5]. A mineral resembling albite, with which it was 
formerly classed : it is found in the Andes. A silicate of Al, Na (6), 
Ca (5), and K (1). 

30. SpopuMENE, Triphane [.5]. Essentially a silicate of Al, Li (4—7), and 
some Na. | : 

31. Perauite [.25]; Castor. Essentially a silicate of Al, Li (3), and 
Na (2.5). Castor is the crystallised variety found in Elba, and differs 
from Petalite in the absence of Na. 

32. LaBraporitTE [.666] An important felspar species. Essentially a 
silicate of Al, Ca (11), and Na (4), perhaps also K, as it is generally 
present. Iron is rarely absent. Distinguished from other felspars 
by its great liability to decomposition ; which results either from the 
total elimination of the Ga or a partial elimination of the Si. Many 
zeolites appear to be the products of the decomposition of Labradorite. 

33. ANORTHITE, Christianite [1.0], Sausswrite [.8]. An important felspar. 
Normally a silicate of Al and Ca (16), with small quantities of K, 
Na, and generally some Mg. The amount of Ca varies greatly, and 
diminishes as the alcalies and Mg increase. Sausswrite is a mineral 
of irregular composition, and is supposed to be an impure Anorthite 
or Labradorite. It occurs in the rock Gabbro ; and Bischof considers 
its unequal composition to be due to the effect of the decomposition 
of the other minerals in that rock. 

34. Sopanite. Havyne. Sodalite is a silicate of Al, and Na combined 
with Na Cl; the proportion being about Al (82), Na (25), and Cl 


SALMON—ON ROCKS. 235 


(6). Hauyne is a silicate of Al (26), Na (15), and Ca (9), combined 
with S (12): a variety of this last mineral, called Nosean, has a 
slightly different composition, with less sulphuric acid and Ca, and 
more Al and Na. 0.Q. of all these minerals is about 1.0. 

35. ZeouirEs. These minerals are hydrated silicates of Al, Ca, and 
alcalies, or seemingly hydrated lime-felspars. They all contain Al 
except 3 (Apophyllite, Damourite, and Datolite) ; and all contain Ca 
except 3 (Analcime, Natrolite, and Baryta-harmotome). The following 
list includes all the principal zeolites, arranged according to their con- 


stituents :— 

2 OP ee Scolezite, Stilbite, Heulandite, Laumonite, Leon- 
hardite. 

Al, Ca, Na . . Thomsonite (Comptonite), Epistilbite, Faujasite, 
Mesolite. 

Al, Ca, K .. . Chabasite, Phillipsite (Lime-harmotome) (some 
N a). 

Al... Na. .. Analcime, Natrolite (Mesotype). 

ane Ba. Baryta-harmotome.* 


Al, Ca, Ba, and Strontia. Brewsterite.* 
.. Ca, K... Apophyllite, Damourite. 
. Ga .... Datolite (with Boracic acid). 

36. ANDALUSITE [1.33]; Chiastolite. Essentially an anhydrous silicate 
of Al with very often some Fe. Chiastolite is a variety with a 
peculiar internal structure. Bischof supposes Andalusite to originate, 
in many instances, from felspars. In the conversion of felspars into 
kaolin there is a diminution of Si, and an increase of Al ; and, if this 
process were continued further, the composition of Andalusite would 
be ultimately attained. From pseudomorphs, we find that Andalusite 
and Chiastolite are convertible into Steatite, and the latter (Chias- 
tolite) into Tale. 

37. KyAnitE, Disthene [1.5]. Composition essentially the same as that 
of Andalusite, which mineral is found, by pseudomorphs, to be con- 
vertible into Kyanite ; this alteration consists in the elimination of 
the extra Si, which gives the lower O.Q. to Andalusite, and may be 
considered as a continuation of the before-mentioned process of 
alteration of felspars into Andalusite. 

38. WERNERITE, Scapolite [.75]; Meionite [1.0]. This mineral is essen- 
tially a silicate of Al and Ca (17), but almost always contains alcalies, 
either Na alone, or Na with a small proportion of K: the alcalies 


* These obscure minerals are noticeable as being the only silicates of Baryta known in the 
mineral kingdom. 


236 THE GEOLOGIST. 


replace the Ca; and Fe and 3 sometimes also replace the Al in 
small quantities. Meionite, the transparent variety, is essentially the 
same in composition, although in a different order of silicate, by 
which it has less Si, and consequently a higher 0.Q. According to 
Bischof, there is no mineral known capable of undergoing more 
numerous and diverse alterations than Wernerite. 

39. Eprpots, Pistazite [1.0] ; Zotstte. Consists essentially of a silicate of 
Al and Ca, the former base being replaced, often largely, in the 
different varieties by #e and Mn, and the Ga by Fe. Iron-epidote, 
or Pistazite, the most common variety, has Ca (22), ¥e (13), and Fe — 
(5). Zoisite, or lime-epidote, has Ca (21),¥e (5), and often a variable 
amount of Fe ; it is usually supposed to be distinguished, as a lime- 
epidote, by absence of Fe; but, according to Nicol, is rather cha- 
racterised by the small amount of Fe replacing Al. Manganese- 
epidote is distinguished by the replacing of the Al by Mn (17) with 
Ca (20), Fe (9). This mineral, it will be seen, is especially marked 
by the frequent and large interchange of the isomorphous 8 bases, 
which occurs in a minor degree in Wernerite.. . 

40. TourMALINE, Schorl [1.0 or .833]. This is one of the most complex of 
the silicated minerals, including, in its different varieties, in greater 
or less proportions, al2 the R and R bases. named in XIX. as com- 
bining with Si to form rock-minerals, and containing, besides, B 
(which is supposed to act as an acid and replace Si), and also a 
certain quantity of Fl. No general formula has yet been found 
applicable to the different varieties of this mineral ; and the con- 
sistency of its form through changes which cannot be accounted for 
by isomorphism has suggested many difficulties. The O.Q. is 1.0 or 
.833, according as we regard Boracic acid as B or B* ; but, at which- 
ever number we take it, it only varies, through all the varieties, 
within very narrow limits, and consequently the ratio of the oxygen 
in the bases, as a whole, is nearly constant with that of both the 
acids taken together. Rammelsberg also considers the oxygen in 
B to have the constant ratio to that in Si of 1: 3.5; and, however 
the amount of Si varied, he found this proportion unchanged, which 
he considers as indicative of the substitution of the acids for each 
other. 

The oxygen-ratio in the R and & bases varies very widely. Ram- 
melsberg has been able to arrange the different proportions into five 
‘groups, according to the nature of this ratio ; and the arrangement is 


Ke se Dr. Phipson’s remarks in July number of Tar Geoxocist (vol. i. p. 299) on 
us acid, 


SALMON—ON ROCKS. 


237 


also found to correspond with the leading physical varieties of 


the mineral. 


Monoxide bases. . . . . 1 Ale eel 1 1 
Sesqui-oxide bases. . . . 3 “ | 6 9 12 
Silicic and Boracic acid 5 6 8 12 15 


te} 


VOL. 


0.Q. (B). . . .| 08 | 0.838 | 0.875 | 0.833 | 0.866 


A. Yellow and brown Tourmaline, with little Fe (2) and the 
largest quantity of Mg (11); together with B (9), Fl (2), Na (2), 
Ca (1), and some K. 

B. Black Tourmaline, containing a mean proportion of Fe (7) and 
Mg (8) ; together with B (8), Fl (2), Na (2), Ca (1), and some K. 

C. Blackest, with largest proportion of Iron, Fe (8), Fe (6), and 
least of Mg (2); together with B (8), Fl (2), Na (1), with some 
Ca and K. 

D. Violet, blue, green, generally containing some Li, Fe (5), and 


Mn (8) ; together with B (7),"Na (2), Fl (2), Mg. (1), with some Ca 


and K. 

E. Red Tourmaline, with Li(1) but no Iron ; together with B (8), 
Fl (2.5), Na (2), K (1), and Mg (1). 

The whole of Rammelsberg’s analyses, classed on these five 
divisions, are to be found in Brooke and Miller's edition of “‘ Phillips’s 
Mineralogy.” Schorl, the black variety, is the most abundant. 

Hermann divides all the varieties of Tourmaline into three species, 
with the following formul, the R bases being placed in the order of 
quantity, and the Al being assumed to be replacable by Fe. 

1. Schorl. . (Fe, Mg, Li, Na) B+ Al Si 0.Q.=1.0 

2. Achroite . 2 (Na, Li, Mg, Mn) B+3 AP Si 0.Q.= .9090 

3. Rubellite 2 (Na, Li, Mn, Mg)?B+3 A Si. 0.Q.=1.0 
assuming the Boracic acid to be a binoxide. 

We find by pseudomorphs that Tourmaline is convertible into Mica, 
Chlorite, and Steatite. In these alterations Al is always separated, 
until in Steatite, the final product of alteration, it disappears. 
Besides this, the decomposition takes place in two different directions : 
in the conversion into Mica, alcalies are introduced ; while in the 


ik, 7 


238 THE GEOLOGIST. 


conversion into Chlorite and Steatite, the alcalies present in Tour- 
maline are separated, and the Mg constantly increased. _ 

41, Garnet [1.0]. This mineral, so widely variable in its components, is 
yet—unlike Tourmaline—remarkable for the regularity of its chemical 
relations, all the various replacements of its constituents being in 
strict accordance with the doctrine of isomorphism. Its 0.Q. is con- 
stant, and likewise the oxygen-ratio of R to R =1: 1, answering to 
the formula R* Si? + #® Si, where R is Ca, Fe, Mg, Mn; and 
®, Al or Fe. The following examples will illustrate the common 
variations. The common (alwmina-lime) garnet contains principally 
‘Al (20), Ca (32), with Fe (8). The noble (alwmina-iron) garnet 
(Almandine), principally Fe (40), Al (20). The black (magnesian) 
variety Al (22), Mg (13), Fe (9), Mn (6), Ca (6). The manganese- 
garnet contains Mn (33), Al (18), Fe (15). The éron-lime variety has 
Fe (31), Ca (28), Mg (7). Two other varieties (Pyrope and Uwaro- 
wite) contain respectively 9 per cent. and 23 per cent. of the oxide 
of Chromium. Thus every important base, both protoxide and 

~- sesqui-oxide, which each in their characteristic varieties reach to a 
large per centage, in turn disappears, being replaced by their 
isomorphs. 

Like all minerals containing considerable quantities of Ca and Fe, 
the varieties of Garnet with these bases are very liable to decom- 
position. The principal pseudomorphs of Garnet are Chlorite, Ser- 
pentine, and Steatite. 

42. Ipocrasz, Vesuvian [1.0]. Like Garnet, to which Idocrase bears 
a great similarity, and with which it is frequently associated, the 
0.Q. is 1.0; but the oxygen-ratio of the R to & bases is probably 
different, or nearer 3: 2. The mineral consists essentially of a 
silicate of Oa (33), Al (16), Fe (7), and Mg (5), replacing each other, 

and with sometimes a little Fe and Mn. 

43. CoRDIERITE, JToléte, Dichroit [.8]; Pinite; Fahlunite ; and others. 
Cordierite is not frequently met with : its essential constituents are 
a silicate of Al (31), Mg (10), and Fe (8). The oxygen-ratio of the 
R and & bases is 2:3. This mineral is principally important by 
being regarded by Haidinger, Bischof, and others as the initial 
member of a series of minerals, including Fahlunite and Pinite, and 
ending in Mica. The alteration to which Cordierite is subject has one 
essential feature,—the elimination of the Mg, and the introduction of 
water and alcalies. In one series of alterations the water only is 
introduced ; but in the other (which includes Fahlunite and Pinite) 
the alcalies come in, and attain the maximum in pinite, which has 
K (8). Rammelsberg considers the ratio of oxygen in the Si and Al 


45. 


46. 


47. 


48. 


49, 


50. 


51. 


SALMON—ON ROCKS. 239 


to be the same (5 : 3) in Pinite as in Cordierite. Cordierite is (with 
Olivine) one of the few minerals containing silicate of Magnesia liable 
to decomposition. 


. Mica, Potash-or Biaxal Mica [.866]. Essentially a silicate of Al (34), 


K (9), and Fe (6), sometimes with Fe, H, and Mn, but very variable. 
Briotite, Magnesia- or Uniaxal Mica [1.0]. Very variable, but essen- 
tially a silicate of Mg (19), Al (17), K (9), Fe (8), and generally some 
H and Fe. 
Lipiowre, Lithia-mica [1.0]. Essentially a silicate of Al (26), 
K (9), Li (4) with hydrofluoric acid (5), and generally Mn, and often 


Fe and H. 

CuLoRITE [1.33]. A silicate of Fe (22), Al (20), Mg. (18), with 
H (10); sometimes Fe replacing Al; and Mn in small 
quantities. 

Ripiwoure [1.5]. A silicate of Mg (34), Al (16), Fe (4), Fe (4), with 
H (13). . 

Wotasronirs [.5]. Essentially a silicate of Ca (47), with generally a 
very small quantity of Mg, and often Fe. Supposed by mineralogists 
to be an Augite of the simplest kind. 

Aveits, Pyroxene ; Diopside ; Malacolite, Sahlite ; and others [.5]. This 
mineral may, chemically, be separated into two classes, that contain- 
ing Al (5), including Augite proper ; and the non-aluminous class, 
including the other varieties mentioned. Excepting this distinction, 
the mineral consists essentially of a silicate of Ca (in nearly a constant 
quantity), and Mg and Fe in variable proportions, the former gene- 
rally preponderating. Aluwminous Augite, the most common variety, 
has Ca (21), Mg (14), Fe (7), Al (5). Diopside has Ca (24), Mg (18), 
Fe (2), and generally small quantities of Mn. Malacolite has Ca (23), 
Mg. (15), Fe (7), and some Mn. The black iron variety, Heden- 
bergite, has Ca (21), Fe, (24), Mg (2). Augite also occurs in a fibrous 
state, and is then called Amianthus or Asbestos. The O.Q. of the 
non-aluminous class is .5; and, according to Bischof, that of the 
aluminous .666. The Al in this mineral is considered to act as an 
acid. Augite is extremely liable to decomposition. We find by 
pseudomorphs that it is convertible into Mica and many other 
substances. 

HoRNBLENDE, Amphibole; Tremolite; Actinolite; Antophylkite; and 
others [.444]. According to Gmelin, 0.Q. = .416. This mineral is 
closely allied to Augite, but (as seen by the O.Q.) has more Si, 
and also more Mg, but less Ca. The varieties canbe divided into alu- 
minous and non-aluminous. The aluminous are common Hornblende, 


Tt 2 


240 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Pargasiie, and basaltic hornblende. General composition about 
Mg (15), Ga (12), Al (10), Fe (7—10), very variable. Uralite is also an 
aluminous variety. The non-aluminous varieties are Tremolite and 
Actinolite (magnesia-lime hornblende) with Mg (24), Ca (14), and Fe, 
amounting to (4) in Actinolite ; and Antophyllite (magnesia-iron 
variety) with Mg (24), Fe (14), Mn (2). The fibrous variety, Asbestos 
or Amianthus, has generally the composition of Tremolite or 
Actinolite. 

In this mineral the Al is supposed to act partly as an agit re- 
placing the Si and forming aluminates, and partly as a base ; but the 
subject is very obscure. It is less subject to decomposition than 
Augite, from its containing less Ca; but yet it is liable to many 
series of alterations. 

52. Hyprrstuens [.5]. A silicate of Mg (12—25), Fe (25—12), Oa (3), and 
often Al and Mn. Marked by its small contents of Ca, and wide 
replacement by each other of Mg and Fe. 

53. Bronzitx [.5]. A silicate of Mg (30) and Fe (9), with often a 
Mn and H, and sometimes Ca. 

54, Drauuace [.5]. A silicate of Mg (17), Ga (16), Fe (7), Al (8), 
with H (2). 

55, SERPENTINE [.75]. Many varieties. A silicate of Mg (40) and Fe 
(2—6), with H (12). 

56. Tauce; Steatite, Speckstein [.428 or .437]. Average composition of 
silicate of Mg (32), Fe (2), with H (3). Steatite is the compact variety, 
but has always a crystalline structure. Meerschaum is the amorphous .- 
variety, with four per cent. additional water. 

57. OLIVINE, Chrysolite, Peridot [1.0]. <A silicate of Mg (45) and Fe (15), 
with very little Mn and Fe. In the green transparent variety, 
Chrysolite, there is the highest proportion of Mg (50) and a com- 
parative decrease of Fe. 


WATSON—THE HAMATITE DEPOSITS OF GLAMORGANSHIRE. 241 


THE HAMATITE DEPOSITS OF GLAMORGANSHIRE. 
By Dr. J. J. W. Watson, F.G.8., F.S.4., Member of the North 


of England Institute of Mining Engineers. 


Durine the last few years, the native iron-making resources of 
South Wales have received considerable assistance from the re-dis- 
covery and working of some very remarkable deposits of hematite in 
the county of Glamorganshire. I propose in the present article to 
describe two of the most important, perhaps, of those veins of ore, 
which are found in the districts of Llantrissant and Llanharry, near 
Cowbridge, and at Newton Nottage, near Bridgend ;—the iron-ore in the 
latter locality being associated with a very large and curious deposit 
of manganese, chiefly psilomelane. Prefatory to this description, it 
may not be out of place to give a few remarks on the physical geology 
of the surrounding country, inasmuch as this district possesses ample 
materials to engage the attentive and careful examination of the 
geologist, particularly in relation to the origin of the mineral deposits 
in question. ‘The exploitation of these hematite-mines will have the 
effect, commercially, of giving a great development and increased 
prosperity to the iron-manufacture in the district south of Cardiff ; 


while, as a social result, their being worked will probably bring back 


to a population, at present agricultural, the mining and metallur- 


gical occupations of the ancient fore-dwellers on the soil, and, what 


is most desirable, give constant occupation to a very large number 


of the working classes. 


The stratigraphical position, as well as mode of occurrence of the 


ore, is similar in all three localities, being confined to the uppermost 


beds of the carboniferous limestone, immediately below where, in 
ordinary cases in this district, it is overlaid by the sub-dolomitie or 
calcareo-magnesian conglomerate, of equivocal age, which occupies the 


_ hollows and overlaps the edges of the limestone. 


Starting from the shores of the Bristol Channel, the limestone- 
strata roll forward to form a series of east and west anticlinals, before 


242 THE GEOLOGIST. 


they take their final north-east dip and disappear beneath the coal- 
measures. Bedded in the corresponding synclinal troughs to which this 
arrangement gives rise, are the nearly horizontal but much denuded 
strata of dolomitic conglomerate, which help to constitute a series of 
parallel basins, the deeper depressions in the magnesian rock being 
occupied by outliers of triassic marl, capped by lower lias lime- 
stone, while the more moderately denuded portions of the surface are 
covered up with beds of bouldered drift, which mostly exhibit imper- 
fect stratification, with false bedding, and are often of great thickness. 
South-east of the belt of limestone, between Llantrissant and Llan- 
harry, at Tregwylum, there is a protrusion of old red sandstone, 
showing the transition-beds with their yellow sands and the overlying 
lower carboniferous shales ; but the real “old red” base of the South 
Wales coal-field commences south of Pentyrch, and, with the exception 
of the interruption afforded by the drift and alluvium of Taff Vale, 
extends thence continuously into Monmouthshire and Herefordshire. 
Asa consequence of the geological structure, the surface of the country 
presents a number of narrow and shallow valleys, running mostly to 
the sea on the south-west ; and if we look north, we may see in the 
foreground, trending from east to west like low crested waves on 
a lazy ocean, the limestone-ridges and conglomerate-bottoms, while 
beyond, rising in a series of dwarfed bluffs one over the other, and 
only to be separately distinguished in the view by the alternations of 
lights and shadows caused by the hills and valleys, are the basset- 
edges of the lower and middle groups of coal-measures with the 
pennant-sandstone. Turn to the south, and the same undulating 
country lies stretched out before us, but the crests of the waves or 
anticlinals now fall lower, while the swell of the strata spreads 
wider, until, over and beyond the last rising land, a dim misty streak 
terminates the scene and marks the line of the sea-shore. 

The accompanying diagram represents the rocks in ideal section near 
Llantrissant, and illustrates the prevailing geology of the Glamorgan- 
Shire sea-board. It represents one of the many undulations of the 
limestone, and the unconformable filling-up of the troughs by the 
dolomitic conglomerate. It also shows, what is here characteristic, 
the comparatively rapid inclination of the northern dips, as compared 
to the more gradual curves of the strata where the limestone rises into 


243 


WATSON——THE HZMATITE DEPOSITS OF GLAMORGANSHIRE, 


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“JUESSTIYURTT  —«- "8 {10 M-prary 


= 
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When walk- 

ing over the country, what first strikes 
If we restore the 

t surface of the 

ted after, perhaps, the 


ien 
and before the land 


rock emerge from be- 


-measures. 
ta, wherever the summits 


and thus establishes, apart 


from the inland pitch of the rock on 
_ the shores of the Channel, the true 


_ direction whence proceeded those ele- 


either by their cropping through the 
is 
ions, 


continuous, and the now broken beds 
were formerly uninterruptedly joined, 
does not admit of doubt; and it is in- 
teresting to notice how the old wea- 


removal of the conglomerate “ cap.” 
That such masses of rock were once 


vatory disturbances by which the vast 
the physical geologist, is, the frequent 
fractured and upturned edges of the 
soil, or by the artificial exposure of the 
beds, as laid open for quarrying, by the 


masses of this 
neath the coal 


limestone-stra 
-or axes of the anticlinals are bared, 


to those which are now to be observed 
same rocks at the adjacent shore—are, 
deposits of the newer rocks, by joining 
the figure of the “coursing” of the 
limestone-strata by lines proportion- 
ately curved to the prevailing “dips,” a 


lapped over by conglomerate, or covered 
sank beneath the sea to receive the 


according to their elevation, either 
with the drift-gravel 


presenting marks of attrition so similar 
from the action of the waves on the 


outline of the anc 


- anticlinals, 
tract as it ex 
first convuls 


244 THE GEOLOGIST. 


clue may be obtained which will serve to unravel something of the 
history of those extensive denudations which have given origin to the 
curious intercircling, and often perplexing, assemblage of mesozoic and 
ancient rocks which is presented by the geology of this part of South- 
Western England,—where, although organic remains are by no means 
abundant, the fossil-collector may, at the end of a day’s search, lay 
side by side the characteristic indices of life-periods separated by vastly 
remote intervals of geologic time, gathered out of not more than half- 


a-dozen quarries, in the space of as few miles,—and where, in a 
country that hardly deserves to be called hilly, the petrologist may 
note, in an area of the same or even Jess extent, an individually- 
represented range of formations, from “old red” to “lower lias.” 

By such restorations of the breaks and eurves in the limestone, it 
becomes at once apparent that an enormous amount of mineral matter 
has been destroyed and re-arranged. The coal-measures, with their 
coal-seams “ cropping” nearly to the surface, and actually ceming out 
to the day in places, afford perfect evidence that their collection of 
shales and sandstones were never originally discontinued at their 
present outcrop, but that, on the contrary, they form only the remnant 
of a more extended tract of similar strata, long since destroyed, that 
enee covered the subjacent limestone. The elevated portions of 
this rock, together with the old red sandstone, formed islands and 
headlands, exposed to the action of breakers which, while they beat 
away the cliffs of the coal-measures, furnished from the harder 
strata those sub-angular shingles which, with the limestone-pebbles, 
were afterwards cemented and consolidated by a ealeareous or mag- 
nesio-caleareous paste, into the dolomitic conglomerate. That this 
conglomerate was in part derived from these strata, is attested by the 
fact, that as the beds approach the coal-measures, the quantity of 
fragments of sandstone preponderates over those of limestone. It 
is also fair to assume that the softer rocks may have furnished the 
patches of red sands and marls afterwards thrown down in quiet 
places on the conglomerate. In a quarry~near Pyle, about three 
miles from Newton Nottage, a section can be observed, where 
these red sands and marls rest on the denuded surfaces of the conglo- 
merate, and are surmounted by lower lias-limestone. 

In Sir H. De La Béche’s valuable paper on the “ Formation of Rocks 


WATSON—THE HZ MATITE DEPOSITS OF GLAMORGANSHIRE. 245 


in South Wales,” the dolomitic conglomerate is classed with the 
poikilitic or new red sandstone series, and a lithological resemblance 
is pointed out between this rock and consolidated beaches, the 
resemblance being further traced in their mode of occurrence. Messrs. 
Buckland and Conybeare, also, in their notice of the south-western 
coal-districts of England, observe that the conglomerate “generally 
forms a thick bank or talus near the base of those hills from the 
débris of which it has been derived ; while at a distance from them 
it grows thinner, and at length wholly disappears.” But, without 
actually dissenting from the presumed beach-origin of the conglo- 
merate, I submit that the recent mining excavations in the neigh- 
bourhood of Llantrissant and Llanharry, as well as the openings 
and sections at Newton Nottage, exhibit so much evidence of former 
denudation, that there is strong reason for believing that the patches 
and thin coverings of the magnesian rock now presented to us, are 
merely the remains of a thicker formation, which has been attenu- 
ated to its present condition by aqueous causes; and, following up 
this view, there is nothing, in the absence of palzeontological grounds, 
to show why this rock, which is notably magnesian in its composition | 
should not be the representative of the magnesian limestone of true 
Permian age in the North of England, and be wholly unconnected in 
time with the overlying sands and marls at the base of the lias. This 
reasoning seems further supported by the frequent cases of uncon- 
furmability in the position of the latter group of rocks. In the 
absence of organic tests, it is fair to assume, all other things being 
equal, the contemporaneity of formations lithologically related, though 
not identical. 

The outliers of the lias, and the scooped-out surface of the dolomite, 
where exposed in section, and where the hollows are seen filled with 
drift-gravel, mark periods of destruction. And to these we have 
additional witnesses in the loose blocks of the conglomerate which 
fret the surface of such situations as Newton Nottage Downs, and 
the blocks of fine soft pinkish-white argillo-quartzose stone which 
occur scattered over the western part of those downs.* If we follow 

* This rock, mostly in a disintegrated state, often occupies hollows in the lime- 


stone, where it is considered to be in sitd, and it is questionable whether it does 
not belong to the Millstone-grit or its equivalent. In North Staffordshire, the 


246 THE GEOLOGIST. 


the coast from the little fringe of limestone and conglomerate-rock 

at the Bathing House at Newton over the barren dunes of blown 
sand through which the little river Ogwr enters the sea, we come again 

on the same rocks; and as we leave the conglomerate, approaching 
Dunraven Castle, we find the lias limestone resting partly on this 
rock, and partly on the carboniferous limestone, without any inter- 

mediate red sands or marls, so that, even if these latter deposits 

existed, they must have been removed prior to the deposit of the 

liassic strata. But to quote other instances of the degradation of the 

chief rock-formations of the district is unnecessary, or to prove that 

the destructive action produced by moving water had been actively 
engaged in bringing about much. of the present configuration of this 

portion of the surface of South Wales; it is right, nevertheless, to 

point out the thick-bedded gravels which, though usually classed 

under the general term of drift, probably represent the progress of 
geological events far removed from one another in time. Of these, 
however, one thing is certain, that in the districts in question the 

massive beds of sand, small, flat, and sub-angular fragments of shale,* . 
which often carry proof of their original position in the roof of 
some ancient coal-seam by being still flecked with coaly particles,— 

pieces of clay-ironstone, pebbles, and patches of loamy clay which 

spread wide over the low grounds, in places as much as ten yards 

deep, are entirely composed of the débris of local rocks. Towards this 
miscellaneous collection of rock fragments, the coal-measures and 
the lias have contributed abundantly ;* and although in the various 
oscillations of land, which most likely occurred in bygone tertiary 
times, the materials were more than once assorted during the varying 
changes of level, yet, with the exception of the results of the action of 
modern agents, we may look upon these gravels as evidence of the 
last great modification of the surface. 

The cases are not many in which we have direct evidence afforded 
us of a former phase in the physical geography of a country, by the 
finding of the remains of animals still in the same positions as those 
hollows in the Carboniferous limestone are similarly filled at Oakamore, near 
Cheadle, and the argillo-siliceous sands are there largely quarried for use in the 
slept from their possessing highly refractory qualities for the manufacture of 


ining-tiles for the kilns. 
* Rolled shells of a species of Grypheea are common in the drift. 


i Tr fh ek titi hh Tk tT) 


i 


sony) del Dee AD 


VOL. Il. PLATE IX, 


HY 


y Mh 
WP AG, 


FATELLA VULGARIS end BALANI, on a Fragment of the Outcrop of a Lead-Vein from 


Liantrissant 


In the Collection of DR WaTson 


S J Macrtpf del 


WATSON—-THE HEMATITE DEPOSITS OF GLAMORGANSHIRE, 247 


they occupied when alive. Yet in the district I am describing, such 
testimony can be found, and the date, geologically, of the period when 
those elevations occurred which in all probability gave arrangement 
to the present surface of the land, is most singularly revealed to us. 
Mr. David Rees, of Neath, discovered some time since some modern 
littoral shells among the “attle” from a lead-vein which traverses the 
crop of the limestone at the Llantrissant Lead-w orks, from which place 
the shore now lies upwards of eighteen miles distant. The specimen, 
which is in my possession, is figured on the adjoining page (Pl. IX.) 
from a beautifully accurate drawing by Mr. S. J. Mackie, and displays 
a limpet shell (Patella vulgata) with two barnacles (Balanus balanovdes), 
in the position in which they adhered to the rock at the time when 
the back of the vein was washed by the waves; the lower part of the 
specimen—a piece of confusedly crystallized carbonate of lime, in fact, 
an ordinary veinstone—is spotted with little masses of galena, one 
or two of the crystals of which may be seen in the cut. It would 
be leading from the purpose of this paper to do more than remark 
that this species of mollusck (Patella vulgata) as well as the cirri- 
pedes (Salani), are animals inhabiting the tidal zone, and that, 
therefore, the limestone-ridge from which the specimen came must 
have fringed the shore, as does the same rock now near Newton, 
where the “backs” of lead-veins may also be seen at ebb-tide, 
encrusted with the same description of shells. By reference to any 
good geological map of the district, it will be seen that the point 
marked Llantrissant Lead-works lies apparently on the conglomerate, 
but the veins which are close by are found really in the limestone 
which has been exposed by the denudation of the thin cap of conglo- 
merate. It follows from this fact, that, on the evidence of the shells, 
the mass of land lying to the south, and occupied chiefly by lias, was 
probably submerged until a very recent period, and that much of 
the present disposition of the gravel-beds, as already remarked, was 
given to them during the final elevation of the land. 

But if thus much of elevation and denudation of the land has 
occurred, it is obvious that we must find evidence of great dislocation of 
strata,—of beds not only bent into simple or double curves, but of 
rents and fissures such as a succession of elevations and depressions, 
with their concomitant disturbances, would be sure to effect. And, 


248 THE GEOLOGIST. 


accordingly, we find great lines of fault on the south-western sea- 
board, and inland to the edge of the coal-basin in Glamorganshire, 
running N.W. and S.W., and producing two principal systems of 
fissures, which intersect at nearly right angles. The effect of the N.W. 
fractures has been, mainly, to thrust up the strata into dome-shaped 
protrusions ; and it is probable that these disturbances were of more 
ancient date than those which produced the undulating character of 
country, and which forced up the rocks in east and west directions, 
originating at the same time a parallel system of faults. It is in con- 
nexion with this series of east and west fissures that we must look for 
the origin of the deposits of hematite at Llantrissant and Newton 
Nottage. 

The most important workings of the hematite-ore in the Llantris- 
sant district, are probably those of Mr. Vaughan, at Cornel Park, and 
the adjoining Hendy Mine, on the lands of the Marquis of Bute. 
Both mines are worked “open-cast”—that is to say, the super- 
incumbent strata are stripped from the upper surface of the vein, 
which is then worked through its whole thickness after the manner of 
a quarry. This is probably the most ancient mode of mining, and 
in countries where the “old men” have been, the magnitude of the 
excavations often affords a rude proof of the former wealth of the 
neighbourhood, as well as indicates the value of the deposits likely 
to be encountered by continued exploring. But to the geologist these 
open-cast workings possess the greatest advantages, since they reveal 
those details of structure and association, both in regard to the depo- 
sits themselves as well as to the containing rock, to an extent, and 
with an amount of convenience to the observer, which can seldom or 

ever happen in subterranean mines. In both geologist and miner 
the workings in the vein of ore at Cornel Park must provoke a sense 
of wonder. Indeed they cannot fail to set the former speculating upon 
the origin and segregation of such enormous quantities of a particular 
mineral, which, by its mass and constancy of position, here becomes, 
stratigraphically speaking, almost entitled to the dignity of being 
considered a “formation,” more especially if this word be considered 
equivalent to “period.” The surprise, too, of the intelligent miner, 
in connexion with the experience of his profession, must be very 
great, since, in this case, we have the rare occurrence of a bed of 


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BNVSSIPLNVIT teu “HNIWNOUL ACGNAMN 


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WATSON—THE HZEMATITE DEPOSITS OF GLAMORGANSHIRE. 249 


ore “in sight,” from which we can calculate the yield for a definite 
period, with almost grave certainty, without taking into consideration 
those chances and contingencies which render mines— under the 
best of circumstances—par excellence speculations. 

A face of vein upwards of two hundred yards in length has been 
more or less laid open by Mr. Vaughan’s excavation, and the average 
width of the “raising floor” is about thirty-five yards. A reference 
to the woodcut (PI. X.) will afford the best idea of the dimensions 
and other* details connected with the works. To obtain a weekly yield 
of 1,500 tons is said to be a matter of easy performance. 

The mines at Cornel Park are situate about a mile and a half north 
of the Llantrissant Station on the South Wales Railway ; and so far 
as regards the character of the limestone-strata, as seen in quarries and 
sections by and near to the roadside, but few indications are to be 
found of the vast deposits of mineral which exist in the vicinage. The 
stranger, accustomed to the position of mines, will probably look for 
operations at the foot of some hill, but the hills which are seen in the 
distance in travelling towards these works, are those of the coal-grits, 
and we unexpectedly advance upon the mines in a slightly undulating 
plane. The accompanying lignograph (Pl. X.), from a rough sketch I 
made on the spot, gives a representation of Mr. Vaughan’s mine. On 
the left hand in the cut we have a section of the rocks on the dip of 
the beds, which amounts, on an average, to twenty-three inches in the 
yard. On the “face” we have an end section of the same _ beds, 
showing the thickness of the heematite-vein, the overlying conglome- 
rate, and the great thickness—upwards of fifteen feet—and bedded 
character of the “drift.” The magnesian conglomerate, from the 
sub-angular character of some of the fragments of limestone and 
sandstone of which it is principally composed, might perhaps be more 
properly called a breccia. The cementing paste is not of uniform 
composition, but is as often wholly calcareous as it is magnesian, and 
near the hematite it is usually highly charged with peroxide of iron. 
The “conglomerate” itself does not appear to include any fragments of 
solid ore. The nature of the cementing matter confers, especially at 
a distance, a more homogeneous appearance to the rock, and a rude 
description of bedding is always to be observed ; the stratified character 
being further maintained by a series of horizontal “joints,” along the 


250 THE GEOLOGIST. 


lines of which the amount of weathering seems to have been greatest, 
and the dolomitic character most brought out. 

The vein of hematite, it will be observed, reposes immediately on 
the uppermost bed of limestone, and is overlaid directly by the con- 
glomerate; indeed, the one seems to form a bed separating the two 
descriptions of rock, and it might doubtless be assumed to be an 
interstratified deposit but for the great irregularity of the bounding 
walls. Moreover, interspersed in the mass, sometimes in contact 
with, but more often perfectly isolated from, the parent rock, large 
fragments of limestone lie bedded in the ore; while large cracks and 
fissures in the conglomerate, partly filled with ironstone, evidently 
prove that the two formations were first torn asunder, and the ore 
subsequently introduced. The ore differs mineralogically from the 
“mine” raised from the carboniferous limestone in other localities 
chiefly by a superabundance of silica, the associated minerals—vein- 
stones—being chiefly quartz, large crystals of which may be found 
lining the angles and cavities in the vein. The magnitude of the 
deposit generally has already been referred to, but not its average 
thickness, which, from wall to wall, may be fairly calculated as not 
less than fifteen feet, and is probably much more as it lies deeper 
from the crop: the engine-shaft (see Pl. X.) passes through a mass 
of ore upwards of fourteen yards solid ; but this, although taken perpen- 
dicularly, is of course an oblique measurement as regards the proper 
section of the vein. The siliceous character of the matrix has probably 
influenced the crystallization of the hematite, and the highest per- 
centages are obtained from that description of ore known in the Forest 
of Dean as “flint-brush ;” this ore presents a smooth conchoidal fracture, 
and much resembles in colour and surface the appearance presented 
by a freshly broken piece of cast iron. Another kind has a more 
granular fracture, possesses a colour between iron-grey and brownish 
red, has a semi-metallic lustre, and is of an exceedingly compact 
texture, A third variety might probably be called Black Hematite, 
and, from its affording a violet-coloured glass with borax before the 
blow-pipe, proves itself to be a mixture of iron-ore and manganese :— 
its colour is bluish black, and its lustre imperfectly metallic. All 
kinds are mostly impregnated and interlaminated with quartz, which 
frequently confers a fibrous or Semi-ligneous character to the large 


WATSON—THE HEMATITE DEPOSITS OF GLAMORGANSHIRE., 251 


masses, rendering them at the same time exceedingly hard to blast ; 
the “ getting of the ore” being almost exclusively performed with gun- 
powder. In the small cavities or angles, where we might expect to 
find the botryoidal forms or “kidney-ore,” none such occurs, but 
instead, as mentioned above, we have often magnificent specimens of 
rock-crystal, inclosing minute but very perfectly formed crystals of 
specular ore. The “raddle” or fine powdery micaceous ore, which 
soils the fingers on the most delicate touch, and which is always dis- 
tinctive of the Ulverstone hematite, and some of the ores raised in 
North Wales, is uniformly absent, and in lieu of it the less coherent 
parts of the vein-stuff are represented by an ochraceous earth (argil- 
laceous hydrous sesqui-oxide of iron), which in wet Weather works up 
to a stiff red mud, but is far inferior in per-centage of iron to 
the Ulverstone “raddle,” (anhydrous sesqui-oxide of iron), which, like 
the “smith-ore” of the Forest of Dean, is always of equal value with 
the more solid products of the veins. 

One of the most interesting lithological features connected with 
these Llantrissant mines is the “yellow clay” (ochre). This mineral 
occurs in great abundance, “riding” the vein near the crop above the 
deposit, and is several yards in thickness: it is of a pale lemon-chrome 
colour, and I have little doubt might find use as a coarse pigment. 
It is probably a hydrate of alumina and silica, with hydrate of the 
sesqui-oxide of iron, and, mineralogically, the equivalent of “ Limonite.” 
‘In my paper upon the [Ironstone Formation of the Forest of Dean* 
I have mentioned the circumstance that the upper portion of the 
“joints” which cut across the underlying limestone of the “ mine- 
measures” is filled with a highly ferruginous marl, described as “ clod- 
ore ;’ and I may here observe, that ochraceous earths are superficially 
common to most of the deposits of ironstone in the carboniferous 
limestone. The origin of these ferruginous clays or marls must doubt- 
less be assigned to the introduction of the wasted alluvial matters 
derived from the weathering of the contiguous rocks, and their sub- 
sequent amalgamation with the ferriferous matters of the vein, but it 
is at least curious, that each dissimilar deposit of hematite has its 
own peculiar character of “clod” in the same way that the veins of 


* QGnoLogist, vol. i. p. 270. 1858. 


952 ~ THE GEOLOGIST. 


other minerals have their distinctive “gozzans”” and surface associa- 
tions of particular minerals. This “clod” may either be a ferruginous 
clay or a ferruginous marl, according as the gangue of the ore is sili- 
ceous or calcareous. In the Llantrissant district, the matter being 
chiefly silica, we have the “clod” in the form of a yellow clay (the 
“native ochre” of the painter), but nevertheless containing lime : in 
the Forest of Dean the ores are calcareous, and the “ clod ‘ is a true 
marl, highly charged with small fragments of compact hematite, or 
“black brush.” . 

The exact geographical range of the ironstone-deposits contiguous 
to the boundary of the coal-measures, has not yet been ascer- 
tained — although there has as yet been no lack of enterprise to 
make discoveries. In the Llanharry district, which immediately 
adjoins Llantrissant, a score and more of trial pits testify the 
eagerness of the search; and wherever this has been rewarded, the 
ore has been found similarly situated with respect to geological 
position, that is, near the axis of some anticlinal of the limestone. 

The common mining-axiom, that the depth from surface and wealth 
of a vein are conterminous facts, is certainly not founded on any — 
precedent derived from the occurrence of those deposits of heematite- 
ore which lie (as it were) bedded. Indeed, unlike copper or tin, or 
even lead, of which, as a vein or lode “holds down” in depth, it 
assumes a richer mineralisation and more constant ore-bearing charac- 
ter, iron-ore in veins is not generally found in deposits of the same 
magnitude in depth as near the surface ; and more especially when 
the run of the veins is horizontal. In the Forest of Dean, where this 
horizontal or “bedded”’ character of the deposits is almost typical, it 
is extremely doubtful that, if the centre of the basin were proved by 
deep “ winnings,” the ore would be found in the same quantity as 
near the basset of the “measures ;” and, taking the same view, 
I believe that any sinkings through the dolomite to the synclinal 
troughs of the limestone at Llantrissant and Llanharry would be, both 
geologically and economically, failures. But it must be understood 
that by deep “ winnings” I do not mean the actual depth at which a 
shaft may intersect a vein of the ore, since, although actually very near 
to the crop, certain deposits may be carried deep from surface by the 
high angle at which the strata may be raised. My restriction of the 


WATSON—THE HEMATITE DEPOSITS OF GLAMORGANSHIRE. 253 


unproductive region relates only to the troughs or positions near to 
the synclinal axes, and to which the exoteric agents, which aided 
mainly in the deposition of the ironstone, could never possibly have 
penetrated. 

On the statement of this fact, that these veins of hematite may be 
considered superficial, the question of origin next arises. And here is 
immediately opened to us the wide inquiry of the relationship of 
mineral veins to the rocks which inclose them. With veins filled 
with other ores than those of iron, the origin of the metallic accu- 
mulations may, in most cases, be referred to causes acting from 
distant centres in the interior, assisted by those subterranean changes 
which are the universal result of the calorific and electrical agents 
that are always at work in the earth’s crust. 

In a few words, the origin of these veins may be considered esoteric, 
or produced from within. With iron, however, in nearly all cases, 
an external derivation must be sought. The great solubility of its 
salts and chemical combinations, their affinity, and the proneness of 
the metal itself to enter into union with substances with which it may 
have newly come in contact, gives to iron in its various forms a more 
world-wide distribution than is perhaps possessed by any other 
metallic mineral. Its local accumulation will therefore probably be 
the result of its chemical segregation and the nature of its combina- 
tions ; in other words, the particular class of ore will be governed 
by the mineral character of the transported matter, those portions 
which do not separate as ore solidifying into the vein-stones, or 
“ saneue,” which may either be amorphous or crystallized, according 
to circumstances. 

In the Llanharry district there is a bed of hematite five feet in 
thickness, of the same mineralogical character as the Llantrissant 
deposit, and occupying a similar geological position in the limestone. 
This bed has been anciently worked to some extent at Lleche, and, 
from the form of the chambers, or “stalls,” and the narrow pit by 
which access was gained to the vein, probably by the Romans, 
who certainly were acquainted with the existence of the ore in the 
district. Some coarse red pottery, of undoubted Roman manufac- 
ture, was found a few years since buried in a.small pit made in 
the bottom of an ancient stall-working at Ty-Ischaf. The pottery, 

VOL. Il. U 


254 a4, Sl ‘THE GEOLOGIST. 


which consisted of small amphore, was accompanied by some bones, 
but unfortunately both were scattered by the finders. The age of 
some of the workings, however, is probably more recent than the time 
of the Romans ; and in the Ebbw Vale Museum the skeleton of a 
miner, and an oaken shovel, can be seen, which were exhumed 
together from an old working. The character of these ancient excava- 
tions is shown in the subjoined plan and section, which exhibits a 


| WW 
att] 
Will 


WATT 
Hi! 


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maui 


= is oe Se eis eail ed Fue 0 Ny josh sili 
TOADS MASUR TTT TR a URN LEAR RTC La UR 
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2 


i _ Une 
i 7 


Lign. 2.—Plan of Ancient Mine Workings in Vein of Hematite Iron Ore, Llanharry. 


aa. Outciop of Carboniferous Limestone. 5 Ee ne 
6 6. Hematite Vein. . Stalls. A * 5 
A. Pit. = . The arrow shows the direction of the drip. 


Lign. 3.—Section of Ancient Mine Workings in Vein of Hematite Iron Ore, Llanharry. 


a. Carboniferous Limestone, A. Section of Shaft. 


56. Conglomerate. B. Section of Heading. 


ce. Superficial Drift. C. Section of Stall. 
d. Vein of Hematite. 


WATSON—THE HZMATITE DEPOSITS OF GLAMORGANSHIRE. 255 


working on the vein. The pits were usually sunk down some twenty- 
five yards on the “dip,” and low headings were then driven out on 
the “course” or “strike” of the vein, the headings terminating in 
“stalls,” which are “chambers” turned at right angles to the 
“< pitching ” of the deposit which it follows down. The diagram, how- 
ever, will afford a clearer idea of this plan of working than any 
written description. It is difficult to assign any reason for the small 
size of the pits and the lowness of the “ headings,” seeing that such 
arrangements must have offered great impediments to the bringing 
out of the ore from the mine, unless it were that the rude nature of 
the tools, and slow progress thereby caused in working through the 
rock, rendered it more economical to confine all the means of access 
to the smallest possible dimensions. 

In. the commencement of this article I have referred to the 
rediscovery of these iron-ore deposits, since, apart from the evidence 
of the ancient workings, Leland in his “ Itinerary” says, “There are 
two faire parkes by south of Llantrissant now unimpalid and without 
deere. There is yren now made in one of these parkes, named 
‘Glinog.’” The mine at Cornel Park, worked by Mr. Vaughan, is 
probably the mine referred to by Leland. The proof of the former 
mining-associations of the locality extends also to the names of places. 
Thus, near Mr. Vaughan’s mine is Mwyndy, or the Miner’s House ; 
and at Lleche, near Llanharry, is a building called Castell y Mwynwrs, 
or the Miner’s Castle, and is situate near, I believe, the largest deposit 
proved by Mr. Plant in the Llanharry district. 

The deposit at Newton, as I have already stated, is remarkable for 
having, intercalated with the hematite,a bed of manganese-ore, or 
black hematite. The vein was first discovered at Guar Coch, where 
it has been worked to a limited extent, and where the diagrammatic 
section delineated in Plate XI. can now be seen. 

_. We have presented there :— 


(e).oGravel toe b. 6) 


(6). Conglomerate . . . 6 feet.* 
(d’). Hematite . . . . 1 foot. 
(ce). Manganese. . . . 4 feet. 
(d). Hematite . . . . 3 feet. 


(a). Limestone . . . . —— 


* The section is purposely exaggerated to better show the details—the real 
thickness of the several beds is mentioned in the text. 


256 THE GEOLOGIST. 


The manganese-ore is singularly free from iron, and its position - 
between the beds of hematite forms altogether a most remarkable 
association of minerals, The character of the veinstone of the heema- 
tite at Newton differs from that at Llantrissant by the absence of 
silica and its replacement by calcareous minerals. Small leaders of 
ore, called “ blowers,” run up into the magnesian conglomerate at right 
angles to the general mass, and are analogous to the “joints” which 
intersect the “ mine-measures” in the Forest of Dean. ‘The ore dips 
fast to the south at the crop, but would seem to “flat” as it passes 
towards the centre of the basin. Near Pyle, traces of the hematite 
are to be seen at low-water occupying the flank of the limestone 
basin immediately under the magnesian conglomerate ; and both there 
and at Newton the deposits course in an east and west direction. 
Besides the psilomelane, which forms the chief bulk of the ore, there 
is a small admixture of pyrolusite, but the vein may be considered 
“massive grey manganese,” such as occurs at Upton Pyne and 
Dodscomb Leigh, in Devonshire. | 

In the Newton District the ploughshare has brought up the 
evidence of former workings of the ore, as near Llantrissant, and 
iron-cinders, old slags, and even pieces of ore, are to be found scattered 
over the fields.) The borough of Kenfig, in this district, consists of a 
solitary house ; and this fact is significant of the place having once 
been of importance, arising, no doubt, from the metallurgical opera- 
tions formerly carried on by the Romans, or some other people, in 
the neighbourhood,—the ancient town having disappeared with the 
removal of that industry which had created the settlement. 

Antiquarian matters do not properly fall within the province of 
this article, but those of my readers who have curiosity in these 
matters had better repair to the locus in guo, where they may find an 
abundance of material:—the geologist will have an opportunity of 
examining there some of, perhaps, the most wonderful phenomena in 
connexion with the petrology of the British Isles. 


jap 4 
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FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 257 


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 


“By Dr. T. L. PHipson, oF Paris. 


History of a large and recent Aérolite—Its Mineralogical Composition— 
Vibrations of the Harth—A new Mineral, Vitriolite—The Metal 
Tungsten. 3 


Muc# attention has been excited in France for some few months past 
by the fall of a large aérolite, which took place in the canton of 
Montrejeau on the 9th of December last. We have now all the details 
that we are ever likely to have concerning this remarkable meteor. 
It fell about seven o'clock in the morning, appearing first in the 
north-east like a large red-hot bomb, which passed rapidly to the 
south-west, where it remained stationary for an instant. It then 
emitted a considerable column of smoke and flame; three seconds 
after which a loud detonation was heard, followed by a rumbling 
noise. Although in broad daylight, the little town of Aurignac was 
eompletely illuminated by the passage of this aérolite. After the 
explosion nothing was observed in the sky but a streak of vapour and 
a small cloud which marked out the direction followed by the meteoric 
stone, and the place where it exploded. Shortly after this phenomenon 
two large fragments of the aérolite were picked up in the parishes of 
Aussan and Clarac ; one of these weighed about 90 lbs., and had sunk 
into the ground for nearly two yards; the other, that fell at Clarac, 
broke through the roof of a cottage; it weighed from 16 to 20 lbs., 
and was so hot when first seen that it could not be touched for some 
time. These blocks present rounded forms, their surface is black and 
smooth, the interior is formed of a sort of grey substance, not unlike 
certain volcanic products in structure. 

We enter into these details for two reasons: first, they are authentic; 
and secondly, they represent the history of almost every aérolite that 
has been thoroughly observed. The aérolite of which we speak is 
not uneasily broken into fragments. According to MM. Filhol and 
Leymerie, who have examined it, its specific gravity is 3.30; and it 
presents in its granular structure numerous small and brilliant laminee 
of a metallic lustre. The stone attracts the magnet, but has no poles. 
Before the blow-pipe it becomes black, and emits a sulphurous odour, 
but does not melt. To fuse it completely, it was found necessary to 
employ the oxy-hydrogen blow-pipe ; the result was a black globule, 
not unlike the crust or rind of the aérolite itself. MM. Filhol and 
Leymerie have analysed this stone; but their analysis is not good. 
We are indebted to MM. Chancel and Moitessier, of Montpellier, for 
a knowledge of its exact composition. They affirm that the aérolite 
of Montrejeau resembles, in a chemical and mineralogical point of 
view, those of Chantonay and Chateau-Renard, of which we have 


258 . THE GEOLOGIST. 


spoken in a preceding number of THE GEOLOGIST (vol. ii. p. 85). A 
first analysis gave them “10 per cent. of magnetic substances (iron 
and iron-oxide) ; 1.70 of chrome-iron, 5.70 of protosulphuret of iron, 
48 per cent. of silicates soluble in acids, and consisting principally of 
peridote ; 17 per cent. of silicates insoluble in acids, and consisting 
principally of feldspar and amphibolite.” They then proceeded to 
analyse, with more care, that part of the aérolite which is insoluble in 
nitric and hydrochloric acids ; and the result is as follows :— 


CTT Ga ee ee ey Se ae te ae ee) mtn 

AM martia ge Se 2 eee Ge 

Maonesta.. i» <odeindegyl tet Ved Hey aon mun no man 

polAIMC: > 2 acupdran's dein d sy eowe en Cee eae a ee 4,012 
Protoxide of iron yy °:. 2) weeny ake eee ae ene 

Oxides of nickel and manganese. . . . 1.100 

OCA 252s nie, ae pre geee itee ate. Beales pe meee alr 

Potash Pn eer re am me Ter eet cee (0) OOS 

99.563 


Berzelius, Rammelsberg, and other chemists who have occupied 
themselves with this sort of analysis, have already remarked that 
the composition of the silicates which are insoluble in acids does not 
coincide with that of any one known mineral. Thus, from the above 
analysis, it is impossible to write down any chemical formula, as the 
oxygen of the silica is not proportionate with that of the different 
bases. This circumstance shows that the insoluble residue is not 
composed of one silicate only, but of a mixture. Rammelsberg has 
shown that the simultaneous existence of alumina and ailcalies in such 
a case indicates the presence of feldspathic minerals. He found, as 
we have before noticed, that in some meteorites this residue coin- 
cided exactly with the composition of hornblende or augite, according 
as the alcalies were attributed to labradorite or to oligoclase. It is 
impossible, in the absence of distinctive crystalline forms, to prefer 
one of these hypotheses to the other ; each is equally good. 

Following M. Rammelsberg’s method, MM. Chancel and Montessier 
conclude that the soluble portion of the silicates in the aérolite of 
Montrejeau represents labradorite, and the insoluble portion horn- 
blende ; or, if the soluble part be made to represent oligoclase, the 
imsoluble portion becomes augite. Hence the mineralogical composi- 
tion of this remarkable aérolite may be thus represented :— 


Magnetic portion (iron and oxide of iron) . 10.04 


ingome-irow et ae eee 
ProOvuo-sulphuret Of iron. ¢ 5 8 wong ee wong 
Ll Sy 0 [oh naa ae . . 45.08 


Labradorite = 8.34} _ { 10.99=Oligoclase 
Hornblende = 29.17 } Pe) 6.00 = Augite. 


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 259 


There is a slight error in the figures on the right, representing 
oligoclase and augite. 

During our visit to England, in the autumn of last year, M. Prost 
published the following note (which has escaped our attention until 
now) upon certain vibrations of the earth observed at Nice during the 
winter of 1857-1558, and since that period :—‘‘ When I came back 
to Nice in October, 1857, my pendulum remained perfectly quiet for 
about twenty days; but it began to move suddenly on the 4th Nov., 
and oscillated with considerable intensity. The movement was accom- 
panied, as usual, by that of the glass hangers of the chandeliers. 
These oscillations, after having diminished gradually for some days, 
showed a new activity about the 18th, which lasted till the 22d. 
I have been able to ascertain that the date of the 4th November 
corresponds to that of the violent earthquake which took place at 
Meneggio on the Lake of Como, and the other dates with shocks 
observed on the 19th at Pontévédra and at Lisbon, and on the 21st 
at Lisbon and Porto. Since then the oscillations of my pendulum have 
been almost permanent, presenting very rare intervals of repose ; and 
their intensity augmented again on the 15th December, and lasted 
for a very long time; the glass hangers oscillated without interruption 
up to the first days of January, 1858. It was during this period that 
the earthquake_at St. Denis-du-Sig, in the province of Oran, took 
place, on the 14th December ; then the terrible shocks felt at Naples 
and in La Pouille on the night of the 16th and 17th December, which, 
after having been felt on the 17th at Hernosand, in Sweden, on the 
20th at Agram, in Croatia, continued for a long time, and occasioned 
many disasters in those countries. Again, on the 25th, shocks were 
felt at St. Veit, in Austria, and at Admont and Rosegy in the valley 
of Kros. Their sphere of activity spread itself, therefore, to a great 
distance, for during the same period, 7.e. from the 20th December, 
shocks of earthquake happened in succession at Brousse, up to about 
the 15th of January, and on that day were felt at Ratibor, in Silesia, 
whilst on the 11th an earthquake took place at Martinique, and on 
the 26th there was one at Parma.” 

About the end of February, 1858, the oscillations of M. Prost’s 
pendulum began to diminish gradually ; in the months of May and 
June there were very few. But they began again in July, and con- 
tinued with increasing intensity until the night of the 4th and 5th 
August, when a shock took place about half-past two a.m., which 
awoke the inhabitants of Nice out of their sleep. “ It is, therefore, 
certain,” says M. Prost, in conclusion, “that this phenomenon of 
oscillation, which had never yet been observed, is in connexion with 
earthquakes ; but that it differs from the latter inasmuch as, instead 
of being sudden and violent, like a shock, it manifests itself as a 
vibration, the duration of which may be hours, weeks, or even 
whole months.” | 

Our accomplished friend, M. Pisani, has lately received from Con- 
stantinople samples of a new mineral found in the interior of Turkey, 
and which presents a rather remarkable composition. It is seen to 


260 - THE GEOLOGIST. 


form large stalactites in caverns near a mine of copper-pyrites ; its 
colour is that of sulphate of copper, in the parts freshly broken (but 
with a green ochraceous tint on the exterior), whilst its crystalline 
form is that of sulphate of iron. On analysis, it turns out to be sul- 
phate of protoxide of iron, in which part of the oxide of iron is replaced 
by a corresponding quantity of oxide of copper. The figures obtained 
in M. Pisani’s analysis are a3 follows :— 
Oxygen. Proportion. 


Oxide! oficopper i. hohe naa ale 1 

Protoxide of iron) .. . 10-98 P oycmi2 445 

Sulphuricacid’ 0. 20590 Wipe O4 | eres 

Water J osc. cite 2) A800) Wo Sse ea 
100.00 


This composition leads to the formula ae \ O, SO? + 7 HO. 


We have also analysed this new mineral, and our figures coincide very 
closely with those above.* The formula arrived at is that of common 
green vitriol in which a certain quantity of iron is replaced by cop- 
per, the crystalline form having remained intact. It is probable that 
the natural production in question has been formed in the waters that 
filter through the beds of copper-pyrites, and that it could be formed 
artificially in the laboratory. 

Tungsten is a metal which has been hitherto little studied in a 
practical point of view. It appears destined, however, to operate a 
complete revolution in the manufacture of steel. It has been lately 
affirmed that an alloy formed of 80 per cent. of steel and 20 per cent. 
of tungsten, possesses a degree of hardness that has never yet been 
obtained in the manufacture of steel. This alloy works upon the 
latter, and can even cut it. Experiments have been made with this 
new composition at Vienna, Dresden, and at Neustadt-Ebertswalde, 
and considerable quantities of the alloy are being manufactured, it is 
said, in that part of the world. Many old tin-mines have been bought 
up with a view of extracting tungsten-ore, and considerable sums 
have been given for mines that had ceased to be worked long ago. 


i ee sample of the same substance analysed by ourselves gave the follow- 
ing result :— 


Oxygen. Proportion. 
Oxide: of copper > i) ). 15. S6R eon casks 1 
Protoxide of irony...) . 1100).)5. 2 244(5 ae 
Sulphuric acid’... 28.08.20. 2 1G6b een ee 
Water. 3... fC ABIOG rs esi pinee ee enemys 


100.00 
Formula :—(Fe Cu) 8+ 7 H. 


In the result given in the text there is evidently a slight excess of acid in pro- 
portion to the quantity of oxide found. We have proposed for this mineral the 
name of Vitriolite—T. L. P. 


THE GEOLOGIST. 


JULY, 1859. 


ON THE RED CHALK OF ENGLAND. 


Read before the Geologists’ Association, 4th April, by Rev. THomas 
Wi.tsHire, M.A., F.G.S., Etc., President. 


PERSONS in general take as the type or representative of chalk the 
material which mechanics employ for tracing out rough lines and 
figures. It is a substance of a bright white colour, somewhat yield- 
ing to the touch, and capable of being very easily abraded or rubbed 
down. 

But the geologist gives a much wider interpretation to the term, 
not limiting it by these few characteristics; and, accordingly, he 
includes under the same title many strata which would hardly be 
so grouped together by the uninitiated. 

For instance, there is at the base of the upper portion of the cre- 
taceous system a certain hard, often pebbly, and highly coloured 
band, which, notwithstanding its great departure from the popular 
type, is nevertheless styled in geological language the ‘“ Red Chalk.” 
This stratum, the subject of the present paper, nowhere forms a mass 
of any great thickness or extent ; perhaps if thirty feet be taken as 
its maximum of thickness, four feet as its minimum, and one hundred 
miles as its utmost extent in length, the truth will be arrived at. 
It may be said, also, to be peculiar to England, for the Scaglia, 
or Red Chalk of the Italians, has little in common with that of our 
country. The two differ widely in appearance, in situation, and in 
fossils. 

The first view of the seam in the north is to be obtained about 
six miles north-west of Flamborough Head, in Yorkshire, near the 
village of Speeton, where its structure, dip, and general appearance 
can be remarkably well studied. 

VOL, II. Xe 


262 THE GEOLOGIST. 
Speeton is a small village, a place of no great note in the business- 


world, yet of much fame amongst the lovers of geology, nee nuel as 
in its neighbourhood there are several interesting formations, to one 
of which—the Speeton clay—it gives a name 
In these days of rapid travelling, the village has the great con- 
venience of a railway-station, from whence the cliffs below can be 
reached without the slightest difficulty. 
As I wish to conduct the members of the Association to the Red 
Chalk in siti, let us suppose that, starting from some locality near 
the Hull and Scarborough Railway, we have taken tickets for Speeton 


« 
~~ 


- 
--. 


& 


4 
ry 
Cpe) 


* 
e 


; TILE 

a. Speeton clay. foHinstanl or 
b. Coral-oolite. WA SH i £7, 

c. Inferior oolite. ) 
d. Lias. a 

e. New Red. S 

Jf. Kimmeridge clay. A, 4 b 
g. Greensand. 

h. Chalk. 

i. Gault. 


Lynn 6 


ing the Outcrop and Range 


Lign. 1.—Map of Part of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and Norfolk, showi 
of the Red Chalk, 


WILTSHIRE.—ON THE RED CHALK OF ENGLAND. 263 


station, and have in due time arrived at that latter place. On alight- 
ing from the train we must direct our steps to the houses in front, 
and then inquire the way to the sea-shore, above which we shall be 
standing at some considerable height—say four hundred feet. We 
shall be told to walk by the church, to turn to the right along a 
little lane, and then to look for an obscure path which passes across 
the fields. We shall soon afterwards, being on high ground, be able, 
by the light of nature, to find a way down to the sands below. 

Whilst descending, let us survey the scene that lies before us. It 
is a grand one, rendered picturesque by the broken ground, the soli- 
tude, and the sounding of the waves. Right ahead, there is the 
open Bay of Filey ; on the left hand, the town of Filey and its Brig ; 
not a ship, as one might imagine, but a huge mass of rocks of the 
coralline oolite, jutting out to sea at right angles from the shore, like 
a pier formed by human hands, and crowned on the land-side by 
strangely cut pinnacles of pink and rugged drift. On the right hand 
there are the high and perpendicular white chalk cliffs of the Flam- 
borough range. As we pass down we shall meet with a gulley or bed 
of a small stream, in all probability quite dry, by following the 
winding course of which we shall reach the shore. This gulley passes 
over an escarpment of diluvial matter (the whole place being in 
confusion through the effects of small landslips), and traverses the 
Red Chalk itself, the first trace of which will be rendered visible by 
means of rolled fragments, which the force of the stream has at 
different times detached. 

It will be only here and there that we shall find the Red Chalk in 
siti, because sometimes vegetation, sometimes diluvium, sometimes 
fallen masses, entirely conceal its real position. However, there 
will be plenty of rounded pieces at the feet. Some of these had 
better be examined on the spot, in order that we may gain a 
clear perception of the appearance of the bed, should we meet 
with it again. These pieces are found to be hard and rough to the 
touch, and of a bright red tinge, though occasionally marked with 
streaks of white. Most likely on some of their sides a fossil or 
two will be seen peeping out; a blow from a hammer will divulge 
still more. So plentiful are the rolled fragments, that a few hours’ 
work will satisfy the conscience, and fill the pockets of the traveller. 

x 2 


264 THE GEOLOGIST. 


If I might be permitted to give advice to any member of our 
Association who should hereafter visit the place, it would be this— 
that it would be well for him to carry away moderate sized boulders 
entire, rather than to break them on the spot. The fossils will best 
be developed at leisure. The material is so hard, and the fossils so+ 
brittle (especially the belemnites and serpulee), that imperfect specimens 
only will result from the quick and rough treatment of the hammer. 
The “find” will not produce any very great variety, only numbers; 
terebratule, serpulee, and belemnites will be all that will be obtained. 

Having now procured specimens, we had better walk southward 
along the shore; after a short time will be seen a fine perpendicular 
section of this particular stratum ; we shall notice it is hounded on 
the one side by the White Chalk, to which it is parallel; on the 
other by the Speeton clay, which is not conformable to it, that is, not 
parallel. 

The thickness of the bed of the Red Chalk is at this place, as I said 
just now, about thirty feet. First of all, taking it in descending 
order, that is to say, having reached its limit at the White Chalk, 
and retracing our steps in the direction of Filey, we notice about 
twelve feet of red matter containing serpule, and we note that the 
upper portion of this division is much filled with greyish nodules, 
showing that the change from the White Chalk to the Red is gradual. 
Next comes a bed of about seven feet thick, of darkish White Chalk ; 
and finally, another bed of about twelve feet thick, of bright Red 
Chalk, containing belemnites and terebratule. The whole is followed 
by the Speeton clay, of which a short and accurate account will be 
found in No. 13 of Tur Gronocist magazine. The line of division 
between these two being well marked by runs of water, which are 
caused by the percolation through the chalk being stopped by the 
impervious clay. 

The Speeton clay is singular in some of its characteristics. At its 
upper portion, in contact with the Red Chalk, it contains fossils belong- 
ing to the Neocomian or Greensand era, whilst at the lower part there 
are the representatives of the Kimmeridge clay. And thus it would 
appear to be one of those peculiar formations which have resulted 
from a number of beds thinning out, and becoming absorbed into 
each other. Three of the well-marked fossils of the Speeton clay may 


_— per, ef 


i li a i lil 


WILTSHIRE. 


ON THE RED CHALK OF ENGLAND. 2965 


be adduced: Belemnites jaculum ; a small crustacean, Astacus ornatus ; 
and a large hamite, called Hamites Beanii. 

To the south of the Red Chalk at Speeton, and adjoining it, occurs, 
as I lately mentioned, the White Chalk. The fossils in this part are 
not numerous ; an inoceramus, a terebratula, and rarely an ammo- 
nite, are found. But the White Chalk higher up, that is, farther 
south, below Flamborough Head, near Bridlington Quay, is very fossil- 
iferous, containing corals, echini, a bed of marsupites, as well as that 
very remarkable and extensive collection of marine forms, the silicified 
sponges, thousands of which can be seen at low water scattered up 
and down, and imbedded in the scars, or rocks. This chalk, however, 
has its drawbacks, for being very hard—indeed, so much so as to 
ring under the strokes of a hammer—specimens cannot be obtained 
without much trouble. I must make an exception with regard to the 
sponges. They are composed of silex; hence, long soaking in very 
dilute hydrochloric acid will do more and better work after the 
fossils have been brought home, than fifty chisels. The calcareous 
matter is slowly dissolved away, and then forms come into view as 
delicate and lovely as any that can be noted in the modern sponge 
tribe. Most of the common kinds of the Flamborough sponges will be 
found figured and named in Professor Phillips’ Geology of Yorkshire ; 
the rarer in the Magazine of Natural History for 1839. 

Let us now return to the village of Speeton, and endeavour to 
follow the winding course of the Red Chalk to its visible termination, 
some hundred miles to the south-east, in the county of Norfolk. 

By a reference to the map (page 262), where the bed is laid down, 
it is seen that the Red Chalk adjoins the White Chalk during its 
entire length ; that it first takes a westerly direction for about twenty 
miles, and then suddenly turning at a sharp angle proceeds south-east 
for the remainder of its course. 

Some persons might suppose when they see the map, that if they 
were to travel to any of the towns or villages near the line, they 
would of necessity be able to see the Red Chalk in sit#, No such 
thing ; the upper soil, or vegetation, or man’s work, may quite con- 
ceal all traces. It is only at natural sections like the cliffs just 
spoken of, or by other means, such as wells, &e., that we can acquire 
a true idea of the ground beneath us. Who, for example, that lives 


266 THE GEOLOGIST. 


in the City of London, could imagine, unless he had seen the fact 
for himself, when sewers were opened, or foundations cut, that he 
was dwelling over beds of gravel as bright and yellow as any that 
cover the paths of a flower-garden ? 

When, therefore, the nature of the surface of the ground is such 
that the eyes cannot detect traces of any particular formation we 
may be in search of, we must seek other testimony, we must ask 
what have other men seen, and what have they recorded, and in 
whose custody have they placed the keeping of those facts. 

In the present case I can refer to two excellent works, to help 
us,—Professor Phillips’ Geology of Yorkshire, and Young and Bird’s 
Survey of the Yorkshire Coast. 

Let us turn to the latter. The authors write that in the year 
1819 a Mr. George Rivis, of Sherburn, bored for coal in a deep™ 
dale about a mile anda half south of Staxton ; the boring was con- 
tinued for some considerable depth. First they passed through the 
White Chalk, next came upon the Red seam, and finally, at the depth 
of 288 feet from the mouth of the bore, reached the Speeton clay. 
Thus then near Staxton, a few miles west of Speeton, the Red 
Chalk exists ; there it is, though it may not be visible. 

If we proceed still farther west along the northern foot of the 
Yorkshire Wolds, it is possible that at Knapton we shall actually see 
the Red and White Chalk again in sité ; for Young and Bird tell us 
that, at a clay-pit near that village, it was to be seen in their day. 
At North Grimston, they add, the coloured chalk seems to be wanting, 
for at a copious spring issuing on the hill-side, about a mile above the 
village, the White Chalk is seen lying immediately over the blue clay. 

This statement is not to be wondered at. Look at the map (page 
262). Not far from North Grimston there must evidently be great 
unconformity of strata. Notice several of the formations, instead of 
running parallel to one another, actually are at right angles. For 
instance, we have the Speeton clay, the oolites, and the lias, almost 
perpendicular in direction to the White Chalk, a little to the west of 
Great Driffield. Such a condition of affairs must have resulted from 
great disturbances, and there would be nothing strange in a part of 
the series being displaced or altogether wanting. 


Some miles to the south, near the town of Pocklington, the strata 


WILTSHIRE.—ON THE RED CHALK OF ENGLAND. 267 


are again parallel in direction to each other, and accordingly the Red 
Chalk is found, as before, at the base of the Wolds. Professor Phillips, 
in his work on the Geology of Yorkshire, figures some Red Chalk 
fossils from Goodmanham, near Market Weighton, and alludes to 
their also occurring at Brantingham, not far from the River Humber, 
the boundary of the county. 

Thus, then, the Red Chalk has been traced through Yorkshire ; 
speaking roughly one might say, that it for the most part takes an 
undulating course at the base of the Wolds; that it rises with a very 
gentle inclination from the sea near the village of Speeton; that it 
proceeds nearly due west until it approaches the neighbourhood of 
Malton, that it then suddenly changes its direction, and advances 
south-east until it sinks below the marsh-land six or seven miles to 
the west of Hull, having occupied a distance of about fifty miles. 

We now cross the river Humber, and find the Red Chalk again 
near the banks at a place called Ferraby, to the west of Barton in 
Lincolnshire. 

The Museum of the Geological Society of London possesses speci- 
mens taken from that part, and in a note attached to them there is 
this remark, that first came White Chalk, then Red Chalk, then a blue 
clay ; thus it is evident there is the same state of things prevailing 
as we had at Speeton; and the same observation will apply to the 
appearance of the specimens themselves. 

But as we travel along the western base of the Lincolnshire Wolds, 
or Chalk Downs (for Londoners would so term them), although we 
find the Red Chalk underneath the White, yet the blue clay beneath 
the Red Chalk is wanting ; its place is supplied by a thick series of 
brown coloured sands, with included beds of sandy limestone, full of 
fossils like the Kentish Rag, only not possessing echini and belemnites. 
These beds have been referred to the lower greensand. 

Only a few remarks can be offered in reference to Lincolnshire. My 
intention was to have visited the base of the chalk-hills, and have 
gathered together new facts; I have not been able to do so; neither 
have I been successful in discovering any authors who have written 
much about that county. There is a great geological darkness over 
that land, and much remains to be done in working out its fossiliferous 
deposits. I can, however, speak confidently regarding Louth, 


268 THE GEOLOGIST. 


One might fancy, as the town is placed to the right of the dark line 
on the map, which marks the position of the Red Chalk, that Louth 
could have nothing to do with the latter. But a friend who made some 
inquiries for me on the spot has forwarded two specimens, and says 
he saw them taken out of a chalk-pit at that town. They ran in 
veins, he writes, the lighter coloured over the darker, and were dug 
at no great distance below the surface. The bright red piece was 
just above where the springs arise—facts which correspond with 
evidence in other places. 

As the inclination of the plane of the strata is small, and rising 
towards the south-west (the direction of the strata being north-west), 
it is easily comprehended that the Red Chalk may exist under Louth, 
and yet not appear at the surface of the ground until at some distance 
to the west of the town. | 

At Brickhill, near Harrington, the seam also has been met with ; 
a specimen of it:can be seen in the Museum of the Geological Society 
of London. This last and those from Louth differ little in appearance 
or character from what may be obtained at the Speeton beds. 

I have no more to say about Lincolnshire, except that, according to 
the authority of geological maps, the Red Chalk of that county sinks 
and disappears below the marsh-lands, a few miles before reaching 
the sea. 

And now it is time to cross the Wash, that great sea-bay, and land 
at Hunstanton, a little village on the north-western coast of Norfolk. 
As I am addressing a company of working geologists, I ought perhaps 
to say how in practice the locality can be arrived at, for it is not 
quite so easy to reach a place in reality as it is to see it on a map. 

To go to Hunstanton, in the most ready way, a person must first 
reach Lynn ; whence an omnibus, starting in the afternoon, at three 
or four o'clock, from the Lynn station, will convey passengers to the 
village. 

At Hunstanton there are two hotels, and several lodging-houses. 
I should recommend the Le Strange Arms, as being an old-fashioned 
comfortable inn, and nearer than the other to the section we are in 
quest of Perhaps it may be thought, Why dwell so much upon 
Hunstanton—its hotel—and its omnibus? I do so because at that 
village there is a most excellent natural section of the Red Chalk, 


WILTSHIRE.—ON THE RED CHALK OF ENGLAND. 269 


better almost than at Speeton, and different certainly in many 
respects, ? 

We will suppose that we have arrived at Hunstanton, and are 
walking towards the shore in front of the Le Strange Arms. A 
very few minutes will convey us to the wonderful cliff. I say won- 
derful, not from its height or length ; for at its greatest height, under 
the lighthouse, it is not more than sixty feet ; and it extends little 
more than a mile in length; but wonderful from its curious colour 
and general effect. 


= — 


Lign. 2.— Hunstanton Cliff (looking to the North). 


The woodcut, copied from a water-colour drawing, made last autumn 
by a friend, will afford an idea of its appearance ; but in it the absence 
of colour, of course, takes away from the beauty of the scene. 

The cliff itself may be divided into five portions : first, White Chalk, 
forty feet thick ; secondly, bright Red Chalk, four feet; thirdly, a 
yellow sandy mass, ten feet ; fourthly, a dark brown pebbly stratum, 
forty feet ; and, lastly, twenty feet of a bed almost black. 

These divisions do not run one into the other, as is the case in most 
geological strata, but keep quite distinct. Thus the Red Chalk is as 
clearly separated from the White, as though the one had been covered 


270 THE GEOLOGIST. 


by a broad band of paint. The same observation will hold good with 
respect to the others. 

It will readily be understood that when the sun shines upon the 
cliff, and lights up the bright white, the bright red, the pale yellow, 
and the dark brown and black, and casts a shadow over the mass of 
gaily tinted materials at the base, a picture is produced not easy to 
be surpassed in beauty, and certainly not to be fully appreciated unless 
it be actually seen. 

The bed of White Chalk above the Red is, at Hunstanton, very fos- 
siliferous ; though rendered somewhat useless, like that of Yorkshire, 
to the geologist, from its extreme hardness. Amongst other shells, 
may be mentioned several kinds of serpulz, belemnites, and ammo- 
nites. These last are occasionally very large: when I was at Hun- 
stanton, in the autumn, I found an example two feet in diameter ; 
with great difficulty I extricated it from its matrix, breaking it in half 
during the operation ; and, finally, had the mortification of discovering 
that its weight was so great I could not carry it away. 

The Red Chalk beneath, which is nearly four feet in thickness, is 
very full of fossils: belemnites, serpule, terebratulee, corals, and many 
others, not to mention bones. The number of specimens on the table 
will testify to its richness in organic remains. 

Sometimes it is soft and crumbling ; but, generally speaking, it is 
very hard, gritty, of a bright red shade, and full of small dark-coloured 
siliceous pebbles ; in this respect differing considerably from the Red 
Chalk of Speeton—in which I have not seen pebbles. Professor 
Tennant, who has examined the Hunstanton pebbles, informs me that 
they consist of chalcedony, quartz, flint, slate, and brown spar oY car- 
bonate of tron. ; 

It also contains a great quantity of fragments of inocerami, and a 
curious ramifying sponge-like structure (there is one on the table), 
which also occurs in the White Chalk above. 

Something very similar to the ramifying sponge is seen on the sur- 
face of blocks on the sea-shore at the back of the Isle of Wight in the 
greensand formation, and one very like it on the calcareous grit of the 
Yorkshire shore. You will observe these last to the north of Filey, 


but nothing of the same appearance exists in the White Chalk at 
Speeton. 


WILTSHIRE.—ON THE RED CHALK OF ENGLAND. 271 


Underneath the Red Chalk of Hunstanton occurs a yellow and 
brown pebbly sandstone, which was formerly supposed to contain no 
organic remains. Mr. C. B. Rose of Yarmouth, however, has obtained 
many. 

This bed is termed in those parts “carstone,” and much employed as 
a building-material. The cottages in that neighbourhood and on the 
road from Lynn seem at a distance as though they had been con- 
structed of masses of gingerbread, so great is the similarity in colour 
and appearance. 

The length of the Red Chalk, from end to end, at the Hunstanton 
Cliff is about 1,000 yards, and its greatest elevation at the point where 
it attains the top and quits the cliff is thirty-seven feet ; hence its rise 
is very gradual, since its first appearance is nearly on a level with the 
beach. 

There are two other things worth observing at Hunstanton. One is 
the lighthouse, which is upon the dioptric principle, the light being 
transmitted out to sea by means of glass prisms instead of the ordinary 
metal reflectors ; and the other is a vestige of a raised sea-beach on 
the cliffs composed of rounded fragments of White and Red Chalk 
immediately reposing on the greensand. It is situated at the south- 
ward of the point where the Red Chalk crops out. 

We will now, if you please, quit Hunstanton, and proceed towards 
Lyun, keeping in the neighbourhood of the coach-road. 

If we could dig up the ground when we were within eight or nine 
miles of Lynn, we should still see our old companion at our feet, for 
the Red Chalk has been recognised at the villages of Ingoldsthorpe 
and Dersingham. 

We shall soon meet it no more. At Leziate, a little to the north- 
east of Lynn, it becomes extinct. Mr. C. B. Rose, who always thought 
the Red Chalk would prove to be the equivalent of the gault, and 
who argued from the evidence of fossils and from the direction of 
the outcrops that the true gault and the Red Chalk must ultimately 
meet,—Mr. RoseyI say, has informed me that he has observed the Red 
Chalk and the gault incorporated together at Leziate. Henceforward 
to the south the Red Chalk is no more seen. 

_ Thus, then, we have come to the termination of our journey. We 
have noted the beginning and the ending of the Red Chalk, we have 


972 THE GEOLOGIST. 


a= 


also taken some account of its neighbours. We have noticed, too, 
that in Yorkshire it for the most part reposes on the Speeton clay, 
though in certain localities it is next the lias and Kimmeridge clay, 
and that in Lincolnshire and Norfolk it rests on a dark brown pebbly 
mass supposed to belong to the lower greensand formation of the south 
of England. 

The Red Chalk has also been discovered in a very unexpected place, 
although not in sit#. I allude to the drift of Muswell Hill. In that 
collection of different materials, comprising examples from every for- 
mation from the London clay to the mountain limestone in a stratum 
of eighteen feet, the Red Chalk has been seen in a bouldered condition. 

By the kindness of Mr. Wetherell of Highgate, I am enabled to 
exhibit specimens from the drift of Muswell Hill. Any person who 
compares them with others from Hunstanton, would declare they 
came from the same bed, so alike are they in appearance. 

There was a time no doubt when this Red Chalk had a more 
extended range: its presence in the drift of Muswell Hill, as well as in 
the drift of other places, implies as much. Perhaps it may still exist 
elsewhere, deep down in the earth. 

In a well sunk at Stowmarket a red substance was found under the 
White Chaik, at a depth of 900 feet ; and in another well sunk at 
Kentish Town, the workmen met, at a depth of 1,113 feet below the 
surface, beneath the gault, a bed of red matter 188 feet thick—some 
of this red matter appeared to contain belemnites. 

Geologists are divided in opinion with respect to this deep-sunk 
red bed, which certainly is not always continuous (for instance, it was 
not found at a boring at Harwich), and some incline to the opinion 
that it belongs to the New Red, others that it is the equivalent of 
what is styled the Red Chalk. But it is difficult to give a solution at 
present. It is certain that in the gault formation, or near it, beds of 
a red colour are occasionally found. Near Dorking the lower green- 
sand is capped by a local bed of bright red clay, eight feet 
thick. And examples of red clays from the gault of Ringmer in 
Sussex and Charing in Kent can be seen in the Museum of the 
Geological Society of London. Whether they have any relation with 


the Red Chalk proper of England depends upon the position which is 
given to that formation. 


WILTSHIRE.—ON THE RED CHALK OF ENGLAND. 273 


Geologists generally consider the Red Chalk as really equal to the 
Gault. Many of the fossils certainly are gault species; others no 
doubt belong to the Lower Chalk; and, therefore, probably it is 
better to regard it as an intermediate formation between the Lower 
Chalk and the Lower Greensand, which comes into being when the 
Gault and Upper Greensand have almost thinned out. 

One of the members of our Committee, Mr. Rickard, has been 
good enough to make me an analysis of the Red Chalk of Speeton 
and Hunstanton. The Speeton is as follows :— 


Carbonate of lime, with alittlealumina. . . . . 81.2 

eee ee te On SLRS aS 

I ee eb wpe FES 
100. 


From Hunstanton— 


Carbonate of lime, with alittle alumina. . . . . 82.3 

MreeeetER AS Oo) Sebati) Me 28 a Sing oie te) sg 6.4 

ee eh ee CEES 
100. 


The latter of which agrees remarkably well with the colour of the 
specimen, for the Red Chalk of Hunstanton is brighter than that of 
Speeton. 

Two specimens of the borings of Kentish Town, one a red argil- 
laceous and the other a siliceous mass, gave the following results :— 


Argillaceous— 
2 EELS USS rr A 
SeipeeateiiiWicwe) es.) Ms.) ac.22 «... 13.9 
Silica and alumina (chiefly the latter) . . 80.0 


274 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Siliceous— 
Peroxide:of iron’ g's F nad SE ae ee Pe 
Carbonate of dime +. 3 0) See eee 
Silica, with a little alumina:;). >... 9. /t.)) #430 


Whether any connexion can be traced between these last two and 
the two former, I leave for others to decide. 

The following list of books may perhaps be useful to those who wish 
to further investigate the subject :—In 

Professor Phillips’ Geology of Yorkshire, 

Young and Bird’s Survey of the Yorkshire Coast, 

Dr. Fitton’s Memoir of the Strata below the Chalk, 

Taylor’s Hunstanton Cliff (Phil. Mag. vol. 1xi.), 


Woodward’s Geology of Norfolk, 
Rose on the Geology of West N orfolk (Phil. Mag. for the years 1835 and 1836), 


will be found some account of the English Red Chalk. And in 


Sedgwick and Murchison on the Structure of the Eastern Alps (Geol. Soc. 
Trans. vol. 11. Second Series), 
Sir. R. I. Murchison on the Geological Structure of the Alps (Quart. Geol. 


Journal, vol. v. 

Prof, T. A. Gatullo on the Epiolitic Rocks of the Venetian Alps (Quart. Geol. 
Journal, vol. vii.), 

Count A. de Zigno- on the Stratified Formations of the Venetian Alps (Quart. 
Journal Geol. Soe. vol. vi.), 


will be seen an outline of the Scaglia or Red Chalk of Italy. 

By the kindness of Dr. Bowerbank, Messrs. Wetherell, Bean, 
Leckenby, and Rose, in permitting me to see the specimens in their 
respective cabinets, and to whom, as well as to Mr. Rupert Jones, 
I must express great obligations for much valuable information, 
the accompanying list of the Red Chalk fossils of Speeton, Hun- 
stanton, and Muswell Hill has been compiled. To the Council of the 
Geological Society, 1 have been also indebted for permission to figure 
from the Society’s Museum the Inoceramus Crispii, in the Proceedings 
of the Geologists’ Association. 


WILTSHIRE.—ON THE RED CHALK OF ENGLAND. 


LIST OF FOSSILS FROM THE RED CHALK. 


Cristellaria rotulata, D’Orb.. . 
Sowerby’s Min. Conchology, tab. 121, page ae 
(In the collection of Mr. J ones.) 
Siphonia pyriformis . 
Goldfuss Petrifacta, tab. 6, fig, i: "page. 
(In the eae of Mr. Rose.) 
This is probably the head of the next. 
Spongia paradoxica . 
Heck l. Trans. 2, tab. 27 , fig. ‘1, page 377. 
(In the ibis of Mr. Rose and Author.) 


Bo eticrinus rugosus . . 
Orbigny’s Hist. des Crinoides, ‘tab. 17, fig. 16—19. 
(In the collections of Mr. Rose and Author.) 
Pentacrinites Fittonii . 
Austin’s Crinoids, page 125. 
(In the collections of Mr. Rose, Author, and Mr. Wetherell.) 


Cardiaster suborbicularis, Forbes 
Gold. tab. 45, fig. 5, page 148. 
(in the collections of Mr. Rose and Author.) 
Mr. Rose’s specimen is far better than the one figured. 
Cidans Gaultina (7), Forbes, Dec. v. . 
(In the collection of Mr. Rose. ) 
Spines with 8 ridges, 10 ridges, and 20 ridges ._. 
(1n the collections of Mr. Rose and “Mr. Wetherell. ) 
Diadema tumidum, Forbes, Dec. v. . 
(In the collection of Mr. Rose. ) 
Serpula antiquata . . 
Sow. Min. Con. tab. 598, fig 4, page 202, 
(In the collection of Mr. Rose. ) 
Serpula iregularis . ena a Nara ets PERS ts 
(In the collection of Author.) 
Serpula triserrata. See notice, page 18 . 
(In the collection of Mr. Rose. ) 
Vermicularia umbonata . . 
Mantell’s Geol. of Sussex, tab. 18, fig. 24, page 11. 
(In the collections of Mr. Rose and Author. ) 
Vermicularia elongata, Bean MS... 
(In the collections of Mr. Bean, Dr. Bowerbank, and Author.) 
Cytherella ovata, Roemer. . 
Jones, Cretaceous Entomostraca. Pal. Soc. page 29. 
(In the collection of Mr. Jones.) 
Idmonea dilatata. . 
D’Orbigny’s Terrains Crétacés, tab. 632. 
(In the collection of Mr. Bean.) 
Diastopora ramosa, Dixon 
Geol. Suss. page 295. 
(In the collection of Author .) 


Speeton. 


x 


Hunstanton. 


Muswell 
Hill 


276 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Ceriopora spongites . 
Goldfuss, page 25, tab. 10, fio. 14. 
(In the collection of Author.) 


Terebratula capillata 
or s Cretaceous Brachiopoda, plate. 5, fig. 12, 
page 4 
es the collections of Mr. Rose and Author.) 
Terebratula biplicata 
David. plate 6, fig. 34. 
(In the collections of De Bowerbank, Mr. Rose, and Author.) 


Terebratula Dutempleana 
David. plate 6, fig. 1 
(In the collection of Mr. Rose.) 
Terebratula semiglobosa_ . 
David. plate 8, fig. 17. 
(In the collections of Dr. Bowerbank, Mr. Bean, and Author.) 


Kingena lima. . 
David. plate 5, fig. 3, ‘page 42. 
(In the collections of Mr. Rose and Author. ) 


Avicula, cast of. (In the collection of Mr. Bean.) 


Exogyra haliotoidea. . 
Sow. M. C. tab. 25, page 67. 
(In the collections of Mr. Rose and Author.) 


Inoceramus Coquandianus . 
D’Orb. Ter. Crét. tab. 403, ‘fig. 6—8. 
(in the collection of Author.) 


LSCrispit: a. 
Mant. G. 8. tab. 27, fig. an page 13301 
(In the collections of Mr. Rose and Geol. Soc.) 
Itenuis., > 
Mant. G. S. pag ne 132. 
(In the collections of Mr. Rose and Mr. Wetherell.) 
I. grypheoides . . 
Sow. M. C. tab. 584, fig. ib page 716) 
(In the collection of Mr. Rose.) 
I. leviusculus, Bean ere wrt hate Chan ae 
(In the collection of Mr. Bean.) 
I. sulcatus. 
Sow. M. ©. tab. 306, page 184. 
(In the collection of Mr. Rose.) 
Ostrea frons. Park. . . 
Sow. M. C. tab. 365, page 89. 
(In the collection of Mr. Wetherell.) 


O. vesicularis, Lam. . 
Sow. M. C. tab. 392, page 127. 
(In the collection of the Author.) 
O. Normaniana . 
D’Orb. tab. 488, fig. j29) page 746. 


(In the collection of Mr. Rose.) 


Speeton. 


x 


Hunstanton. 


1 


WILTSHIRE—ON THE RED CHALK OF ENGLAND. 276 


Speeton 
x Hunstanton. 
Muswell 
Hill 


Peemmneavern: 5. Sew 
Sow. M. C. tab. 158, page 131. 
(In the collection of Mr. Rose.) 
mem Mrt TS ree Poe EO Bo as 
Sow. M. C. tab. 80, fig. 2, page 184. 
(In the collection of Mr. Rose and Author.) 


BMMMIOUECGIRETMAGIS ©. 5 ss ew ke pe x 
Woodward, Geol. Norfolk, tab. 6, fig. 23. 
Poumpmmeemmplanatls:. 6 2 a x 


Sow. M.C. tab. 567, fig. 1. 
(In the collection of Mr. Rose.) 


PCM ne ee ke x 
Sow. M. C. tab. 173, page 163. 
(In the cellection of Mr. Rose.) 
A. serratus, Parkinson. . . Se Ee ee LEP oe x 


Sow. M. C. tab. 308, page 3. 
(In the collection of Mr. Rose.) 


PMIIHAGECOMIALUS. 9. 50 55k ee x 
Sow. M. C. tab. 598, fig. 2, page 176. 
(In the collection of Author.) 
nM a ek ew wm x x 
Sow. M. C. tab. 598, fig. 1, page 175. 
(In the collections of Messrs. Bowerbank, Bean, Rose, 
Wetherell, and Author.) 


mn eM ro ee ae x 
Phil. Geol. York. tab. 1, fig. 18. 
(In the collection of Author.) 
EMM MUM ee so GS ee ee 
Sharpe, Chalk Moll. tab. 1, fig. 17. 
(In the collections of Mr. Bean and Author.) 


Pemmrerimpten MS x x 
Sow. M. C. tab. 122, page 122. 
(In the collections of Mr. Rose, Mr. Wetherell, and Author.) 
Dime PICGIEMMALUS. <  6ee ye eee ee x 
Ag. vol. ili. page 270, tab. 32. 
(In the collection of Mr. Wetherell.) 


MMRMPEAMEEMY fm) ks ee aye al ate ® 
(In the collection of Mr. Bean.) 
Werxtepeaot Polyptychodon(?) .0 2... 06 0. we es x 
(In the collection of Author.) 

Siphonia pyriformis is probably the head of Spongia paradoxica. In the cabinet 
of Mr. Rose is a mass of the latter, to which a head similar to the one figured is 
attached. 

Bourgueticrinus rugosus. The diameter of the specimen figured is 2 of an inch, 
the depth of each plate 4. The surface of attachment is covered with very fine 
mamille, in rays of seven in number; a smaller specimen in possession of the 
author measures 2 of an inch in diameter and 4 in depth. 

The serpula represented in Plate III. fig.3 varies in its irregular growth from 
the specimens figured on the same plate. This character perhaps can scarcely 
be regarded as a specific difference ; both V. elongata and the serpula under con- 


VOL. IT. > i 


278 THE GEOLOGIST. 


sideration have the same thickness of the calcareous tube. The former occurs 
only at Speeton and the latter at Hunstanton ; in order to distinguish the two, 
the title “‘irregularis ”’ may be applied to the latter as a variety. 

Serpula triserrata, a species found on a specimen of Ammonites complanatus, is 
distinguishable by its three serrate longitudinal ridges. A similar form occurs on 
ostree from the Kimmeridge clay of West Norfolk. 

Terebratula semiglobosa is common at Speeton, but very rare at Hunstanton. 
T. biplicata is very common at Hunstanton, but is not known at Speeton. 

Inoceramus leeviusculus, Bean, a large smooth species something like I. Cuvieri. 

The Ammonites alternatus of Woodward is now lost ; it was probably a variety 
of A. serratus, Park. 

Belemnites minimus is sometimes two inches long in the Hunstanton Cliff. 

The vertebra of Polyptychodon would be, if perfect, about six inches in diameter 
and three in thickness. 

‘he small specimen figured in Geologists’ Association Proceedings, Plate II. 
fig. 9, evidently belongs to the Turbinolian family of corals, and possibly; to the 
genus Trochocyathus instituted by Messrs. Milne-Hdwards and J. Haime, in 1848. 
The specimens as yet obtained are not sufficiently numerous nor perfect for a 
rigid comparison with other forms, or to admit of a sufficiently detailed descrip- 
tion should the species prove to be new. ‘The constricted form of growth is 
very common in the Parasmilia of the Upper Chalk, and has no specific value. 

‘he characteristic fossils of the Red Chalk at Speeton are Terebratula semiglo- 
bosa, Belemnites minimus, and Vermicularia elongata ; and at Hunstanton, Tere- 
bratula biplicata, Belemnites minimus, and Spongia paradoxica. 


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 


Notices of the Meteorite of Tulbagh and of the Tertiaries of Horn. 
ftead before the Imperial Academy of Sciences, Vienna, 7th March, 
1859. Communicated by Count MARSCHALL. 


1.—WMeteoric Stones. 


THE meteorite which fell, Oct. 13, 1838, near Tulbagh, Cold Bokkeveld 
(Cape of Good Hope), already analyzed by Prof. Faraday, has been 
submitted to a new investigation by Mr. Harris, in Prof. Wéhler’s 
laboratory at Gottingen. This meteorite,’in its black, opaque, and 
soft substance, greatly resembles that of Kaba (Hungary). 

The analysis discovered in it 1.67 per cent. of carbon, and 0.25 per 
cent. of the same bituminous substance as was met with in the Kaba 
meteorite, a substance declared by Prof. Wéhler to be of undoubtedly 
organie origin. The inorganic constituents found in this meteorite 
are, iron, 2.50; nickel, 1.30; sulphur, 3.38 ; silica, 30.80; oxydu- 
lated iron, 29.94; magnesia, 22.20; lime, 1.70; alumina, 2.05; 
oxide of chrome, 0.76; potash and soda, 1.23 ; oxide of manganese, 
0.97 ; copper, 0.03 ; vestiges of cobalt and phosphorus, deficit, 1.22 


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 279 


per cent., a composition greatly analogous to that of the Kaba stone. 
According to Prof. Wohler’s views the mineralogical composition of the 
Tulbagh meteorite may be expressed by the formula: ferrugineo- 
magnesian olivine, 84.32 ; indecomposable silicate, 5.46 ; sulphuret 
of iron and nickel, 6.94; chromate of iron, 1.11; carbon, 1.67 ; 
organic bituminous substance, and traces of copper, cobalt, and phos- 
phorus. ‘The first small specimens of the Tulbagh meteorite came 
into the possession of the Vienna Imperial Museum through M. de 
Struve, then resident Minister of Russia at Hamburgh ; subsequently 
a fragment of 123 ounces was purchased from Dr. Krauss; and Sir 
John Herschel himself presented the Museum with a specimen of 
64 ounces from the fragments sent to him by Mr. Maclear, the first 
scientific observer of the phenomenon. 

The total bulk of the meteorite, partly shattered by its having 
fallen on stony ground, has been estimated to exceed five cubic feet. 


2.—Tertiarves of Horn (Lower Austria). 


These tertiaries, reposing on the erystalline rock-masses of the 
Manhartsberg, have attracted Dr. Rolle’s attention on account of 
their fossil remains, which partly indicate an age earlier than that 
generally of the Vienna basin. They include, comparatively to the 
other Vienna strata, a greater number of gasteropods, indicative of 
the inferior tertiaries, with a smailer proportion of recent forms ; 
so that they may justly be considered the most ancient of the 
Vienna basin, those of Grund following immediately above them, 
and the ascending series of marine deposits being closed by those near 
Baden, Vos, Pau, &c. Dr. Rolle’s observations afford a new proof of 
the non-existence of any strictly determinable limit between the faunz 
of the neogene (upper miocene and pliocene) and of the oligocene 
and upper eocene deposits, overlying immediately the first, several 
organic forms being common to both divisions, in the same way as 
neogene species have continued to exist amid those of the present 
creation. 


By Dr. T. L. PHirson, oF PArRis. 


Discovery of Selenium and Tellurium at Vesuvius — New Minerals 
observed by MM. Napoli and Palmeri—Metamorphism undergone 
by Eruptive Rocks—A few Facts connected with the Physical Geo- 
graphy of the Hautes-Alpes. 


One of the most interesting discoveries that have been made for some 
time past in mineralogy is the following, which we owe to M. Raphael 
Napoli, professor of chemistry at Naples :—On examining the lava 
which has been emitted almost constantly by Vesuvius for the last 


eu 


980 THE GEOLOGIST. 


twelve months or more, M. Napoli found that it contained a consider- 
able proportion of selenium and tellurium, combined with titanium, 
iron, and lead. 

As the lava cools, the sulphurous acid vapours, which are exhaled 
in abundance from it, partially destroy these combinations of selenium 
and tellurium, producing a great quantity of pure selenium, which 
is deposited, and oxides of selenium and tellurium, which are disen- 
gaged and emitted into the air in a gaseous state and in large 
proportions. 

Pure Selenium is thus deposited in the cavities and crevices of the 
lava, and in the interior of the solidified mass. No one had ever 
remarked this before. Doubtless Selenium has often been seen in 
the fissures of lava, but from its red colour it has evidently been as 
often mistaken for oxide of iron. 

To chemists and mineralogists this discovery is of the highest 
interest. Both tellurium and selenium are such rare substances that 
they are only known as curiosities of the laboratory ; and few labora- 
tories indeed possess specimens of either. | 

Up to the present time, tellurium has been found, but very rarely, 
combined with gold, silver, lead, and bismuth, in the mines of 
Transylvania. In appearance it resembles antimony. It was dis- 
covered, in 1782, by Miller, of Reichenstein, and its principal pro- 
perties were made known by the then eminent chemist Klaproth. 

Selenium, which bears much analogy to sulphur, was discovered, in 
1817, by the celebrated Berzelius. It has hitherto been found only 
as seleniuret of lead, a rare mineral, or combined in certain varieties 
of iron-pyrites. A native seleniuret of copper was discovered some 
years ago, and called Berzeline, in honour of the great chemist whom 
we have just named. Before the interesting observations of M. Napoli, 
selenium had never been found in nature otherwise than in combina- 
tion with substances. M. Napoli has also described a new substance, 
which appears to be a combination of lead and selenium, discovered 
by M. Palmieri, the distinguished meteorologist of Vesuvius, in cer- 
tain fumarolle, and which has been named Sacchite, in honour of 
Professor Sacchi, of Naples. A peculiar white substance has likewise 
been observed. This substance exists in the crevices of the lava, 
whence it is easily volatilised, mixes itself with the air, absorbs 
moisture, and falls again, forming a sort of crust on the surface of the 
beds of lava. It appears to be another combination of selenium, not 
yet thoroughly known. We shall return again to these new minerals 
when we have seen M. Napoli’s memoir ; we may already affirm that 
a new mine of interesting mineral and chemical products is open at 
Vesuvius, and promises fairly to be a rich one. 

We now resume M. Delesse’s researches on metamorphism. In 
THE GroLogist for May last we terminated our sketch of the effects 
produced upon the different stratified deposits by the upheaval of 
igneous or plutonic rocks. We will now inquire how the igneous or erup- 
tive rock itself is modified while acting upon the strata it has uplifted. 


7 
. 


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 281 


The metamorphism of the eruptive rock (whatever be its nature) is 
generally less characteristic than that of the strata uplifted. M. 
Delesse thinks this is easy to account for, as the latter were solid at 
the time the phenomenon took place, and consequently not in a con- 
dition to exercise a reaction upon the plutonic rock. This is, how- 
ever, an insufficient reason, and M. Delesse’s own observations show that 
even where no change or metamorphism is apparent in the uplifting rock, 
a few simple tests will enable us to affirm that a change has really taken 
place. When the plutonic rock is examined comparatively (in a large 
vein, for instance) at its borders and at its centre, it is remarked to 
have undergone a modification, not only in its structure, but also in 
its composition. Such modifications do not, however, extend more 
than a few inches from the borders ; they are more marked in smaller 
veins, and more visible in lava and traps than in granite rocks. 

Near the borders of a vein of rock its structure has become schistose, 
prismatic, granular, amygdaloidal, &e., according to circumstances. 
The density of the rock has diminished in these parts, and this is 
very notable in the case of trap-rocks. The quantity of water which 
it contains has, on the contrary, augmented.* In some cases struc- 
ture alone has been modified ; but in most the composition of the rock 
is changed also. Sometimes this composition is exactly intermediate 
between that of the uplifting and that of the upheaved rock. 

Among the minerals found in the eruptive rock near the parts in 
contact with the uplifted strata, M. Delesse indicates carbonates and 
quartz; also, different silicates, principally garnet, idocrase, and 
epidote. But when the reaction that has taken place between the two 
rocks has been very active, a complete exchange or mixture of ele- 
ments has been operated. 

Metalliferous lodes are often seen either in the uplifted or in the 
plutonic rock. They penetrate both, and are most abundant at the 
points of contact. 

As concerns minerals produced during metamorphism by contact, 
they are very numerous, as we have already shown in our preceding 
papers, and they are much the same for the plutonic rock and the 
strata which it has uplifted. In numerous cases these minerals have 
been formed from the elements of the one and the other. Quartz and 
spathic carbonates are very frequent where either the eruptive rock 
or the other contains silica and carbonates. Zeolites are more espe- 
cially associated with volcanic rocks, such as lava, basalt, and trap. 
Tourmaline, with granitic rocks. The numerous silicates for which 
M. Dana formerly established the types garnet and pyroxene have 
been formed in the eruptive rock, and in the uplifted strata. 

M. Charles Martins, the eminent botanist of Montpellier, informs 
us that he has discovered, among some notes taken during several 
scientific excursions made by him at different times, a striking proof 
of the correctness of a theory he propounded some time ago to esta- 


ip oe is probably one of the chief causes of the diminution of specific gravity. 


282 THE. GEOLOGIST. 


blish that on mountain ranges the soil must be heated by the solar 
rays to a greater extent than the air ; whereas in flat countries or 
plains the contrary must take place. The theory indicates, and 
experiment proves, that our atmosphere absorbs a considerable por- 
tion of the heat which comes from the sun to the earth. M. Pouillet 
estimates this quantity at four-tenths of the entire heat arriving at 
the earth from the sun at any given moment. 

A sunbeam falling upon an elevated mountain-top traverses a much 
thinner layer of atmosphere than one which falls upon a soil level 
with the sea; the former must therefore distribute more heat to the 
summit of the mountain than the ray which continues downwards 
until it reaches the level of the sea can bestow upon the soil of the 

lain. 

But the rarefied atmosphere of the mountain-top is less heated than 
the more condensed air of the plain. It remains evident then, that 
the soil of a mountainous elevation, at its surface, and at some inches - 
below the surface, must each day be heated by the sun to a higher 
degree than the air which reposes upon it; whilst precisely the 
reverse must take place on plains which are only a little above the 
level of the sea. 

The correctness of this theory is demonstrated by certain observa- 
tions made on the Faulhorn (Alps) in August, 1842, by MM. Bravais 
and Peltier, and in September, 1844, by MM. Bravais and Ch. 
Martins, when compared with corresponding data collected at Brus- 
sels by M. Quetelet, and at Spitzbergen, in 1839, by the meteorological 
commission attached to the expedition of the ship Za Recherche. 

This relative elevation of the temperature of the soil exercises a 
powerful influence upon the physical geography of the Hautes-Aipes. 
To it alone must be attributed the rise of the snow-line. Any 
traveller who has visited these elevated regions knows that the snow 
is melted underneath by the heat of the ground. Often he must have 
remarked that when he placed his foot upon the border of a field of 
snow, the weight of his body caused the superficial crust to break, and 
observed that this crust does not repose upon the ground. Some- 
times, under such icy vaults he will have seen with astonishment 
flowering soldanella (Soldanella Alpina, L., and S. Cludi, Thom.) 
and rosettes of dandelions! It is this melting of the snow which is 
in contact with the warmer soil that causes those immense fields of 
frozen water to slide down the verdant slopes and form terrible 
avalanches in the spring. Finally, to the warmth of the soil in these 
high regions must be attributed the presence of so great a variety of 
vegetable species, and such numbers of plants, which cover the soil at 
the very limits of perpetual snow. On the conical summit of the 
Faulhorn, at a height of 8,800 feet above the level of the sea, M. 
Charles Martins collected 131 species of phanerogamic plants. At 
the Grands-Mulets, on peaks of schistous protogine which rise from 
the centre of the glaciers of Mont-Blanc, 10,000 feet above the sea, 
19 species were observed :—Draba Fladnizensis, Wulff. ; Cardamine 


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 283 


belladifolia, L. ; Silene acaulis, L. ; Potentilla frigida, Will. ; Phyteuma 
hemisphericum, L.; Erigeron uniforum, L. ; Pyrethrum alpinum, Willd. ; 
Saxvfraga bryoides, L. ; S. Grenlandica, Lap. ; S. muscoides, Martins ; 
Androsace Helvetica, Gaud. ; A. pubescens, D. C. ; Gentiana verna, L. ; 
Luzula spicata, D. C.; Festuca Halleri, Will. ; Poa laxa, Haenke. ; 
P. cesia, Sm. ; Agrostis rupestris, All. ; and Carex nigra, All. 

Also, on the 28th June, 1846, the temperature of the air in the 
shade being 9° 4’ (centigrade), and in the sunshine 11° 4’, the schistose 
gravel in which these plants grew showed a temperature of 29°. 
Spitzbergen, the shores of which may also be said to touch upon the 
snow-line, shows us, on a space of ground infinitely larger, only 82 
species of phanerogamic plants. 

On the Alps plants are warmed by the soil in which they grow far 
more than by the air which surrounds them; a bright light favours 
their respiratory functions ; and so soon as the temperature descends 
to zero during the day a layer of recent snow preserves them from the 
accidental cold which generally accompanies bad weather on high 
mountain-ranges. Hqually sensitive to cold and to heat, they can 
only endure a temperature ranging from 0° to + 15°. Continually 
moistened by the damp clouds and the wet which drops from the 
melting snow, they would require the most careful culture to flourish 
in the plains below, for the horticulturist would have to protect them 
at once from the chills of winter and the heat of summer, giving them 
constant humidity and bright light. 

At Spitzbergen, on the contrary, in spite of the perpetual day 
which reigns during the summer, vegetation is poor and scanty, 
because the sunbeams, mostly absorbed by the great depth of atmo- 
sphere they traverse, and by the continuous mists, have not power to 
vivify by their light or by their warmth its icy ground. 


Notes read before the Imperial Geological Institute ot Vienna. Favoured 
by Count Marscua.., of Vienna. 


1.—Wetalliferous Strata of Rochlitz, on the Southern Slope of the 
Bohemian Sudets. 


The author ofa monograph on these strata is the lately deceased 
Mr. E. Porth, who in 1853 successfully undertook the re-opening of 
the old mines in this district, abandoned some centuries ago under the 
pressure of unfavourable circumstances. The ores occur in a series of 
calcareous strata, intimately connected with the schistose quartzite of 
the micaceous and argillaceous schists of the South Sudets, and under 
circumstances analogous to those of the Scandinavian metalliferous 
deposits. Large masses of a mineral substance, similar to malacolite, 
are impregnated with sulphurets of copper, lead, zinc, and iron. With 


284 THE GEOLOGIST. 


these occur, in predominant proportions, hydrosilicates of copper, 
malachite, green carbonate of copper, and other minerals containing 
this metal in the condition of an oxide. 


2.—Sulphuriferous Strata in the Roman States. 


Sulphur is found in a calcareous marl (Upper Cretaceous) in the 
environs of Rimini and Cerena. The thickness of the most produc- 
tive beds varies from about four to thirty-one feet. During 1857, 
680 workmen produced above 10,000 cwts. of smelted sulphur. 
These mines are the property of a company of shareholders, having a 
capital of 220,000 scudi. A considerable proportion is sent, in the form 
of powder, to the Levant, where it is used to preserve vines against 
the ravages of the Oidium. 


3.—Mineral Springs of Goritzia and Istria. 


The Montefalcone spring is situated about 2,000 paces from the 
sea-coast, in a natural basin, seven feet deep, twenty-eight feet long, 
and as broad ; of nearly regular square form, and excavated in 
cretaceous limestone. The basin is without an outlet. The water- 
level rises and falls with the sea-tides, and is spontaneously restored 
when lowered by exhaustion. The temperature is 37° or 38° cent.; the 
taste is similar to that of sea-water ; the smell slightly sulphuretted 
(like that of the surrounding limestone when freshly fractured), but 
transient. The surrounding swamps contain fresh water. 

This mineral water contains, in 10,000 parts, 133.71 parts of solid 
substances, among which chloruret of natrium (96.06), chlorureé of 
magnesium (15.32), bicarbonate of lime (1.83), sulphates of potash, 
natron, and lime (2.44, 6.51, and 8.76), are predominant. 

The sulphurous spring of San Stefano lies about twenty English 
miles from the sea, and nearly twenty feet above the sea-level. Its 
quantity is very considerable. Temperature 36.5° to 37.5” cent. (tempera- 
ture of the surrounding air 22° to 26° cent.). ‘Taste, lixiviously insipid. 
Proportion of fixed substances very considerable. The strong hydro- 
sulphurous smell, the thick white deposit, and the instantaneous deep 
blackening of silver coins thrown into the water, denote a considerable 
proportion of sulphur contained in it. There may exist a connexion 


between this spring and the alum-shales of Sovigniaco, not far 
distant. 


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 285 


Notices of some Meteorites, by Dr. Hérnes, Professor Wéohler, and 
Director W. Hardinger. Read before the Imperial Academy of 
Sciences, Vienna, July, 1858, and January, 1859. Communicated 
by Count MarRscHaLt, of Vienna. 


1.—On the Meteorite of Ohaba (Transylvania). By Dr, HORNEs. 


This meteorite fell in the night, between October 10th and 11th, 
1857, at Ohaba, east of Carlsberg, in Transylvania, and was subse- 
quently acquired for the Imperial Mineralogical Museum of Vienna. 
Soon after midnight of October 10th, the curate of Ohaba was 
frightened out of his sleep by a thunder-like noise, attended by a 
fiery mass moving through the serene atmosphere, in a descending 
direction, and finally falling on the ground with a stunning detona- 
tion. Next morning, the meteorite was found in an orchard, where 
it had penetrated the tough, moss-covered ground. It is completely 
covered with the black crust peculiar to meteorites ; its shape is that 
of an irregular trilateral pyramid, fourteen and a half inches high ;_ 
two of the irregularly curved surfaces are smooth, thé third and the 
basal one exhibit the characteristic round impressions. 

A fresh fracture at the base exhibits the interior, of a light green 
colour, slightly tinged with dark bluish grey, with indistinct spherical 
concretions, a great plenty of coarse and fine particles of metallic iron, 
very minute particles of magnetic sulphuret of iron, and a very 
scarce admixture of olivine. ‘The crust is thin and opaque. 

This meteorite is very similar to that of Chateau-Renard (June 
12th, 1841 ; weight, between 70 and 80 lbs.) ; and on account of 
the indistinct form of its spherical concretions, it must take its 
place amongst Partsch’s “Normal Meteorites.” It weighs 29 lbs. ; 
its specific gravity is 3.11. An analysis, made by Dr. Buckeisen, in 
Professor Wohler’s laboratory, proved it to be a compound of olivine, 
augite, and a felspar-like mineral, with interspersed particles of 
metallic and sulphuretted iron. 


2.—On the Meteorite of Kaba (Hungary). By Dr. Hornes. 


This meteoric stone fell April 15th, 1857, near Kaba, south-west 
of Debreczin, in Central Hungary. About 10 P.M. an inhabitant of 
Kaba, sleeping in the open air, was awakened by a noise, different 
from that of thunder, as he described it, and perceived in the serene 
sky a luminous globe, of dazzling brightness, following a parabolic 
course during four seconds. This phenomenon was observed by 
several inhabitants of the same place. As one of them was riding 


286 THE GEOLOGIST. 


out the next morning, his horse was frightened by the sight of a 
black stone, deeply bedded i in the soil of the road, the eround around 
it being depressed and creviced. When dug out. the meteorite 
weighed about 7 lbs. The finder broke off some fragments, and the 
remainder, weighing 51 l1bs., was deposited in the “Museu of the 
Reformed College at Debreczin. This meteorite has the shape and 
size of a small loaf of bread. Its crust is black, covered with con- 
centrically radiate furrows and tubercles. Its mass is greyish-black, 
with globular concretions, and acts energetically on the magnetic 
needle. Its internal structure, in general features different from that 
of any meteorite hitherto known, most resembles in its structure 
that which fell at Renazzo. 

The Kaba meteorite has been found to contain a certain quantity 
of carbon, together with another substance into the composition of 
which carbon enters. Professor Wohler, of Gottingen, found the 
composition of this substance to bear a ‘ereat analogy with certain 
minerals of a wax-like constitution, such as SNRs scheererite, d&c., 
which are all carburets of hydrogen. 


.3.—On the Meteorite of Kakowa (Banat). By Proressor WOHLER 
AND M. HAIpDINGER. 


The fall of this meteoric stone, on May 19th, 1858, at 8 a.m., was 
attended with the usual phenomena: a small black cloud in the air, 
a hissing and thunder-like noise, heard at two Austrian (five English) 
miles distance, a short and loud explosion at the moment when the 
stone—in a state of considerable heat—touched the ground, into 
which it penetrated to a depth of three inches. Lieutenant-General 
Count Coronini, Governor of the Banat, sent the stone to the Imperiai 
Geological Institute, and it is now added to the rich collection of 
meteorites in the Imperial Museum of Mineralogy. 

The meteorite of Kakowa (although complete as in the moment of its 
fall) bears the appearance of being a fragment from a larger mass, with 
markedly rounded angles and edges, and a black cortical substance, 
about half an inch thick, extending into the interior in the shape of a 
vein. Minute particles of metallic iron are nearly uniformly spread 
throughout the whole stone. 

Professor Wohler submitted it to an analysis. The portions extracted 
by the magnet give: metallic iron, 82.95; nickel, 11.41; cobalt, 
1.08 ; and inappreciable quantities of phosphorus, copper, and oxide 
of chrome. 

The analysis by means of carbonates of potash and soda gave : 
silica, 41.14 ; magnesia, 27.06 ; oxidulated iron, 27.47 ; lime, 0.68 ; 
and some oxidulated manganese. 

Fluorie acid decomposed the substance of the meteorite into: 
Silica, 41.96; magnesia, 27.06 ; oxidulated iron, 23.95; alumina, 


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 287 


2.46 ; lime, 0.81 ; oxidulated manganese, 0.39 ; soda, 1.92 ; potash, 
0.56; graphite, 0.15 ; nickel, 0.20 ; and sulphur, a trace. 

Hydrochloric acid reduced it into undecomposed silicates, 43.3, and 
decomposed silicates, 56.7 ; these last giving, by means of further 
operations, a per centage of silica, 19.5 ; magnesia, 11.2; oxidulated 
iron, 24.4; nickel, 0.2 ; lime, 0.7 ; and sulphur, a trace ; so that they 
may be considered to be a mineral substance analogous to olivine, with 
a very large proportion of oxide of iron, as occurs in many other 
meteorites. The per centage of the insoluble portion is: silica, 
50.49; magnesia, 36.84 ; lime, 1.88 ; alumina, 5.71; soda, 4.45; and 
potash, 0.59; representing, according to Sartorius von Walters- 
hausen, an aggregate of 82.17 of magnesian wollastonite, and 17. 
of anorthite, with the difference only that these two minerals as 
they generally occur are decomposable by acids. 

Mr. Haidinger added some remarks on the theory of meteorites, 
tending to prove that the opinion of the formation of meteorites by 
immediate aggreZation of the gaseous or extremely subtle matters 
dispersed through the cosmic spaces, is, in all probability, very far 
from the truth. A temperature of from 50° to 91° cent. (as calculated 
to exist within these spaces) is a very unfavourable condition for the 
crystalline arrangement of material atoms. It is more probable that 
a reaction from the interior to the surface is going on within an 
already formed aggregate of substance, which, by mutual and opposite 
pressure, and with the assistance of heat (a natural consequence of 
it), shapes the component particles into a stone-like compound. 
Subsequent eruptions may then have detached and thrown off minor 
portions of the whole, and of these some reach the surface of the 
globe. Humboldt, in his “‘ Cosmos,” alludes to the improbability of a 
sometimes highly developed crystallizing process going on during the 
brief time of the passage of meteorites across the terrestrial atmo- 
sphere. 


On the Fossil Mammalia of the Vienna Tertiary Strata. By PROFESSOR 
E. Susss. Read before the Imperial Academy of Sciences, Vienna, 
June, 1858. Communicated by CounT MarscuHatt. 


The supposed complete identity of the faunz of the Leitha lime- 
stone, the Congeriz-beds, and the sands of Belvedere (Vienna), does 
not really exist, although a few species are found throughout the 
whole series. The species of Hippotherium and Sus peculiar to the 
Congeriz-beds and the Belvedere sands are nowhere co-existent with 
the Psephophorus and the Cervide of the Leitha limestone. Dinotherium 
seems to be common to both these faune. The remains of mastodons, 
long ago identified with the species, from Eppelsheim, described by 
Professor Kaup (for instance, the ramus of a lower jaw, found by 
‘Count Breunner, near Kremms, in Lower Austria, and figured by 
‘Cuvier as Mastodon angustidens, the two rami of a lower jaw, and 


988 THE GEOLOGIST. 


the large tusk from the upper jaw, found at Belvedere in 1827, and 
described by Dr. Fitzinger, under the same denomination, and lately 
by Professor Kaup,* who had received a sketch of it from Professor 
Suess, as IW. Arvernensis), must all be placed in the group of Tetralopho- 
dontes. A lower jaw from Belvedere, in Professor Leydelt’s possession, 
having on each side a rather long tusk, with straight longitudinal 
flutings, may have belonged to a male individual, while the other 
specimens, above enumerated, may have belonged to females. Professor 
Suess, in accordance with Dr. Falconer’s Monograph,f assigns to this 
species the name of Mastodon (Tetralophodon) longirostris (although 
retracted by Professor Kaup himself), reserving the specific name J. 
Arvernensis for the species with alternating, not opposite, dental pro- 
tuberances. 

The only known specimen of a mastodon found in the Leitha 
limestone was found in 1816, near Loretto, and is preserved in the 
Imperial Museum of Vienna. It isa ramus of the lower jaw from 
a young individual. It is essentially different from all the remains 
found in the sands of Belvedere, and belongs, on account of its dental 
structure, to the group of 7rilophodontes. 

According to the author, like differences hold good with the several 
species of Ahinoceros from these localities. 


On some Erratic Phenomena in Hungary. By Prorsssor E. Suxss. 
Read before the Imperial Geological Institute of Vienna, July, 1858. 
Communicated by CouNT MARSCHALL. 


Erratic phenomena on the west side of the Rosalia Mountain- 
group (between Lower Austria and Hungary) were made known some 
years since by MM. de Morlot and Czjzek. Similar phenomena have 
recently been traced out by Prof. Suess on the eastern or Hungarian 
slope, in the Ratterer ravine near Marz. A deposit of irregular and 
rounded fragments, derived from the neighbouring mountains 
(Schneeberg, Wechsel, and Neuewelt), lies, several fathoms thick, 


beneath the loess. The calcareous fragments exhibit distinct ice- — 


groovings, and some show the chain-like perforations made by the 
Vowa ; and there are shells of an oyster (very like Ostrea edulis) fixed — 
on the blocks and directly upon the glacial grooves. The intercalated 
sandy beds contain fragments of a Nucula or Yoldia, and internal casts 
of a bivalve referable to the family of the Zucinw. From these facts 
the author infers that this portion of the Vienna Basin, after having 
gradually passed, during the neogene (younger tertiary) period, from 
the condition of a marine bay into that of a fresh-water lake, again 
underwent an irruption of the sea. 


PT Aig. 3; 


* Beitraige zur niithern Kenntniss der urweltlichen Saugthiere, vol. iii. 1857, 
oD 
“+ Quart. Journ. Geol. Soe., vol. xiii. p. 307. 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 289 


' Further researches may clear up the relation of these faune with the 
glacial faunee of the Frith of Clyde and of Uddewaller, and throw 
perhaps some new light on the analogies between the younger mol- 
luscan faunz of Sicily and England, at first so ingeniously exposed by 
the late Prof. Edward Forbes. 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 


GrontoegicaL Society oF Lonpon.—May 4th, 1859. The following communi- 
cations were read :— 

1. “‘ On the Ossiferous Cave, called ‘ Grotta di Maccagnone,’ near Palermo.” By 
Dr. H. Falconer, F.R.S., F.G.S. 

In a letter, dated Palermo, March 21, 1859, and addressed to Sir C. Lyell, 
V.P.G.S., Dr. Falconer first states, that from the caves along the coast between 
Palermo and Trapani he has lately obtained remains of Elephas antiquus, Hippo- 
potamus Pentlandi, H. siculus, Sus priscus (1), Equus, Bos, Cervus intermedius and 
another species, Felis, Ursus, and Canis, and coprolites of Hyena ; but no remains 
of Rhinoceros, nor of Llephas primigenius. ‘These additions to the previously 
ascertaine1 faunze of the cave-period in Sicily may aid in putting it in relation 
with the Newer Tertiary deposits of Italy. 

The author then proceeds to describe the Grotta di Maccagnone, a previously 
undescribed ossiferous cave, in the Hippurite-limestone, westward of the Bay of 
Carini (between Palermo and Trapani). In the breccia below its entrance he met 
with remains of Hippopotamus in abundance, and remains of Elephas antiguus in 
the upper deposit of humus within the cave. But some other fossils were dis- 
covered under very interesting and somewhat anomalous conditions in this cave. 
The interior of the cavern is lined with stalagmite ; and at a spot on the roof, 
where this is denuded, Dr. Falconer found a large patch of bone-breccia containing 
teeth of Ruminants, bits of carbon, shells of several species of Helix, and a vast 
abundance of fit and hornstone knives of human manufacture. At other places, 
and wherever the author had the calcareous coating broken by hammers, he found 
similar remains. At one spot, on breaking the stalagmite, he found against the 
roof of the cave a thick calcareo-ochreous layer containing abundance of the 
coprolites of a large Hyena. 

Dr. Falconer draws the following inferences from the study of these facts :— 
(1.) That the Maccagnone Cave was filled up to the roof within the human period, 
so that a thick layer of bone-splinters, teeth, land-shells, and human objects was 
agglutinated to the roof by the infiltration of water holding lime in solution. (2.) 
That the coprolites of a large Hyena were similarly cemented to the roof at the 
same period. (3.) That subsequently, and within the human period, such a great 
amount of change took place in the physical configuration of the district as to 
have caused the cave to be washed out and emptied of its contents, excepting the 
patches of material cemented to the roof and since coated with additional 
stalagmite. 

2. “On the Jurassic Flora.’ By Baron Achille de Zigno. Communicated 
by C. Bunbury, Esq., F.G.S 

In studying the numerous specimens of Jurassic Plants discovered in the Vene- 
tian Alps, Sig. de Zigno has found it necessary to pass in revision all the known 
species derived from the Jurassic strata in different countries. In preparing his 


290 THE GEOLOGIST. 


large work on the Fossil Plants of the Oolitic Rocks (“ Flora fossilis Formationis 
Oolithice” ), two parts of which have been published, the author finds, as may be 
expected, some discrepancies in the published opinions as to the place which the 
plant-bearing beds of Scania, Richmond (U.S.), India, Australia, and South 
Africa respectively are entitled to im the geological scale. As the apparent weight 
of evidence places some of these deposits in other formations than the Jurassic, 
and as some are still very doubtfully placed, the author omits them from his 
sources of Jurassic plants. 

In the two parts of his work which he has presented to the Society, the author 


describes the Jurassic Calamites (including the Asterophyllites), the Phyllothece, 


and Equiseta. The plates of figures accompanying the foregoing, but not yet 
described, are recommended by the author to the notice of English paleobotanists, 
as illustrative of interesting but somewhat obscure ferns; and he particularly 
requests that search should be made in the Oolites of Yorkshire for specimens of 
Pachypteris with pinnules having a single midrib. Sig. de Zigno supports Stern- 
berg and Bronn in the suggestion that under the term Lguisetites columnaris 
authors have confounded two distinct forms ; one from Brora and Yorkshire, with 
thick joints, and illustrated by Konig; the other being found in the Lias and 
Trias. Some remarks on the probable relations of Glossopteris and Sagenopteris 
follow. 

The remains of Ferns in Jurassic beds of the Venetian Alps are numerous, 
though the species are few. The fructification is often evident ; and the epidermis 
of the fronds can be sometimes separated for microscopical examination. The 
Cycadee have more species ; and the Conifere (especially the Brachyphylla) are 
numerous. 

3. “On a Group of supposed Reptilian Eggs (Oolithes Bathonice) from the Great 
Oolite of Cirencester.” By Professor J. Buckman, F.G.S8. 

The specimen referred to was obtained by Mr. Dalton from the Harebushes 
quarry near Cirencester, and presents evidence of a compact cluster of eight oval 
bodies (each about 2 inches long and 1 inch across) in a mass of oolitic rock. These 
oval bodies being equally rounded at the ends, and in this differing from birds’ 
eggs, the author thinks that they must have been the eggs of a reptile. The egg- 
shells were very thin, have been here and there puckered by pressure, and are 
more or less occupied with calc-spar. 

[The specimen was exhibited to the meeting. ] 

4. “On some Sections of the Strata near Oxford.” No. I. By Professor 
Phillips, Pres. G.S8. 

In this communication Professor Phillips gave the details of sections showing 
the base and the top of the Great Oolite in the Valley of the Cherwell. This oolite, 
with sandy layers below and variable argillaceous beds above (capped by the Corn- 
brash), has been entirely referred to the Great Oolite formation by the Geological 
Survey, and has been traced through Northamptonshire to the cuttings in the 
Great Northern Railway near Stamford and Grantham ; and continues through 
Lincolnshire to the Humber. On the north of that river this series is continued 
by the Oolite of Brough and Cave, and is recognised again in the Millepore-rock 
at the base of the Gristhorpe Cliffs. Hence it appears that the calcareous shelly 
beds of Gristhorpe on the Yorkshire coast are still to be assigned, as they were in 
earlier works, to the Great Oolite group, notwithstanding they contain a few fossils 
which in the South of England are prevalent in the Inferior Oolite, together with 
many the distribution of which is not there limited to one member of the Great or 
Bath Oolite series. 4 

May 18th, 1859.—1. ‘ Palichthyologic Notes, No. 12. Remarks on the Nomen- 
clature of the Fishes of the Old Red Sandstone.” By Sir P. Egerton, Bart., 
M.P., F.R.S., F.G.S. &e. 

Premising with some remarks on the in many respects unsatisfactory condition 
of the nomenclature of the fishes of the Old Red Sandstone, the author refers to 
the late revival, by Dr. Pander, of the discussion as to the priority of Eichwald’s 
name “ Asterolepis” over the ‘‘ Pterichthys” of Agassiz; and, after a detail of the 
circumstances of the case, Sir Philip states that there is every reason for the 
retention of the name Péerichthys for the ‘‘ winged fish” discovered at Cromartie 


~ 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 291 


by Miller in 1831, introduced by him to the scientific world in 1839, and named 
Pterichthys by Agassiz in 1840. 

The author then proceeded to offer some critical remarks on several of the genera 
and species which Prof. M‘Coy has described from the Old Red Sandstone Chiro- 
lepis velox, M‘Coy, is regarded by him as a good species ; but C. cwrtus as identical 
with C. Cummingie, and C. macrocephalus with C. Traillii. Chiracanthus gran- 
dispinus and C. pulverulentus are regarded as good species ; but C. lateralis is 
referred to C. minor. Diplacanthus gibbus and D. perarmatus are accepted. The 
substitution of Diplopterax for Diplopterus is not considered necessary. Diplo- 
pterus gracilis appears to be a variety of D. Agassizit. The occurrence of D. 
macrolepidotus im Caithness, and the restriction of D. macrocephalus to Lethen- 
bar and Russia, are regarded as a reason for not accepting Prof. M‘Coy’s view as 
to the identity of these two forms. 

Osteolepis arenatus, stated by Prof. M‘Coy to occur at Orkney, has been met 
with only in the Gamrie by Sir Philip. 0. brevis is regarded as a good species, 
though the apparent breadth of the head has probably been misunderstood. Hugh 
Miller has well figured and described the cranial anatomy of this species in the 
“Footprints.” Zriplopterus Pollexfeni is also considered to be well established 
generically and specifically. Sir Philip coincides with Prof. M‘Coy in classing 
Dipterus with the Celacanthi, but observes that it is distinct from Glyptolepis. 
Dipterus has but one anal fin. Dipterus brachypygopterus and D. macropygopterus 
= in the author’s opinion, synonyms ; but D. Valenciennesi is regarded by him as 

istinct. 

Conchodus is esteemed by the author only a provisional genus. . 
Sir Philip agrees with M‘Coy in separating from the Holoptychius the large 
fishes of the coal-measures which have received the name Rhizodus from Prof. 
Owen. The latter have ossified vertebral columns. Holoptychius has decidedly two 
dorsal fins. Some good specimens lately obtained at Dura Den prove that Z. 
Andersoni and H. Flemingii are specifically the same. The determination of Z. 
princeps by scales alone is not regarded as satisfactory ; but H. Sedgwickii is a 
good species. Gyroptychius angustus and G. diplopteroides are considered as good 
species of a new and important genus ; but Sir Philip refers them to the Sawro- 
dipteride, not to the Celacanthi. Platygnathus Jamiesoni, Ag., is well founded, 
as proved by recent discoveries in Dura Den ; but the specimen of jaw named P. 

paucidens by Agassiz is assigned to Asterolepis by Hugh Miller. 

With regard to the Placodermata of M‘Coy, Pterichthys and Coccosteus are the 
types, and Chelyophorus is probably a member of the family ; but it is still doubtful 
whether Asterolepis and Heterosteus belong to it. Cephalaspis, Pteraspis, and 
Auchenaspis remain for the limited Cephalaspide. 

Pterichthys had certainly one dorsal and two ventral fins. 

Sir Philip remarks that in Coccosteus M‘Coy and others have mistaken for 
vertebral centres the thick lower extremities of the neurapophyses ; hence the C. 
microspondylus of M‘Coy is a misnomer, and what he terms the ‘‘ dermal bones of ~ 
the dorsal fin reversed,” in his specimen, are the hemapophyses. Sir Philip thinks 
that ©. microspondylus and C. trigonaspis must be regarded as synonyms of C. 
decipiens, Ag. C. pusillus is quoted as a good species, and probably the same as 
one subsequently described by H. Miller as C. minor. 

In a supplement to this memoir Sir P. Egerton gives several extracts from un- 
published letters by the late Hugh Miller, descriptive of structural characters of 
the Coccosteus. Among these notes is the description of a small well-defined 
Coccosteus which Sir Philip proposes to signalize as C. Miller. [Drawings and 
casts, prepared by the late Mr. H. Miiler, illustrated these supplemental notes. | 

2. “On the Yellow Sandstone of Dura Den and its Fossil Fishes.’ By the 
Rev. John Anderson, D.D., F.G.S. &c. 

In his geological remarks on Dura Den, the author described the sedimentary 
strata in the vicinity as consisting of (in ascending order).—1. Grey sandstone, the 
equivalent of the Carmylie and Forfarshire flagstones, with Cephalaspis and 
Pterygotus. 2. The red and mottled beds, such as those of the Carse of Gowrie, 
and the Clashbinnie zone with Holoptychius nobilissimus, Phyllolepis concentricus, 
and Glyptolepis elegans. 3. Conglomerates, marls, and cornstone, with few and 


292 THE GEOLOGIST. 


obscure fossils 4. The Yellow Sandstone, rich in remains of Holoptychiws and 
other fishes, and about 300 or 400 feet in thickness. This sandstone is seen to 
rest unconformably on the middle or Clashbinnie series of the Old Red at the 
northern opening of the Den, and at the southern end is unconformably overlaid 
by the carboniferous rocks. It is also exposed _heneath the lower coal-series of 
Cults, the Lomonds, Binnarty, and the Cleish Hills. It is seen also in Western 
Scotland (Renfrewshire and Ayrshire), and also in Berwickshire and elsewhere in 
the south, with its Pterichthyan and Holoptychian fossils. In the author’s opinion 
it is entirely distinct from the “‘ Yellow Sandstone” of the Irish geologists. 

At Dura Den the yellow sandstone in some spots teems with fossil fish, especially 
in one thin bed. In 1858 a remarkably fine Holoptychius Andersoni was met with ; 
and this, with many other specimens, fully bears out Agassiz’s conjectures for 
completing the form and details of the fish where his materials had been insufh- 
cient. Dr. Anderson also offered some remarks on the Glyptopomus minor (Agass.), 
the specimen of which was obtained from this locality ; and he drew attention to 
two apparently as yet undescribed fishes also from Dura Den. 

(Several specimens from Dura Den, and drawings, were exhibited by the author. 
And a collection of specimens from the Society’s Museum, and a selection from the 
original drawings illustrating M. Agassiz’s Monograph, were also exhibited. } 

June 1st, 1859.—1. “On the Sinking for Coal at the Shireoaks Colliery, near 
Worksop, Notts.” By J. Lancaster, Esq., and C. C. Wright, Esq., F'.G.S. 

In two shafts sunk for the Duke of Newcastle, on the north-west side of hi 
estate of Worksop Manor, it was found that the Permian beds have a thick- 
ness of 166 ft. ; the uppermost consisting of thin sandstones and marls (54 ft.) ; then 
hard yellow limestone (54 ft.), blue limestone and shale (20 ft.), blue shale (83 ft.), 
and soft gritstone, probably equivalent to the “‘ Quicksand” of the north (5 ft.). 
Below the gritstone the coal-measures commence with 5 feet of blue shale, in 
which there are four bands of ironstone; another band, 15 inches thick, lies 
immediately below. This iron-ore is chiefly in the state of peroxide, gives an 
average of 42 per cent. of metallic iron, and promises to be of great economical 
value. The first seam of coal (2 feet thick, and of inferior quality) was cut at a 
depth of 88 yards. Four yards below this is a compact sandstone 66 feet thick. 
The sinking through this rock occupied 20 months ; each pit made 500 gallons of 
water a minute, which was stopped in detail by cast-iron tubing. The pressure 
from the gas at the bottom of this thick rock was at times as high as 210 lbs. per 
square inch, but is now about 196 lbs. per square inch. Shales, with coal-seams 
and. bands of ironstone, all thin or of inferior quality, were met with in the next 
170 yards. At 346 yards the first thick coal was cut, and found to be 4 ft. 6 in. 
thick, and of good quality. This is considered to be the ‘“‘ Wathwood Coal.” 
The “Top Hard Coal” was cut at a depth of 510 yards, and found to be 3 ft. 10 in. 
thick: the strata intervening between this and the “‘ Wathwood Coal” were found 
to have much the same characters and thickness as they are known to have else- 
where. The sinkings were commenced in March, 1854, and perseveringly continued 
until their completion on Febraary Ist, 1859. Altogether, 37 feet of coal were 
passed through ; but only four seams are of workable thickness. The authors of 
this communication remark that the district appears to be remarkably free from 
faults, that the dip decreases considerably towards the east, and that the ‘Top 
Hard Coal” appears to thin out eastwardly. 

(This paper was illustrated by carefully prepared sections (vertical and hori- 
zontal), and by specimens of the ironstones, &c. | 

2. “ Notes on the Geology of Southern Australia.” By A. R. C. Selwyn, Esq., 
ae of the Geological Survey of Victoria. In a Letter to Sir R. I. Murchison, 


Mr. Selwyn remarked that, as to the impoverishment of auriferous veins in 
depth, the only evidence of such being the case in Victoria is the great richness of 
the older drifts ; for, indging from the large size of the nuggets sometimes found 
in the gravels, compared with that of the nuggets met with in the gold-bearing 
quartz-veins (usually from about 4 dwt. to } oz., though occasionally as much as 
12 ozs. or even 13 Ibs.), the upper portions of the veins, now ground down into 
gravel, were probably richer in gold (as formerly suggested) than the lower parts, 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 293 


mow remaining. As far as actual mining experience shows, some of the ‘ quartz- 
reefs ” in Victoria prove as rich in gold at a depth of 200, 230, and 400 feet, as at 
the surface ; the yield, however, fluctuates at any depth yet reached. According 
to the author’s latest observations, the gold-drifts, and their accompanying basaltic 
lavas, are of Pliocene and Post-pliocene age. Miocene beds occur at Corio Bay, 
Cape Otway coast, Murray basin, and Brighton ; and Eocene beds on the east 
shore of Port Phillip, Muddy Creek, and Hamilton. Two silicified fossils (Echi- 
noderm and Coral), thought by Prof. M‘Coy to be of cretaceous origin, have been 
found in the gravel near Melbourne. 

This letter also contains some remarks on the probability of some of the coal of 
Eastern Victoria being of ‘‘ Carboniferous” age,—on the occurrence of Silurian — 
fossils in the rocks of all the gold districts,—on the newly-discovered bone-cave at 
Gisborne,.about twenty-five miles north of Melbourne,—and on the progress of the 
Geological Survey of the Colony. 

[Portions of the Geological Survey Map of Victoria, lent by the Secretary of 
State for the Colonies, and specimens of gold, &c. lent by Prof. Tennant, F.G.S., 
were exhibited in illustration of this paper. ] 

[Fossils from Mayence, &c., presented by W. J. Hamilton, Esq., For. Sec. G. &., 
Fossil Trigoniz from South Africa, presented by Capt. Harvey, R.E., and a series 
of Photolithographs of fossil foot-tracks trom Connecticut, lent by Dr. Bowditch, 
were exhibited at this Meeting. ] 

June 15th, 1859.—1. “‘ Notes on Spitzbergen.” By J. Lamont, Esq. Commu- 
nicated by Sir C. Lyell, V.P.G.S. 

Mr. Lamont cruised about Spitzbergen in his yacht in the summer of 1858, and 
went up the Stour Fiord, which, he remarks, is a sound, dividing the island, not 
a gulf. The first thirty miles of coast along which he sailed on this Fiord con- 
sisted almost entirely of the faces of two or three enormous glaciers: the water is 
shallow, seldom as much as sixteen fathoms, and such appears to be the case all 
around Spitzbergen ; and hence icebergs of very large size are not formed. The 
shores are mostly formed of a muddy flat, from half a mile to three miles broad, 
_ with ice or hard ground at from twelve to eighteen inches under the surface ; this 
is intersected with muddy rivulets, and bears saxifrages, mosses, and lichens, on 
which the reindeer fattens. Protruding trap-rocks appear at many spots on these 
flats. A steep slope of mud, snow, and débris succeeds the flats, and reaches up 
to perpendicular crags of schistose rock, above which extend the great glaciers. 
Above these, peaks, probably of granite, appear when free of mist. 

The upper part of the sound has much drift-wood, chiefly small pine-trees, 
weather-worn and water-logged, and some wreck-wood. Bones and skeletons. of 
whales are numerous. Drift-wood and bones of whales were observed several miles 
inland, and high above high-water mark—at least thirty feet. Whales’ skeletons 
were also seen high up on the Thousand Islands. These circumstances, connected 
with the fact that seal-fishers and whalers state their belief in the shallowing of 
these seas, lead the author to think that Spitzbergen and the adjacent islands are 
emerging from the sea at a rate even more rapid than that at which some parts of 
Norway have been shown to be rising. 

2. “On the Formation of Gypsums and Dolomite.” By T. 8. Hunt, Esq., of 
the Geol. Surv. Canada. Communicated by Prof. A. C. Ramsay. F.G.8. 

The points to which the author calls attention are, first, the formation of sul- 
phate of lime and bicarbonate of magnesia by the action of bicarbonate of lime 
upon a solution of sulphate of magnesia, and their successive deposition in the 
forms of gypsum and hydrous carbonate of magnesia, during the process of evapo- 
ration ; and, secondly, the direct union, under certain conditions, of this carbonate 
of magnesia with carbonate of lime to form a double carbonate, which is dolomite. 

3. ‘On the Tertiary Deposits, associated with Trap-rocks, in the East Indies.” 
By the Rev. 8. Hislop. With Descriptions of the Shells by the Rev. 8. Hislop ; 
and of the Insects by A. Murray, Esq. (Communicated by the President.) 

In the first place, the author brought forward additional proof to support his 
views, already given in the Society’s Journal, of the probability of the amygda- 
loidal trap-rock found beneath the freshwater deposits at Nagpur being posterior 
in age to those beds and to the nodular trap-rock overlying them. Also, he again 


VOL.. II. Z 


294 THE GEOLOGIST. 


points out that these trap-rocks were erupted beneath the waters of a lake or 
akes, of no great depth, in the Nagpur district ; whilst towards the south-east, 
about the mouths of the Godavery, there were estuarine and marine deposits 
being formed. — a. 

The author formerly thought that the sandstone at Nagpur, underlying the 
lower trap and overlying the gneiss, was of Jurassic age, and once continuous with 
that of Korhadi, Mangali, &c. ; but he now believes that it belongs to the Tertiary 
series. It contains abundance of silicified wood, and a few Paludine. ‘This ter- 
tiary sandstone is metamorphosed into gneiss by the intrusion, apparently, of some 
deep-seated plutonic rock, evidenced by veins of pegmatite. 

Some minerals from the trap, gneiss, &c. were then enumerated, especially the 
“‘ Hunterite” and “ Hislopite” lately discovered by Prof. Haughton. 

The /ossils were next alluded to: namely, Fish-remains—some like the Sphy- 
venodus of the London Clay ; also Reptilian remains, and bones of Pachyderms. 
The Shells, both freshwater (from the neighbourhood of Nagpur) and marine (from 
Rajamandri, near the mouth of the Godavery), were described by the author in 
detail. Cyprides are numerous ; some have been described by Mr. Sowerby, and 
some new forms will be described by Mr. Jones. Plant-remains are abundant, but 
have not been yet described. Many remains cf Insects occur ; and, as far as Mr. 
Andrew Murray can form an opinion on them, they differ from recent species. 

The author, after comparing the fossil shells of Nagpur with those of the Num- 
mulitic fauna described by Viscount D’ Archiac, and with the recent fauna of India, 
offered the conclusion that they are probably of Lower Hocene date. The nearest 
European analogue is found in the Physa-bed (Physa gigantea) at Rilly, in France. 

These Tertiary deposits, with their pachydermatous remains, are decidedly (in 
the author’s opinion) older than those of the Sewalik Hills, so well known from 
Cautley and Falconer’s researches. ‘There are yet newer deposits, with huge fossil 
bones (probably of Upper Pliocene age), on the banks of the Nerbudda and 
elsewhere. 

Lastly, the author observed that the “‘ diamond-sandstone” of India belongs 
to these Hocene deposits ; and, since its formation, plutonic rocks have risen to 
the surface and rock-masses have been metamorphosed. 

Shells from the freshwater strata of Nagpur and neighbouring parts of Central 
India (all, but three, new species)—Melania quadrilineata, J. Soy. ; M. Hunteri ; 
Paludina normalis; P. Deccanensis, J. Sby. ; P. Wapsharei ; P. acicularis ; P. 
pyramis ; P. subcylindraca; P. Sankeyi ; P. Takliensis ; P. soluta ; P. conoidea ; 
P. Rawesi ; P. Virapai ; Valvata minima; V. unicarinifera ; V. multicarinata ; 
V. decollata ; Succinea Nagpurensis; Limnza oviformis; L. subfusiformis ; 
L. attenuata ; L. peracuminata ; L. Spina ; Physa Prinsepii, J. Sby., var. elon- 
gata, var. inflata ; Ph. Bradleyi ; Unio Malcolmsoni ; U. Hunteri ; U. cardioides ; 

- mammillatus ; U. imbricatus ; U. Carteri. 

_Shells from the estuary strata near Rajamandri (all new species)—Pseudo- 
liva elegans ; Natica Stoddardi; Cerithium multiforme ; C. subcylindraceum ; C. 
Leithi ; C. Stoddardi ; Vicarya fusiformis ; Turritella preelonga ; Hydrobia Ellioti ; 
Hemitoma? multiradiata ; Ostrea Pangadiensis ; Anomia Kateruensis ; A. modiola ; 
Perna meleagrinoides ; Modiola, sp. ; Corbis elliptica; Corbicula ingens ; Cardita 
variabilis ; Cytherea orbicularis ; C. Wilsoni ; C. Wapsharei ; C. Rawesi ; OC. Jer- 
doni; C. elliptica ; C. Hunteri ; Tellina Woodwardi; Psammobia Jonesi; Corbula 
Oldhami ; C. sulcifera. 

Fossil Insects from the Tertiary strata near Nagpur—Lomatus Hislopi, nov. ; 
and three other Buprestide (indefinable). Merisios Huntert, nov. ; and seven 
other Curculionide (indefinable). ° 


[An extensive collection of fossils from Nagpur, including those collected by the 
late Dr. Malcolmson, were exhibited.] oy : : 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 295 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 


Gronocicat Praris.—“ The inquiry in a late number of THE Groxoagrst, 
‘ Have geologists ever found any fossil pearls among the oyster and other beds of 
fossil shells ?” has induced me to forward the result of some investigations which 
I have very recently been carrying on, not originally with the expectation of dis- 
covering pearls, but, having observed in several instances bodies in chalk which I 
have thought fit to denominate ‘pearls,’ I will at once proceed to tell you the 
tale respecting them ; premising that I am aware they are not the bodies which 
your correspondent ‘ Knquirer’ is in search of. 

“T have been employing and amusing myself by examining microscopically spe- 
cimens of chalk from various localities. I followed the method of disintegrating 
the chalk, ‘by scrubbing it with a nail-brush in water,’ adopted by Mr. Lonsdale. 
The first specimen I examined was taken from a drifted mass of chalk lying upon 
the Kimmeridge Clay in a pit at Ely; on placing minute portions of it, moistened 
with water, in the field of my microscope, I observed, among the particles usually 
met with, a number of spheres of various magnitudes, such as I had never heard 
of before; the majority of them are perfect \circles, having the appearance of 
slightly depressed spheres, their surface exhibits a slight degree of polish, and 
some are certainly subpellucid ; such is the appearance of these bodies when 
viewed under a thin stratum of water, with transmitted light ; but, if examined 
when dry, with reflected light, aided by the bull’s-eye, they are opaque, with a 
subcrystalline, marbly surface ; in short, when seen under water, they reminded 
me so of the ‘urinary pearls’ occasionally met with in the bladder of the horse, 
that I have been induced to term them ‘geological pearls.’ They are soluble 
in dilute hydrochloric acid. I have crushed them, with the desire of seeing if their 
internal structure be fibrous, as in ‘urinary pearls,’ but I have not at present 
succeeded in detecting that structure. It is probable that they may possess a 
central nucleus, inclosed in concentric laminee, as in oolitic bodies. I am decidedly 
of opinion that the spherical is the characteristic form of these bodies, still I have 
seen some of an oviform, or pyriform, and, very rarely, a bilobed, form; if any may 
be said to be amorphous, those have a somewhat botryoidal surface. 

“In the chalk from Cherry Hinton, near Cambridge, I found plenty of ‘ pearls,’ 
and an abundance of Rotaliz and Textularie. In a fragment of chalk-marl from 
Burwell, in Cambridgeshire, I did not detect any of the spherical bodies. Grey 
chalk from Whittington, near Stoke Ferry, in West Norfolk, a stratum of the 
lower chalk, contains an abundance of the ‘pearls.’ Foraminifera appeared to be 
not very numerous ; but, as the portion of chalk examined was exceedingly minute, 
the proportion of these organisms cannot be accurately judged of. The chalk of 
Swaffham (medial chalk) furnished great plenty of ‘pearls;’ that also from 
Hitcham, in its vicinity, contains these ‘ pearls,’ but not in such abundance as 
the chalk of Swaffham ; in it I observed one of a pyriform shape, or rather oviform, 
with a stem to it. 

“he Norwich Chalk (upper chalk) has about the same proportion of ‘ pearls’ 
as the chalk from Hitcham, and an abundance of Foraminifera. 

“Where they are most abundant, you meet with a regularly graduated series of 
these bodies, from the smallest to the largest ; and by measurement I found the 
former >j5;5 of an inch in diameter, the latter zs, so that, if allowed to be those 
precious bodies, we must consider them ‘seed-pearls’ only. The above described 
bodies are very unlike Xanthidia.—C. B. Rosr, F.G.S., Great Yarmouth.” 

THE Carter on Fosstzn Ligntnine.—* Drar Sir,—There is an error about 
Dr. Fiedler’s Dresden specimen, at page 203, which is sure to be noticed, unless 


296 THE GEOLOGIST. 


rectified in your next number. You have embodied a foot-note in the text, which 
makes it read that Dr. Fiedler’s specimen was found on the eonfines of Holland — 
by a shepherd, which was not the case. I merely noticed it as a fact_of ocular 
demonstration of the formation of a fulgurite given in his work.—Yours, &c. 
Grorae D. GIBB.” 

GroLogy or Wieton, CuUMBERLAND.—“ S1r,—I shall be greatly obliged to any 
of your readers who can furnish me with information as to the geology of this 
neighbourhood, the varieties of fossils, and the localities in which they are most 
abundant.—I am, yours respectfully, Frank Dymonp, Brookfield, near Wigton, 
Cumberland.” 

On a Prr-Section or TERTIARY STRATA AT WoouwicH.—By the Rev. 
T. G. Bonney, M.A., of Westminster.—‘ The following descriptions of a section of 
the lower tertiaries, at present exposed in a sandpit near Woolwich, may not be 
uninteresting to some of the readers of Tum Gnonoaist. The pit is situated close 
to the road, between Charlton and Woolwich, and is divided by the railway. In 
fact, strictly speaking, there are two pits; one, the smaller, open to the road ; 
the other, on the other side of the railway. It is of this latter that I imtend 
chiefly to speak. . When I visited it two years ago, it was then deserted, but now. 
a considerable section has been exposed by working for sand. The section 
exposed is as follows :—the measurements are only approximate, as I had no 
instruments—(1.) Soil, containing many rounded pebbles, more especially in the 
lower part (2ft.). (2.) Yellowish-grey sand, with irregular rust-coloured streaks 
(5ft.). (3.) Sand and rolled pebbles. In this there are a few thin streaks or 
traces of shells (3 ft.). (4.) A mass of shells and rounded pebbles. The shells 
here are irregularly heaped together, as if by the action of the waves, just like a 
great shell-bank. Their quantity is so great that, at a short distance, the seam 
appears like a stratum of white rock. The shells are exceedingly brittle, and, 
consequently, it is difficult to procure good specimens, although the number to 
choose from is enormous. I found about ten or eleven species, among which were 
Melania imequinata, Cerithina funatum, Melanopsis fusiformis, Natica, Neritia 
consobrica, N. globulus, Pectunculus, Cyrena, &c. The pebbles in this seam are, 
perhaps, rather smaller than those above (2 ft.). (5.) A small band of grey and 
yellow sand (3 or 4 inches). (6.) Small pebbles, sand, and shells. The shells as 
before, but not quite so abundant. This stratum always formed a talus on the 
cliff (10ft.). (7.) Bluish and dark clay (13 ft.). The last 7 feet composed of 
layers of different shades. The eftect of this part, when seen from a little distance, 
1s very curious. The great number of parallel laminz of different shades look as 
though the face of the cliff had been ruled with differently shaded inks. Shells 
are plentiful in this, but very difficult to obtain perfect, there are not so many 
varieties, apparently, as above. The most plentiful are, Melania inequinata (large), 
Cerithium funatum, Cyrena cordata, and OC. cuneiformis ; the last very abundant, 
lying horizontally with the valves closed, as though they had been engulphed 
while alive, or immediately after death. Oyster-shells also occur, especially in a 
seam about 2 feet from the bottom of the bed. They are frequently of consider- 
able size, and form conglomerated masses. (8.) Three seams of yellow sand, with 
thin clay partings. This sand; I am informed, is used for the moulds in casting 
brass (3 ft.). (9.) Grey sand, used in casting iron (12 ft.). Whitish sand, called 
the ‘silver sand, used in making pottery. This bed is of great thickness, not 
less, I should think, than 50 feet. 

‘The above section is made in a line nearly at right angles to the river, and the 
beds slope gradually upwards in that direction. In the other pit, by the roadside, 
the section parallel to the road, shows only beds 9, 10, 8, and perhaps part of 7. 
There also appears to be a small seam of pebbles separating 9 and 8 ; but with 
regard to these I cannot speak with certainty, as they were high up in the face 
of the cliff, and I had not time to make an accurate examination, indeed, I doubt 
whether it could be accomplished without some risk. In this place the chalk has 
been reached just below the level of the road. 

““The beds exposed in some other parts of the pits are a good deal bent ; in one 
ple they appear to be bent over a projection of the white sand, which seems to 

ave formed a sort of mound or shoal. 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 297 


“J should mention that the pit is closed to the public, but that Beohanly any 
— a be admitted, as I was, by the courtesy of the manager, Mr. 
of Woolwich.” 


llen, 


Ny 


— 


ZZ 


VAN 


Tertiary Strata at Charlton Pit, near Woolwich. 


Tur Furnts or Hien Port.—By Marx Norman, of Ventnor.—“ High Port 
is a local name, long ago given by fishermen and smugglers to a range of low cliffs, 
beginning a little distance from the Fisherman’s Cottage, at the eastern extremity 
of the town of Ventnor, and ending in a headland called Whitestone Point, near 
Horseshoe Bay, below Bonchurch. 

“‘ The cliffs are composed of the débris of the different deposits constituting the 
upper portion of the cretaceous series, or rather the harder portion of such, as 
there is no evidence of the presence of the upper white chalk, except its flints 
imbedded in compact masses in the stiff clays formed by the decomposition of the 
chalk, and which in some places resembles pipe-clay. This is extremely tenacious, 
of a dullish-white colour, and holds the flints so well together that they form in 

many spots the entire face of the cliff, from which they are with difficulty 
extracted by the hand ; but the sea encroaching at the base of the cliffs undermines 
and washes them out, and then they are drifted along the shore, and such as 
contain fossil shells, &c., fall to the share of the collector, while those that contain 
sponges are eagerly sought for by the visitor for the purpose of being converted 
ie Dees bracelets, &c. The sponges and zoophytes will be enumerated in 
the sequel. 

se The best flints for the collector to break in searching for fossils are round 
flattened boulders, varying in size from one to two or three feet: in circumference, 
of a light-reddish colour, and smooth on the outside ; they break with a ring like 
earthenware, are of a white or cream colour, and many of them contain cavities 
filled with a whitish powder, much resembling pulverized chalk to the sight, but 
to me pours it is gritty and does not readily leave traces on the fingers as chalk 
would do. 

“ These flints contain splendid fossils, and it was fromthis class that the alveolus 


298 THE GEOLOGIST. 


of a Belemnitella, figured in p. 317, of Mantell’s ‘ Excursions round the Isle of 
Wight,’ was obtained by my friend and. brother collector, Matthew Hale. The 
external shell of the Belemnitella is always wanting, but the cast of it remains in 
the shape of a circular cavity, having the peak of the alveolus or phragmacone at 
the bottom. Those fossils are extremely rare, and when found, great care should 


be taken not to make too free use of the hammer, or the delicate point of the fossil 


is sure to fly off. I have always found that the best and safest course to pursue is 
to break off the flint, in a large lump, that contains the specimen, and submit it 
to the lapidary’s wheel, which is certain to be attended with success in the 
hands of such a skilful workman as my friend Mr. John Billings, of Ventnor, 
who developed for Mr. Beckles the figured specimen to which I have alluded. 

“Spines of the Cidaris also occur in the same state, with this difference, that 
they only leave the impressions of their fluted sides in a little round hole in the 
flint. The Galerites ovata is also found in a beautiful state of preservation, with 
its rows of slender spines ranged in triple lines across the cast of the shell, as fine 
and small as the points of a needle, and extending from the oval to the anal 
aperture. Casts of Rhynchonelle are also found in as perfect a state. ‘These, 
with the different species of Echinus that occur_in the upper chalk, are amongst 
some of the most prominent that are met with, In addition to the white flint fossils 
may be added those of the grey and black flints, which are imbedded in a stiff red 
clay, a large mass of which occurs on both sides of the Point, about sixty paces 
from the Fisherman’s Cottage, towards Bonchurch, interspersed with large blocks 
of grey chalk containing few fossils. There is an outlier of the lowermost portion 
of the white chalk, containing a few small flints at intervals, with an abundance 
of a small species of Inoceramus, associated with Lhynchonella plicatilis and 
fragments of comminuted shells, Bryozoa, sponges, spines of Cidarites, &c. Blocks 
of the white chalk, intermingled with masses of the upper greensand are scattered 
along the shore until we arrive at White Stone Point, near Horseshoe Bay, which 
is almost wholly composed of chalk-rubble, in blocks from the size of a small 
cottage to pieces of six inches square, comprising representatives of every layer 
of both the lower and middle chalk (but none of the upper); the larger blocks 
consist chiefly of the lower or grey chalk, many of which contain good specimens 
of Siphonia with other fossils, such as Ammonites, Turrellites, Scaphites, &c., 
much distorted by pressure. Further on we come to Horseshoe Bay, an indenta- 
tion of the shore caused by a large mass of Gault intervening between two head- 
lands of chalk ruins. The easternmost headland is capped with drift, in which 
some workmen, a short time back, discovered a portion of the skull of an elephant, 
with a few teeth of some other animal, and the jaw-bone of a young whale. The 
flints are scattered also along the shore from thence to Sandown, and a little 
farther to the eastward we come upon the lower green-sand, at Monk’s Bay, just 
below the old church of Bonchurch, built by the monks of Lyra, in the year 755, 
and in which bay they landed after having bravely crossed the channel from 
Normandy, and preached to. the islanders the truth which St. Boniface had 
attested with his blood ; it is a curious circumstance that those monks should land 
and choose one of the loveliest spots in creation for their future residence. 


“ Fossils from the Flints. 

** Choanites, three or four varieties.—The mass of the Choanite often presents the 
appearance, when cut by the lapidary into slices, of moss, hence they are often 
termed ‘ moss-agates.’ Many of these from this neighbourhood exhibit splendid 
colours, caused by the infiltration of iron, which contrast with the bluish tinge 
of the chalcedony between the ferruginous bands. When they exhibit this 
appearance, they are called ‘landscape-agates,’ and are much sought after for 
brooch-stones by visitors, being preferred fer their beauty to the far - famed 
Brighton-pebbles, in which the oxide of iron predominates so much as to render 
the darker portions black, instead of red, blue, and yellow, like those of this 
neighbourhood. . 

“ Ventriculites, several varieties. 

“ Oliona.—The shells of the larger Inocerami were subject to the ravages of a 
peculiar parasitical sponge, which destroyed the intermediate substance, leaving 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 299 


the outer and inner plates entire, and supported only by thin partitions. Speci- 
mens exhibiting these appearances are full of small oblong cells, connected by 
linear perforations, which are either empty or filled with chalk or flint; in the 
latter case they give rise to a curious class of fossils, the nature of which the late 
Rey. Mr. Conybeare has given an ingenious explanation in the second volume of 
the ‘ Geological Transactions.’ These fossils being the siliceous casts of such 
excavated cells. 

“* Sponges, Many varieties (branched, conical, and round).—Elongated pieces of 
smooth round flint often occur, having a cavity filled with another flint, cor- 
responding to the cavity, which on breaking is found to be white and enamelled on 
the outside. Many such occur, having thus a flint within a flint-sheath. Splendid 
specimens of mammilated chalcedony are sometimes found in the hollows left by 
decomposed sponges in flints. The writer once saw a specimen about nine inches 
by six, with the mammille of the size of large grapes, and of a beautiful blue 
colour. This mammillation is the cause of the chalcedony, occasionally, in the 
landscape-agates assuming, when cut and polished, a hammered appearance, like 
the marks left by the workmen on copper, and is from that cause vulgarly called 
‘hammered chalcedony.’ 

** Foraminifera.—By means of a small lens I have been enabled to detect several 
species. Lituola Nautiloidea, and Placopsilina irregularis, are the most prominent, 
and can often be detected with the naked eye. 

“* Micraster cor-anguinum, Ananchytes ovatus, Galerites albogalerus, Cidarites 
(several varieties), Marswpites (plates of), Lschara disticha, Rhynchonella octoplicata, 
R. subplicata, Terebratula semiglobosa, T. subrotunda, T. carnea, Magas pumilus, 
Ostrea vescicularis (and other species), Pecten quinque-costatus, Inoceramus 
Lamarckii (and other species), Plagiostoma Hoperii, Spondylus spinosum.—These 
last are generally found on the outside of the flints, in a remarkable state of 
preservation ; they are also found, although less often, in the body of the flint. 

** Arca (species of), Belemnites.—Casts of two or three varieties of the latter are 
found, but in most cases nothing is left of the body of the fossils but a hollow 
tube-like cavity, with the cast of the phragmacone.” 

ENcRINITES AND Crinorps.—‘ Dear Srr,—Will you kindly inform me if the 
Encrinite be a species of Crmoid? My reason for asking is, that M‘Causland, 
in his ‘Sermons in Stones,’ fourth edition, p. 51, states that the Encrinite ‘is 
a species of Starfish fixed on the top of a flexible stalk, rising from and fastened 
to the bottom of the water ;’ and in the first number of Tur Groxogist I find 
under the head of ‘ Woodocrinus,’ a description of its stem as being ‘ invariably 
tapering,’ so that the longer it is the thinner it becomes. This circumstance 
would lead us to imagine, that the creature floated freely in the water, and that 
the stems were used to balance it, and keep it upright while it floated. Should 
this fact be established, it will place this genus between the free Comatula and 
the fixed Crinoid. The Comatula here mentioned as ‘ free,’ is noticed in M‘Caus- 
land’s work as ‘the existing representative,’ with the Pentacrinus Caput-Meduse, 
of the primeval Encrinite—I am, Sir, yours truly, M.C. H.”—Crinoids, or 
Crinoidea, is a general family name for the many genera of Encrinites, Actino- 
crinites, Pentacrinites, Apiocrinites, &c. The generic name of Encrinites is some- 
times loosely used for the same purpose, having been the word adopted by old 
naturalists for these creatures. But the generic name Lncrinus having been 
restricted in modern nomenclature to the Brunswick Encrinite, the word Crinoidea 
is better adapted as a general family term. Still Crinoid and Encrinite are used 
by authors differently. Both our correspondent and M‘Causland (as quoted) 
use the word “‘ species” in a loose sense for ‘‘ kind.” Most Crinoids were fixed 
by roots at the end of their stems, but the Woodocrinus appears to have been one 
of the exceptions, and seems to have been destitute of them. It might possibly 
neve floated, but more likely it grovelled in the mud or sand, or lolled on the coral 
banks. 

FRoGs IN SOLID STONE AND IN TREES; LIVING SPIDERS IN Fuint.—“‘ Dear 
Sir,—Sometimes, in regarding one special class of facts, we are apt to overlook 
others of a similar nature, from which much knowledge may be gained. In 
referring to vol. xxxix. of the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ (1769) for another purpose 


300 THE GEOLOGIST. 


this morning, I came across the following extract in a review of Pennant’s British 
Zoology, then just. published, with some remarks of Mr. How ; which passages, 
I think, have a valuable bearing on the questions raised by some of your corre- 
spondents about live toads and frogs in solid stone; as the existence of such 
batrachians, inclosed in the solid wood of trees, tends to strengthen your valuable 
arguments of the recent development of those animals in such situations.— Yours 
truly, B.S. A.”—‘ To conclude the account (of the toad) with the marvellous, the 
animal is said to have often been found in the midst of solid rocks, and even in 
the centre of growing trees, imprisoned in a small hollow, to which there was not 
the least adit or entrance ; how the animal breathed, or how it subsisted (sup- 
posing the possibility of its confinement), is past our comprehension.  Plot’s 
solution of this phenomenon is far from satisfactory ; yet, as we have the great 
Bacon’s authority for the fact, we do not entirely deny our assent to it. Besides, 
Plot’s and Bacon’s authority we can quote another for this fact, viz. Bradley in 
his ‘ Philosophical Account of the Works of Nature,’ p. 164, where he says, 
‘We have instances of toads that have been found in small cavities in the middle 
of large blocks of hard stone.’ And I was once eye-witness of a toad which was 
sawed out of the centre or heart of the trunk of a large oak. At Catsgrove, near 
Reading, a spider was found in the middle of a solid flint. It was alive, but died 
instantly on being exposed to the air. The cavity in which it was iclosed was 
as smooth as if polished, of an oval shape, about three-fourths of an inch in length, 
and about half an inch over.—D. H.” 


REVIEWS. 


Geological Map of Central Hurope, compiled from the newest materials. By H. 
Bacu. 


(Geologische Karte von Central Europe nach dem neuesten Materialen bearbeitet. Von 
Heinrich Bacu.) Stuttgart: E. Schweizerbach. London: Williams and 
Norgate. 1859. 


Tus is a very good chromo-lithographed map, 25 by 21 inches in size. It 
includes the greater part of England and Wales (as high up as Newcastle, and as 
far westwardly as Whitehaven and Portland), and it reaches to Seeland and 
Bernholm on the North of Europe ; to Dantzic, Cracow, and the Carpathians, 
on the Hast ; to Perugia, Toulon, and the Pyrenees, on the South ; and takes in 
Deux, Bordeaux, Nantes, and St. Malo, in its western border. The tertiary areas 
of London, Hants, Paris, Brussels, Bordeaux, Switzerland, and Vienna are recog- 
nised at a glance, and readily show their relation to the later Tertiaries of 
North Germany, Northern Italy, &c. on the one hand, and to the Secondary 
rocks on the other. So also the Jurassic area (after Oppel) and the older forma- 
tions, are clearly seen in their geological and physical relations to the other rocks, 
and to the present geography of England and Europe. The Gneissic plateau of 
Central France, and the porphyritic areas of Thuringia and Bohemia, also stand 
well out, without interfering too strongly with the other colours. With the 
explanation of the colours, are succinct German, French, and English tables of 
the strata, so that this map will be available in the hands of any one wanting a 
good general geological map of Central Europe, portable, and of moderate price. 


THE GEOLOGIST. 


AUGUST, 1859. 


SKETCHES FROM NOTE-BOOKS. 
No. 1—NOTE ON SOME GRANITE-TORS. 
By T. Rupert Jonss, F.G.S. 


Many of the common things that occur to us in our walks and rides 
near home, and which occasionally: are noted in our memorandumn- 
books on account of the clearness of their features, or for the sake 
of some occasional peculiarities in the details observable in them, 
may not only often prove as useful exemplifications of natural pro- 


AACUNMG ERE 
(Meee 


\ 


6 A ; es 
i mys 


Lign. 1.—Vixen Tor, Dartmoor, Devonshire. 


cesses and phenomena as facts and instances brought from any 
distant part of the world, but may bear repeated description and 
VOL. II. ; A A 


302 THE GEOLOGIST. 


fresh demonstration for the sake of geological enquirers, such 
as many of the correspondents of THE GEOLOGIST must neces- 
sarily be. 

I here propose to offer a note on some of the results of weathering 
on granite-rocks. My note-book of last year contains one or two 
sketches illustrating that subject, and reminding me of much that 
has been written by others about it. 


- SSO! 
ae 


Jif = 


Lign. 2.—The Cheesewring, near Liskierd, Cornwall. 


In granitic regions we often find the surface of the countries dis- 
tinguished by peaks and crags; irregularly prominent masses of 
rudely-heaped rock-fragments, forming “tors ;” more regularly piled 
isolated heaps or pillars, such as “ cheesewrings;” and sometimes a 
peak or pile surmounted by a single, moveable, and well-poised 
mass, constituting a rocking or logging stone. Figs. 1, 2, and 4, 
which illustrate these three forms that weathered granite-rock pre- 
sents, are copied from the plates illustrating Dr. M‘Culloch’s 
memoir on the granite-tors of Cornwall, in vol. 11. of the Trans- 
actions of the Geological Society, 1848. In this memoir much 
valuable information will be found; and the difficulties of the sub- 


JONES—ON THE WEATHERING OF GRANITE. 303 


eel 
oi 
i) 

r a) 


“4 
4 


Mae 
Waa 


: } ail i ijk i nih 
Hint ANG Fale Fre ! 
ri Anh 
uh iY inl aia He 
Yiy ins Ni N\ 
7 
UY 


Lign. 3.—Haytor, Dartmoor, Devon, 


WOlne IT: IN AN 


304 THE GEOLOGIST. 


ject are also well brought out to view, and exposed for solution by 
subsequent observers. Not much, however, has been done since the 
date of that memoir. Mr. Ormerod’s communication on the Rock- 
basins of Dartmoor, in the Geological Society’s Journal, 1858, vol. 
xiv., p. 16, &c., contains a résumé of our present knowledge on the 
subject, and to this we shall presently recur. Fig. 5 represents one 
of the Dartmoor tors, the granitic boss known as Blackistone; and 
fig. 3 is a sketch of Haytor (eastern side), also in Dartmoor. The 
latter is from my note-book; and, in connection with some appear- 
ances on the faces of the granite-quarries on the lower ground to 


Lign. 5.—Blackistone, Dartmoor. 


the westward, offers an interesting illustration of the method of the 
formation of “tors,” “cheesewrings,” and “ logging stones.” 

A few hundred yards below Haytor is an old quarry, the smooth 
faces of which are formed of the joint-planes of the eranite. ‘These 
faces show many of the cross-joints; and on the eastern face the 
north-and-south perpendicular joints are plainly seen here and there 
to be the channels by which the rain and frost are working their 
way into the rock, producing innumerable minute cracks close to 
and mostly parallel with the great fissures (fig. 6). This is especially 
the case beneath the surface-soil, where the joits are enlarged into 
a compound group of cracks, minutely cutting up the stone into 


JONES—ON THE WEATHERING OF GRANITE 300 


loose splinters and sand. In some instances, in the quarry and on 
the neighbouring banks, this sand, or decomposed granite, has fallen 
out and is scattered down the slopes in thick beds, forming the 
“oranit pourri’ of continental geologists. This substance covers 


Lign. 6.—Joints in Granite, Eastern Face of Old Quarry, below Haytor. 


vast areas in some granitic regions, and is used for the purposes to 
which sand and gravel are applied in tertiary and alluvial districts. 
In this old quarry the horizontal joints of the granite are less 
widened than are the perpendicular joints by atmospheric causes act- 
ing on their bounding planes. 

In another quarry, on still lower ground, and but little further 
to the west (from which the granite was chiefly obtained for 
building London Bridge), the vertical and horizontal joints are 


Lign, 7.—EHastern Face of New Quarry, Haytor. 


again well seen on the smooth sides of the pit. Fig. 7 shows 
the eastern face. Here the joints are all closed, and their sides 
are nearly unaffected by change, except some alteration in the 
colour of the stone along their lines. At one spot, shown im 


306 THE GEOLOGIST. 


fig. 8, just beneath the surface of the ground, it can, however, be dis- 
tinctly seen that some change is going on, because the joimt-lines 
are rather more distinctly visible and the horizontal lLnes more 
numerous; and here we may observe (standing on the bank of the 
lower quarry, with the eastern or upper face of the older quarry in 
view, and the prominent mass of Haytor still higher up and further 
off) a teaching series of appearances in the granite. In the face of 
the newest quarry we see the joints in their natural condition, almost 
unaffected by the percolation of surface-waters, and by exposure to 
weather for the last thirty or forty years ; but in one small portion 
of this face already alluded to, may be traced in outline the sectional 
areas of several flattish blocks of granite (fig. 8), of various dimen- 


SB Sim | SA in 

eas aa ’ 

Oe 2 ea er 
ge a Se 


Lien. 8.—Portion of Eastern Face, New Quarry, Haytor. 


sions, bounded. by joint-lines, and which would be in the course of 
time, if exposed to adequate agencies, separated one from the other 
by the removal of the intervening softer part of the rock, and would 
either be tumbled down by force of gravity, or would remain piled 
up more or less regularly one upon another (if the destruction of 
the rock took place in the air without the intervention of the sea or 
rivers). There is one such mass, marked out by the intersection of 
oblique joints (indicated by a in fig. 8) which might possibly weather 
away into a sufficiently symmetrical form as to remain poised on the 
underlying hump-backed mass of rock which is so bounded by joints 
as to promise to withstand the destructive action of wind and 
weather, should ever time bring about such changes of the surface 
as would lead to the modification of the Dartmoor district and expose 
it to the erosive action of air and water in those long continued pro- 
cesses which have in former times cut out and left the uprismg mass 
of Haytor on the hill above (fig. 3) :—and the slow, but possibly not 


JONES—ON THE WEATHERING OF GRANITE. 307 


weaker, action of these processes we see already producing effect on 
the exposed granite-faces of the old quarry at its foot (fig. 6). 
Granite (like other rocks of igneous origin, and like many of 
aqueous formation also) is always cut through by joints or fissures 
more or less regularly, and these have probably originated in the 
contraction of the rocky mass whilst cooling. The rain-water trickles 
through these lines of joints, decomposes the granite along the 
eracks, widening them and rounding ‘off the angles of their inter- 
sections, and ultimately only the harder masses, or the hearts of the 
blocks defined by the joints, remain as solid crystalline granite, some, 
though little, of the quartz of the granite is dissolved away by the 
water ; the iron becomes oxydized and weakens the rock; but it is 
chiefly the felspar that is decomposed by the action of carbonic acid, 
its alkalies are removed, and its residue is washed away in the form 
of white clay, the material so useful to porcelain-manufacturers, and 
prepared artificially to a large extent from felspar-rocks. The 
quartz-crystals remain as sand; the mica also remains, but is less 
observable, and is partially decomposed. 
Prof. J. Phillips has the following pertinent remarks on the waste 
of felspathic rocks (Manual of Geology, new edit., 1855, p. 468) :— 
“The exterior of most uncrystalline rocks and buildings seem to 
be slowly eaten away by the moisture and carbonic acid of the air; 
but the influence of this destructive agent is most remarkable among 
the felspathic rocks ; whether, hke granite, they are originally crys- 
talline, or, like millstone-grit, composed of fragmented masses. The 
felspathic portion of the hypersthene-rocks of Carrock Fell is so 
wasted that the crystals of hypersthene and magnetic iron are pro- 
jected from the surface considerably. Some greenstone-dykes are 
thus entirely decomposed to great depths from the surface, and 
whole rocks of granite, secretly rotten, wait only for an earthquake 
or water-spout to be entirely reduced to fragments. Those who have 
seen the crumbled granite of Muncaster Fell in Cumberland, or 
Castle Abhol in Arran, surrounded by heaps of its disintegrated in- 
eredients, must have been struck by the importance of this pheno- 
menon in reasonings concerning the origin of many stratified rocks.” 
Where granitic or other felspathic rocks form mountain-masses, 
they have often been shattered in the elevation of the region; and 


308 THE GEOLOGIST, 


this condition, aided by their partial destruction by the atmosphere, 
has led to the formation of those rugged fields of loose irregular 
angular blocks and masses, picturesque in their desolation, which 
Von Buch has termed the “ Felsen-Meere” or “seas of rocks.” 
Between these gigantic fragments and the sand of the “granit 
pourri’ is a wide difference as to appearance; but the peculiar joint- 
ings of the rock and the rottenness of the felspar lead alike to these 
two conditions of granite rock. The “granit pourri,” consisting of 
quartz-grains and half destroyed crystals of felspar, with or without 
minute flakes of mica, when cemented with silex, which has been 
dissolved by water and re-arranged among the sandy materials, 


’ 


becomes “arkose,’”’ and frequently resembles real granite so closely 
that only a practised eye can recognize the difference. 

Igneous rocks, such as basalt and some trappean rocks, frequently 
harden into nodular masses having a concentric strueture ; and when 
these concretions have pressed closely upon each other in the process 
of cooling, a prismatic or columnar structure has been formed in the 
rock. Sometimes this concretionary structure is only visible when 
the mass of trap is decomposing, or when the prisms are broken. 
So alsoin granite and some allied forms of rock, we have occasionally 
a nodular structure. This is seen, in the same way, in the so-called 
“Corsican granite’ or “ Neapolonite’; and small globular lumps 
are not uncommon in the granite of Dartmoor. But some great 
eranite-masses weather into curved lamine of rock, showing indica- 
tions of concretionary form on the large scale (see fig. 5). Indeed 
the rounding off of the angles of the great horizontal slabs forming 
Haytor (fig. 3), and the “Cheesewring”’ (fig. 2) seem to point to 
the fact that nearly every mass or block limited by the intersecting 
joints in granite may be regarded as having a nucleus of its own, or 
a central pomt within it from whence the crystallization began on 
cooling, and that the corners of those blocks would the most readily 
exfoliate on account of their being most independent of the harden- 
ing influence of such concentric crystallization. 

By way of comparison with and in illustration of the granite of 
Dartmoor and Cornwall, some of the features of which are shown in 
the accompanying figures, I will quote Prof. W. Macgillivray’s 
description of a part of Scotland :— 


JONES—-ON THE WEATHERING OF GRANITE. 309 


“Tn the upper part of Aberdeenshire I have observed that the 
granitic mountains are very remarkable for their extreme sterility 
and the desolate aspect that they present. The summits are 
rounded, sometimes nearly flat, to a great extent, and entirely 
covered by disintegrating blocks and stones, together with gravel and 
sand. Some of them present protuberances, consisting of granite 
much decomposed, forming tabular masses, intersected perpen- 
dicularly by fissures, and evidently portions of the mass of the 
mountain, which have either originally protruded beyond the surface, 
or have resisted disintegration. Most of the mountains exhibit per- 
pendicular precipices near the summit, which generally assumes the 
circular form, constituting the hollows named “ corries,” and having 
a lake at their base. The rock near the surface, wherever it is ex- 
posed, has split into tabular masses, generally pretty regular, and 
exhibiting the appearance of strata, intersected by rectangular 
fissures. The true nature of these tables, however, is really under- 
stood on examining the precipices, where they are best seen, and 
where, notwithstanding, the perpendicular fissures more resemble 
the seams of strata. There is no tendency in any part to the con- 
centric or globular arrangement, nor do the masses in decomposing 
ever present that appearance.”—Manual of Geology, 2nd edit., 1844, 
pe lG. 


co . 6in. 3 


Lign. 9.—Outlines of Rock-basins on Haytor. 


An interesting feature observed in a large portion of the Dartmoor 
district is the occurrence of rock-basins, or shallow hollows on ex- 
posed surfaces of the granite, often on the summit of the “tors.” 
These are of natural formation, according to Dr. M‘Culloch and Mr. 


310 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Ormerod, who have treated of these phenomena in the papers 
already referred to. Onthe top of Haytor there are traces of two 
or more of these shallow basins (fig. 9). They are enumerated by 
Mr. Ormerod in his Table of Tors and Rock-basins, op. cit., p. 26. 
We cannot do better than quote at length some of Mr. Ormerod’s 
observations on the formation of rock-basins, whence the reader 
may learn much respecting the physical character of the Dartmoor 
granite. 

“Sir Henry de la Beche in a note on the ‘Report on Cornwall, 
Devon, and West Somerset’ (p. 452), writes :—‘ Dr. M‘Culloch has 
suggested that the friction of the quartz and felspar-fragments not 
unfrequently found in rock-basins may have contributed to deepen 
them. As we have often observed these fragments in motion during 
high winds, both when the basins were dry, or a small quantity of 
water in them, we are inclined to believe that this may the case.’ 
The fragments occur in most basins; in some, the bottom is covered 
by them. Rolled stones similar to those which occur in the ‘ pot- 
holes’ have not been found by Mr. Ormerod in any basin, but the 
contents generally consist of small angular fragments of quartz and 
felspar, and schorl, which sometimes cover the bottom of the basin. 
Small lumps of granite occasionally are found, not rolled, but that 
have apparently fallen in where the sides are much weathered and 
falling to decay. Although in the habit of inspecting the basins in 
every state of the weather, from the mildest breeze to the heaviest 
storm, Mr. Ormerod had never seen these particles blown about in 
the water in the basins having the bottoms flat and sides upright, 
and had only seen them moved in shallow concave basins when dry, 
or when a heavy gale had blown them out together with the water. 
The cause suggested by Dr. M‘Culloch could not affect the deep 
basins, as in those cases the particles would be undisturbed by 
motion of the water from wind. These small fragments, however, 
throw some light on the manner of the formation of the rock-basins. 
The granite of the Dartmoor district is in a great measure porphy- 
ritic ; itis for the most part of a large coarse grain, and schorl in 
variable proportions frequently occurs; globular nodules, varying 
from an inch to upwards of a foot in diameter, often occur. These 
vary much; sometimes they are harder than the adjoiming rock, 


JONES—ON THE WEATHERING OF GRANITE. 311 


sometimes scarcely coherent, and, on exposure to the weather, soon 
falling away. Along the belt where the basins exist, the granite is 
for the most part more lable to decomposition than at the harder 
and more crystalline tors. This is shown by the many rounded tors, 
and every roadside-cutting shows the rapidity of the decay. The 
division of the granite into tabular sheets of rock of irregular thick- 
ness, causing the appearance of stratification, is common to all the 
granite of this district. In irregularities on the surface of the 
granite, and in hollows, very probably in many cases caused by the 
nodules above noticed, water lodges on and penetrates into the 
porous granite, and the decay thus commenced will gradually enlarge 
the cavity to a basin. During the inclement part of the year these 
basins are full of water, that durimg part of the time often rapidly 
alternates with ice. When the warm weather comes on, the water 
evaporates, and the basins are dried up; from the frequent showers 
there is, then, a constant change between the rock being saturated 
with wet and it being warm and dry. The gradual action of the 
water is very perceptible ; when it has evaporated, the stone up to 
the water-line is left a lighter shade than the adjoming rock; the 
felspar-crystals instead of presenting their usual appearance, are dull 
and full of minute cracks, and appear as if about to fall into small 
fragments similar to those found in the basins; the action of the 
water is evident to the eye though not easily described. An un- 
broken face of granite resists the weather more powerfully than the 
rock does when it is broken or penetrated ; in those cases the water 
soaks into the granite, and thus renders it more easily acted upon by 
the alternations of heat and cold, wet and dryness. Such action 
when once commenced will continue until checked by the unbroken 
face of a parting which will limit the extension either perpendicularly 
or horizontally. The tabular formation of the granite is probably 
the cause of the frequent occurrence of the basins with flat bottoms. 
The gradual decay thus acting from a centre will cause the nearly 
circular and oval forms that so many of the basins present, the 
variation from that shape being probably caused by a difference in 
the structure of the granite. The eye will in a short period dis- 
criminate between the tors where basins would probably be found or 
not. Firstly, where it is the character of the tor to have the per- 


S12 THE GEOLOGIST. 


pendicular joints clearly developed, the angles where exposed being 
only slightly weathered, and the horizontal beds, if thick, standing 
out with well-defined edges and ends ; if thin, with sharp projecting 
edges, giving to the side a serrated appearance, rock-basins are 
scarcely ever found. When, on the contrary, the tor is rounded, the 
sides sloping or smooth, projecting beds not frequent or bold, and 
such beds as do project for the most part rounded at the edges, 
rock-basins will very frequently be found. For the above reasons 
Mr. Ormerod considers that in this district the rock-basins were 
caused by atmospheric action, that power working gently but surely 
upon the rock, and equally forming every description of basin, be 
it large or small, deep or shallow ; this he considers the rotation of 
pebbles could not do. 

The direction of the longest diameter is in nearly one-third of the 
cases from north to south, and in all but five out of the thirty-five 
cases is from the north-westerly to the south-easterly quarter: the 
cause of this Mr. Ormerod has not been able to discover. Although 
the direction of the longest diameters is in the greater number of 
instances towards the points, between which the perpendicular joints 
of the granite of Dartmoor generally range, he has not found that 
there was any connexion between them, the direction of the longest 
diameters rarely corresponding with that of either the main or cross 
joints on the same tors; neither do the directions of the basins on 
the same tor always agree. The most violent storms on Dartmoor 
come from between west and south-west; although occasionally 
heavy gales occur from the south-east, the winds from between the 
south and east are generally mild, and those between the north and 
north-west are not of frequent occurrence. The direction, therefore, 
of the longest diameter cannot be assigned to the action of the 
strongest or most prevalent winds.”—Quarterly Journal Geol. Soc., 
vol. xiv., pages 22, 23. 


em) 
— 
we 


GEMS FROM PRIVATE COLLECTIONS. 


Ges PROM PRIVATE COLLECTIONS. 


SPIRIFERA CONVOLUTA. 


(From the Carboniferous Limestone of Thorneley. In the collection of 
J, ROFE, Hse. 1.G:s:) 


By Tomas Davipson, Hsq., F.R.S., F.G.S., Ere. 


SINCE some pages of your valuable magazine are occasionally devoted 
to the description and illustration of “Gems from Private Collec- 
tions,’ allow me to offer a drawimg and some observations on 
Spirifera convoluta, Phillips, one of the most remarkable of our 
British carboniferous spirifers, and which will serve at the same time 
as a small supplement to the paper I published in the eleventh num- 
ber of THE GEOLOGIST. 

At page 35 of my “Monograph” I described Sp. convoluta as a 
distinct species, but subsequently I thought that it might, perhaps, 
be a very transverse or exceptional condition or variety of Sp, bisul- 
cata, Sowerby. 

Experience teaches us that individuals of the same species may 
assume great differences in shape; that a Spuifera, for example, which 
in its normal condition is about as wide as long, may at times exceed 
these proportions very considerably in one or the other direction, and 
that we are often too prone to seize upon similar variations as 
pretexts for the creation of so termed species. 

Spirifera bisulcata is one of these variable species which, in its 
usual condition, presents a somewhat semi-circular or sub-rhomboidal 
shape, rather wider than long, with its valves almost equally convex 
or deep; the hinge-line is straight, and either shorter or as long as 
the greatest width of the shell; when shorter, its angles are rounded ; 
and when otherwise, they project at times to a considerable extent, 
with angular terminations. The area is of moderate height, and the 
beak sometimes so much incurved as almost to touch the umbone of 
the opposite valve. Hach valve is ornamented by from twenty to 
forty ribs, which vary in width and degree of projection in different 
specimens: in some they are rounded and flattened, while in others 
they are sharply angular; the sinus is of moderate depth, and the 
mesial fold rounded and generally divided into three principal por- 
tions by two deep sulci; but each of these are in their turn more or 
less subdivided into two or more ribs of lesser projection. The 
whole surface of the shell in well-preserved specimens is also covered 
with close concentric lines of growth, which gives to the surface a 
kind of imbricated appearance. 


314 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Such are the characters of Sowerby’s type; but it appears to have 
varied considerably in different localities, and Professor de Koninck 
is of opinion that his own Sp. crassa and M. Coy’s Sp. grandicostata 
are probably nothing more than well-marked varieties of Sowerby’s 
species. 

TG igure convoluta is a very rare shell in England and Belgium, 
and the principal object of this note is to present to the reader a 
correct drawing of the only perfect 
example that has been, to my know- 
ledge, hitherto discovered in Great 
Britam, and which was kindly lent 
to me by its possessor, J. Rofe, Hsq., 
who found it in the carboniferous 
limestone of Thorneley, near Chip- 
ping, about ten miles north-east of 
Preston, Lancashire. This unique 
example measures in length 11 lines, 
in width 57, and in depth 12 lines; 
and another imperfect specimen 
(which the discoverer has liberally 
added to my collection) must when 
complete have possessed almost simi- 
lar proportions. 

Professor de Koninck’s decided 
opinion is that Sp. convoluta differs 
specifically from Sp. besulcata, and he 
entirely agrees in this with the cele- 
brated author of the “Geology of 
Yorkshire ;”” and it must be admitted 
that a glance at the two shells is sufh- 
cient to impress one with the peculiar 
fusiform shape presented by Phillips’s 
species, which somewhat resembles a 
weaver’s spindle. I am therefore 
disposed to waive the misgivings ex- 
pressed, and to leave the matter as 
stated at page 35 of my “ Monograph.” 

To the French translation of my 
paper published in the eleventh num- 
ber of THe Geo.Loersr, in the present 
year’s volume of the “ Transactions of 
the Royal Society of Sciences of 
Liége,” Professor de Koninck has 
added some very valuable notes, im 
order to place in comparison with my 
British list of carboniferous species 
possessed of calcified spiral supports, those which for many years 
prior to 1843, and subsequently, had been discovered by him in the 
corresponding Belgian strata. The analysis of these two catalogues 


SPIRIFERA CONVOLUTA, Puiniirs.—From the Carboniferous Limestone of Thorneley. 
In the collection of J. Rorr, Esa. 


GEMS FROM PRIVATE COLLECTIONS. 315 


will show that out of forty-three species which I enumerate as British, 
thirty-five occur in Belgium, viz., Spirifera striata, S. Mosquensis, S. 
humerosa, 8. duplicicosta, S. crassa, S. bisuleata, S. grandicostata, 
S. trigonalis, 8. convoluta, S. triangularis, S. mesogoma, 8. lamnosa, 
S. distans, S. cuspidata, S. pinguis, 8. ovalis, S. planata, S. imtegri- 
costa, S. triradialis, 8S. rhomboidea, S. lineata, S. Uru, S. glabra, 
S. octoplicata, S. msculpta; Cyrtina septosa; Athyris planosulcata, 
A. lamellosa, A. Roysti, A. squamosa, A. globularis, A. ambigua, 
A. subtilita; Retzia radialis, R. ulotriv; and that Belgium possesses 
ten or eleven species which do not occur or have not hitherto been 
discovered in our British isles, namely, Spirifera pectinoidea, de Kon. ; 
Sp. ornata, de Kon.; Sp. Fischeriana, de Kon.; Sp. acuticostata, 
de Kon.; Sp. Roemeriana, de Kon.; Sp. Schnuriana, de Kon.; Sp. 
ventricosa, de Kon.; Sp. glaberrima, de Kon.; Sp. chewopteryz, 
de Verneul; Sp. Bronniana, de Kon.; and Retzia serpentina, de 
Kon. Many new and original ideas regarding the stratigraphical 
distribution of the species by that distinguished Belgian savant are 
also there introduced, to which I would recommend the attention 
of those who may feel interested in the subject. 

In an illustrated catalogue of all the Scottish species of car- 
boniferous Brachiopoda at present known, now preparing for THE 
Grotocist, I shall have occasion to revert to the two contempo- 
raneous (?) carboniferous faunas discovered in Belgium by Prof. de 
Koninck, which he has designated as the Mauna of Visé, and the 
Fauna of Tournay, and which he believes to have recognized also in 
Great Britain. 


is LiRIT OF GOOD BOOKS: 


ON LAVAS OF MOUNT ETNA FORMED ON STEEP 
SLOPES AND ON CRATERS OF ELEVATION. 


By Sir Caries Lyrtz, F.R.S., D.C.L.: London, 1859. 
(A Paper read before the Royal Society, 10th June, 1858.) 


For some years past it has been a commonly received doctrine 
among continental geologists that lava-streams could not consolidate 
on slopes or declivities of more than five degrees. When, then, solid 
lavas were found in various volcanic mountains at high angles, other 
sources of origin than the mere outflow from their respective craters 
had to be sought; and thus arose the theoretical idea of the formation 
of the cone or crater ata late period of the volcano’s existence— 
after for ages numerous lava-streams had issued from it and had 
become consolidated one over the other into stony beds on successive 


316 THE GEGLOGIST, 


flat plains—by the uprise and bursting of a vast dome or bubble ; 
and such was called a “crater of elevation”. 

So commonly in England have we been accustomed to regard the 
great mountain-mass of every volcano as successively and con- 
tinuously built up by the lavas and scorie rejected from its orifice, 
that we observe with astonishment the prevalence to which the 
“crater of elevation” doctrine, by being favoured by Humboldt and 
Von Buch, and some other great authorities, has attained. 

Sir Charles Lyell early observed the danger of allowing this erro- 
neous doctrine to hold its way, or to spread, and from the first 
edition to the ninth of his “ Principles of Geology,” he opposed its 
tenets ; and, especially after his return from Madeira, in 1852, he 
controverted its essential point by some well-selected instances of 
stony lavas consolidated at steep angles. 

Apparently feeling, however, the necessity of grappling with and 
thoroughly exploding this patronized falacy, Sir Charles, in 1857, 
visited Htna, and obtained conclusive examples of the capability of 
lavas forming stony masses on slopes of not less than from 4.0 to 47 
degrees, an account of which he laid before the Royal Society. In 
October, 1858, Sir Charles again visited Htna, and obtamed further 
confirmatory proofs, which have been engrafted on his original 
memoir, and appear in the last part, recently issued, of the Philo- 
sophical Transactions. 

As the “crater of elevation” theory is built entirely upon the 
assumption that lavas will not consolidate on steep slopes, it is evi- 
dent that, by attacking and demolishing the foundation, the super- 
structure must fall, and thus the chief object of Sir Charles Lyell’s 
two visits to Ktna was to collect evidence of the consolidation of 
lavas which flowed down declivities at high angles into tabular stony 
masses. 

* The first example given is the highly-inclined stony lava of Aci 
eale. 

The town of Aci Reale stands on the top of a cliff in which a 
platform, elevated at some points more than 650 feet above the sea, 
ends abruptly. The slope of this platform is usually about three 
or four degrees, and is prolonged two or three miles inland, while 
the cliff between the town and the sea consists of irregular 
precipitous terraces, and exposes on its face the truncated edges 
of several lava-currents, which were noticed by the Canon Recu- 
pero in his “Storia Naturale dell’ Etna,” to which the traveller 
Brydone called attention in England in his “ Letter on the Two 
Sicilies.” 

In the face of this steep escarpment, facing the sea, an indentation, 
near the Bastione del Tocco, affords a longitudinal section of one of 
these lava-currents dipping east at from 23 to 27 degrees, and pre- 
senting all the usual characters of an upper and under scorise with 
a central stony mass. 

_This case is supported by another still more remarkable and de- 
cisive imstance, in a branch of the great stream of 1689 which 


LYELL—ON CRATERS OF ELEVATION. 317 


cascaded into the Cava Grande. The lava there consolidated into 
a central stony mass on an inclination of 35 degrees. 

During the eruption of 1852, the lava cascaded more than once 
over the steep precipice of the Salto della Giumenta, more than 4.00 
feet high, which intervenes between the hills of Calanna and Zocco- 
laro, and at this spot measurements of inclined stony lava, at angles 
varying from 30 to 45 degrees, were taken with the clinometer, and 
in one case even 50 degrees were ascertained. 

The next remarkable instance given by Sir Charles is that of a 
steeply inclined continuous sheet of lava, 5,000 feet higher than the 
last mentioned, near the top of the great precipice of the Val del 
Bove, not far below the Cisterna. Thirty, thirty-five, and even 
thirty-eight degrees are there attained. 

Other similar instances are given, and quite enough is done even 
in this first part of the paper to prove the essential point, that lavas 
can be consolidated on slopes of considerable steepness. 

The second part of the paper enters into the subject of the struc- 
ture and position of the older volcanic rocks of Mount Ktna, as seen 
in the Val del Bove, as also on the proofs of a double axis of elevation ; 
and by these means the “crater of elevation-hypothesis” is again re- 
futed, and the opinions of M. Elie de Beaumont, both as to theory 
and many important matters of fact, are controverted. 

From a point in the Val del Bove called the Piano di Trifoglietto, 
midway between the Serra Giannicola and the hill of Zoccolaro, the 
beds of lava radiate in all directions (shown by the arrows in the 
map of the region of Etna and the Val del Bove at page 321); and 
from this quaquaversal dip Sir Charles assumes this point (Tin the 
map referred to) to have been an ancient centre of eruption dis- 
tinct from the present cone of Htna, and that Htna had therefore at 
one period a double axis, or two points of permanent eruption, 
with an intermediate valley, or intercolline space, between the two 
cones, which became gradually filled up by lavas and fragmentary 
matter. For the sake of distinguishing these, the extinct axis is 
termed the axis of Trifoglietto, and the present centre of activity 
the axis of Mongibello,—the modern Sicilian appellation of Mount 
Kitna. 

The former existence of an old centre of eruption in the Piano del 
Trifoghetto had been inferred independently by S. Von Walters- 
hausen from the convergence towards a middle point in that area of 
thirteen or more dikes of greenstone, one of them of enormous 
dimensions, visible in the surrounding escarpments. The same 
geologist also observed in the gigantic buttresses of the cliffs, 2,000 
and 3,000 feet high, between the Giannicola and the Rocca del Corvo, 
that while in the lower part of the precipices the lava-beds dip at 
high angles inward towards the escarpment, or away from the Val 
del Bove, those in the middle portion become horizontal, and those 
nearer the summit dip towards the Val del Bove, as if they were 
sloping away from some other point near the present great centre of 
Mongibello, 

fe von. 1. BB 


318 THE GEOLOGIST. 


The change of dip in the inferior, medial, and uppermost beds of 
the Giannicola, and the convergence of the greenstone-dikes towards 
the Trifoghetto centre are inexplicable by the ‘“ crater of elevation 
theory,” but become plainly intelligible on the principle of a double 
axis of eruption. Then, in the lower beds we perceive the lava 
streams flowing away from the old cone of eruption, and mingling in 
the intercolline space with the cur- 
rents ejected from the Mongibello 
crater, until, in the levelling pro- 
cess thus being effected, the hori- 
zontality of the succeeding lavas of 
the middle portion occurs, and after 
this the streams from the existing 
cone, flowing down in greater force 
than those from Trifogletto, gra- 
dually overflowed and extinguished 
it—the lavas which thus flowed 
down presenting, of course, the oppo- 
site dip to those below, or towards 
the centre of Trifoghetto. 

The points of argument next 
brought forward are the want of 
continuity in the older and modern 
parts of Htna, and the truncation of 
its summit: these are followed by a 
discussion on the hypothesis of up- 
heaval by injection. Geologists who 
assume that lava cannot congeal into 
continuous stony layers on slopes 
exceeding five or six degrees, must 
unavoidably embrace the conclusion 
that nine-tenths of the lava-beds 
which constitute the nucleus of Etna, 
and not afew also which overlie that 
nucleus unconformably, were brought 
into their present position by me- 
chanical forces, after the materials 
of the mountain had accumulated 
on nearly level ground. 

M. Khe de Beaumont has sue- 
gested that when new fissures are 
produced during an eruption, racdi- 
ating from the centre, and traversing Zaffarana. 
the nucleus of the mountain, the lava 
rising simultaneously to the rim of the highest crater would 
fill such fissures, causing a tumefaction and distension of the whole 
mass, and that thus a greater or less upheaval of the cone might 
result. There is no actual data, however, for deciding that the 
dyke-making process thus appealed to is usually attended by up- 


y trachytic; e, ¢, and d, f, lavas 
e the origin of the Val del Bove; 


(the faint lines represent the missing 
y are horizontal, and atthe top (x) 


spent, and befor 


; in the middle (c) the 


an the Val del Bove; &, i, k, Val del Bove 
they dip towards the Val del Bove; L, older tertiary and secondary rocks. 


Lien. 1.—InEAL SECTION OF Mount Erna to ILLUSTRATE THE THEORY OF A DovBLE AXIS OF HRUPTION. 


A, axis of Mongibello; B, axis of Trifoglietto ; a, c, and b, i, d, older lavas, chiefl 


chiefly doleritic poured out from A after the axis or focus B was 


, 9, scoriz and lavas of later date th 
rocks) ; ati the beds dip away from the Val del Bove 


LYELL—ON CRATERS OF ELEVATION, 319 


heaval. On some occasions, as proved by the observations of 
Scacchi, Schmidt, and others, it indicates a collapse, or partial 
subsidence of the flank of the cone. That an uplifting of the 
incumbent mass must accompany the injection of hquid matter 
through fissures which are not perpendicular (Sir Charles notices 
some such fissures inclined at an angle of 75 degrees to the horizon), 
no one can deny; and therefore, while rejecting the theory of a 
single terminal catastrophe, or any paroxysmal development of the 
elevating force, we may fairly ascribe no small infiuence to those dis- 
turbing operations, by which such innumerable dikes have been 
formed near the principal centres of eruption. But the great points 
to be kept in view are whether the quaquaversal arrangement of the 
beds in cones like Htna, and the high inclination of the lavas and 
scoriz are not mainly, and in many cases exclusively, due to eruption; 
and whether the upheaving power, granting its intervention, does not 
play a very subordinate part. Whether, in fact, it is more probable 
that, following the proposition of M. de Beaumont, a large portion of 
the lava-beds now dipping at an angle of 28 degrees had an original 
slope of only 5 or 6 degrees, the remaining 20 degrees being due to 
upheaval ; or whether the converse may not be more truly assumed, 
that the 23 degrees may have been the original average inclination, 
and that the additional 5 or 6 degrees may have been gained by sub- 
sequent elevatory movements—in other words, that a fifth part alone 
of the whole dip may be ascribable to elevation. 

The supposed frequent injection of lava in beds conformable to — 
tufaceous strata, and to which Waltershausen attributes much of 
the upheaval of the mass of Etna, is then subjected to a similar 
scrutiny and carefully considered. 

“ Had the lavas,” writes Sir Charles, “ which slope away from the 
ancient centres of Trifoghetto and Mongibello been in great part in- 
jected between the tuffs, we should have frequently seen them pene- 
trating through the dikes. But though these last are of so many 
different ages, and are continually seen to traverse the alternating 
lavas and tuffs, I could discover no instance of such dikes being in 
their turn traversed by lavas. It may be asked, how im the escarp- 
ments of the Val del Bove can we distinguish a lava which has flowed 
originally at the surface from a tabular mass of rock which may have 
been forced, when in a melted state, into a fissure between two layers 
of tuff? I reply, that the lava has almost invariably its upper and 
lower scorie, and sometimes immediately beneath the latter a layer 
of burnt tuff, such as I saw in the Balzo di Trifoghetto, at various 
heights in Monte Zoccalaro, and in the valley of St. Giacomo, where I 
traced a red tuff for a great distance, underlying the most powerful 
of the older lavas. Such red layers are never in direct contact with 
the central and overlying crystalline stony layer, for there intervenes 
always a fundamental stratum of fragmentary and scoriaceous matter 
between the stony bed and the burnt tuff below. On the other hand, 
I looked in vain for an instance of some powerful sheet of lava which 
had one of these brick-red clays above as well as below it. Had the 

WO. « 11 BB) 2 


320 THE GEOLOGIST. 


crystalline lavas, whether trachytic or doleritic, whether shghtly or 
steeply inclined, been in great part intrusive, they would have altered 
the tuffs as much above as below them. Moreover, they must have 
given rise to innumerable faults ; for while they vary in thickness 
from 3 to 60 feet, they are not persistent for indefinite distances, but 
often thin out rapidly in both directions. They ought therefore, had 
they been injected, to have lifted up the incumbent deposits partially, 
so as to give rise to many conspicuous faults. For these reasons, I 
can not adopt the conclusion that the upheaval of Htna has been 
largely due to the injection of lavas in sheets parallel or conformable 
to the tuffs and fragmentary materials.” 

M. Elie de Beaumont in his celebrated essay on Mount Etna 
insists on the uniformity in thickness and parallelism of the many 
hundreds of lava-beds which are presented on the escarpments of 
the Val del Bove, and on their continuity for great distances, as facts 
confirmatory of the doctrine of their original horizontality and sub- 
sequent upheaval into their present positions, referring their occa- 
sional steep inclinations to their hability to be bent together, like 
the regular sedimentary strata which have undergone flexures in 
mountain-chains. This assertion has not escaped the keen observa- 
tion of Sir Charles Lyell, and consequently we have a portion of 
his paper devoted to the evidence of pseudo-parallelism and the want 
of uniform thickness of the beds forming the escarpments of the Val 
del Bove. A conspicuous selected case of want of umformity im 
thickness of stony layers in the northern escarpment—one bed 


Lign. 2.—Non-parallel Lavas. Want of Uniformity in Thickness of Stony Layers in 
Northern Escarpment of the Val del Bove. 


attaining forty-feet in its thickest part—and instances of non-parallel 
strata to the south of Finocchio Inferiore, and at the Serradel Solfizio, 
with an example of curvatures in the lavas of Zoccolaro effectually 


Lign. 3.—Curvatures of the Lavas of Zoccalaro. 


clispose of this pot, and leave remaining only the easy task of 
proving the analagous form and arrangement of the ancient and 
modern lavas. 

The third part of Sir Charles’s paper is devoted to the relation of 
the volcanic rocks of Mount Etna to the associated alluvial and 
modern tertiary deposits of Giarre. 


NI 
fan) 


CRATERS OF ELEVATION. 


LY ELL—ON 


This part first enters into the origin of the Val del Bove, and how 


it is due to aqueous erosion. 


o 
® 


y has been sometimes 
with those movement 


The origin of that large crateriform valle 
attributed to a sudden catastrophe connected 


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which are supposed to have given rise to the mountain itself; but if 


the doctrine of a double axis be admitted, and the reasoning advanced 


in this paper be conceded, it is certam we must come “to the con- 


clusion that the mountain, with its lavas and tuffs slopmg away from 


322. THE GEOLOGIST. 


more than one centre, and pierced by a succession of dikes, was 
already complete before the Val del Bove began to be formed.” 

The alluvial formation on which Giarre and some other towns on 
the coast are built, attests the removal, at some unknown period, of a 
vast quantity of stony fragments from that part of Htna which hes 
immediately in the direction of the Val del Bove ; and if it could be 
shown that this transported matter came down from that great 
valley, it would go far to prove that the abstraction of the missing 
rocks was for the most part effected by aqueous agency. On ex- 
amination it actually appears that the portion of this deposit,—which 
consists of coarsely stratified materials, with rounded and angular 
blocks some nine feet in diameter, but without striations or scratches 
like the “ glacial drift’ —opposite to the Val del Bove is conspicuous 
beyond the rest for its volume, and by being exclusively composed of 
the wreck of the volcano itself, the blocks being of trachyte, basalt, 
dolerite, grey-stone, and indeed of every variety of rock met with in 
the Val del Bove ; some being evidently derived from dikes. 

As usual, Sir Charles provides against attack by combatting the 
probable objections likely to be made to his notions. “ It may,” he 
says, ‘perhaps be suggested that the deposit at Giarre and Mangeno 
might have been swept down by rivers from the old cone when it 
was still entire, and before the caldera originated, in favour of which 
theory it might be urged that in the Val del Bove at present we dis- 
cover no action of running water capable of causing extensive 
denudation; also that we may well imagine, during some former 
suspension of eruption on the eastern flank of the volcano, that 
ravines like the Cava Grande may have been gradually excavated in 
the wide space separating the two hills of Calanna and of Caliato.” 

In order to test the value of the hypothesis, Sir Charles explored 
from their lower to their upper terminations the two principal valleys 
of aqueous erosion, which slope upwards from the foot of the cone to 
the southern margin of the Caldera. Those who are conversant with 
Junghuhn’s “Volcanos of Java” are well aware of the nature and 


Lign, 3.—Furrows of Aqueous Erosion on the Cone of Tengger. From Junghung’s “Java.” 


value of this test; for they will remember that the flanks of volcanic 
cones which are in full activity are free from furrows eaten out by 
running water; whereas, such as have been long extinct, or are in a 
state of moderate activity, exhibit a great number of ravines from 
300 to 600 feet deep, excavated by torrents, and parted from each 


LYELL—ON CRATERS OF ELEVATION. 323 


other by ribs or ridges of volcanic rocks, compared by Junghuhn to 
the spokes of an umbrella. All these furrows grow narrower and 
shallower when traced upwards, and come to an end before they reach 
the rim of the crater; whereas, in such volcanic cones as have been 
truncated by explosions and subsidences, after considerable aqueous 
erosion, the rim is invariably indented. On applying this rule it was 
found that the crest of the southern escarpment of the Val del Bove, 
between Montagnuola and Zoccolaro, was very entire and unbroken; 
“but that there were notches, or deep depressions, several hundred 
feet deep, precisely at the two points where the tpper ends of the 
valleys, called the Val dei Zappimi and the Valle del Tripodo, jomed 
the crest. Hence, it is natural to conclude that the valleys in ques- 
tion are of older date than the Val del Bove, and that their higher 
extremities were once prolonged towards the upper region of the 
cone, and were cut off when the Caldera was formed. Such an ex- 
planation of the facts would, however, be fatal to any theory which 
refers to a single catastrophe, or to any one mode of operation, 
whether slow or sudden, the upheaval of Etna, the tilting of the in- 
clined beds, and the opening of the great cavity called the Val del 
Bove.” 

The erosion of the Valle del Tripodo is stated to be still going on, 
and a small inclined delta at its mouth furnishes the means of learn- 
ing how much matter has been brought down in a given time, or 
during the sixty-six years which have elapsed since 1/722, when a 
powerful flow of lava crossed the lower extremity of a narrow valley, 
- and suddenly put a stop to the transportation of alluvium to lower 
levels. “ The waters of the torrent, even when most swollen, no 
sooner arrive at the margin of the lava, than they are absorbed by its 
spongy, scoriaceous crust, and by the superficial rents and grottos in 
which it abounds. The engulfed waters continue their course under- 
ground; but the mud, sand, and boulders are all left behind and form 
a deposit, already several hundred feet long and thirty or forty deep, 
which “ proves, on the one hand, how much erosion has gone on in 
little more than half a century; and, on the other, how entirely all 
aqueous erosion ceases In areas once covered with fresh lava, and 
where a superficial drainage is turned into a subterranean one.” 

It is not, however, attempted to attribute the origin of the Val del 
Bove exclusively to the action of rnnning water ; and it is presumed 
local catastrophes of paroxysmal intensity may have given rise to the 
first breaches which ended in the production of this enormous cavity. 

The Cisterna, an elliptical hollow, now about 120 feet deep, was pro- 
duced in 1792 on the platform of the Piano del Lago by the smking 
of the ground, and deepened again by subsidence in 1832. On astill 
higher level near the Philosopher’ s Tower, is a fosse-like depression 
known to have originated during the same eruption of 1832. The great 
rent of Mascalucia, a mile in length and 30 feet deep, formed in 1381, 
is still open; and another fissure, 6 feet broad and of unknown 
depth, was formed in the plain of San Lio in 1669, and is said to 
have been twelve miles long, reaching to near the summit of Htna. 


324. THE GEOLOGIST: 


“ Such openings on the steep parts of a cone might easily become 
water-courses, and give passage to floods durimg the winter’s rain 
and the melting of the snow, and these might gradually deepen and 
widen such fissures.” Paroxysmal explosions lke that of Vesuvius 
in the year 79 might also be powerful agents ; and, “if a great ex- 
plosion happened to be lateral instead of central, the new chasm 
being commanded by higher ground, or by the region of snow, floods 
of water would at certain seasons sweep down into it, and might 
increase its dimensions. ‘“ To account for the position of so great a 
cavity on one side only of a cone, we may, in the case of Htna, 
imagine a connection between the Val del Bove and the old axis of 
Trifoglietto. The ancient habitual duct or chimney may, like that of 
the ancient Vesuvius, after beg plugged up for ages, have again 
given passage to vast volumes of pent-up gases or steam, blowing up 
the incumbent lavas of Mongibello, which had filled the crater and 
overtopped the secondary cone. Moreover, the accumulated snow 
and ice, and consequently the action of running water, may at some 
earlier period have been greater in the higher region, when the cone 
of Mongibello was larger and loftier, before its truncation, especially 
if the first excavation of the Val del Bove dates as far back as the 
close of the glacial period, or when the Alpine glaciers reached the 
plains of the Po; for at that time the climate of a Sicilian winter 
could hardly fail to be colder than now.” : 

Tsolated outliers of ancient rock, such as Finochio and Musara, are 
striking monuments of waste, helping to prove the former continuity 
of the northern escarpment of the Val del Bove in a southerly 
direction; and the multitude of dikes projecting from ten to fifty feet 
above the general level of the ground in every part of the escarpments, 
shows clearly to what an extent the softer and more destructible 
beds have been wasted away by atmospheric aud torrential action. 
Such dikes are records of the former existence of masses of rocks 
now no more, though we can still trace the exact shape of the fissures 
by which they were at one period traversed. The lateral ravines also 
before mentioned bear testimony to the removing power of running 
water since the Val del Bove was bounded by lofty precipices.” 

The obliteration of the river Amenano by the lava of 1669 is given 
as an example of the antagonism of aqueous erosion and volcanic 
activity ; and in like manner it is suggested that “at some former 
period there may have existed many rivers in the Val del Bove like 
those now draining the calderas of Palma and Tiraxana in the 
Canaries ; and, like them, they may, after uniting, have issued by one 
principal gorge; yet they would inevitably be all effaced from the 
map, and the gorge filled up with stony matter whenever the time 
arrived, during a new phase of eruption, for fresh floods of lava to 
traverse the Caldera.” Sir Charles then brings forward the great 
flood of 1755, the only authenticated instance of a great body of 
water having passed from the higher region of Htna through the 
Val del Bove to the sea. “ An eruption had taken place at the sum- 
mit of the voleano im the month of March, a season when the top 


LYELL—ON CRATERS OF ELEVATION. O20 


was covered with snow. The Canon Recupero, a good observer and 
man of great sagacity, was commissioned by Charles of Bourbon, 
King of Naples, to report on the nature and cause of the catastrophe. 
He accordingly visited the Val del Bove in the month of June, three 
months after the event, and found that the channel of the recent 
flood, now less than two Sicilian miles broad, was still strewed over 
with sand and fragments of rock to the depth of forty palms*. The 
volume of water in a length of one mile he estimated at sixteen 
millions of cubic feet, and he says that it ran at the rate of a mile in 
a minute and a half for the first twelve miles. At the upper end of 
Val del Bove, all the pre-existing inequalities of the ground for a 
space of two miles in length and one in breadth were perfectly 
levelled up and made quite even, and the marks of the passage of the 
flood were traceable from thence up the great precipice, or Balzo di 
Trifoglietto, to the Piano del Lago, or highest platform. 

Recupero, in his report, maintains that if all the snow on Etna, 
which he affirms is never more than four feet deep (some chasms we 
presume excepted), were melted in one instant, which no current of 
lava could accomplish, it would not have supphed such a volume of 
water. He came therefore to the startling conclusion that the water 
was vomited forth by the crater itself, and was driven out from some 
reservoir in the interior of Etna. 

As it seems unlikely the Canon could have been mistaken as to 
the region of the mountain whence the waters came, Sir Charles sub- 
mits as an explanation, that there might have been at the time of 
that eruption not only the winter’s snow of that year, but many older 
layers of ice, alternating with volcanic sand and lava, at the foot or 
on the flanks of the cone which were suddenly melted by the per- 
meation through them of hot vapours, and the injection into them of 
melted matter. 

In the first edition of the “ Principles of Geology” the existence of 
a glacier under the volcanic sand and lava near the Casa Inglese is 
noticed ; and if glaciers may thus endure for long series of years, the 
store of water which Recupero speculated upon as contained in the 
interior of the mountain seems sufficiently accounted for. 

The gradual rise of the sea-coast, and of the inland cliffs at the 
eastern base of Etna is attested by the existence of alluvial deposits 
in some places some hundred feet above the sea; while the fossils 
contained in them, and those contained in the fossiliferous strata cut 
into terraces at various heights, afford intelligible data for working 
out the general history of such upheaval. The proximity of land, for 
instance, is shown by the tusks and teeth of elephants at Palerno and 
Terra Forte ; while the existence at other places, as near the church 
St. Andrea, below Taormina, of raised beaches containing shells of 
recent species shows a former coastal line. It seems probable also, 
from the leaf-bearing tuffs of Fasano, near Catania, that a portion of 
Kitna is of sub-aérial origin, coeval with the upraised alluvial and 


* A palm is a fraction more than 10 inches Enelish. 


326 THE GEOLOGIST. 


estuarine formations, and evidence is not wanting to support the 
inference that a large portion of the mountain is even of posterior 
date. 

The marine tertiary strata of Cefali and Nizzeti are considered by 
Sir C. Lyell as shghtly younger than the Norwich Crag, and “if so, 
the great mass of Etna, or all that is of sub-aérial origin, being newer 
than the Nizzetti clays, must be, geologically speaking, of extremely 
modern date. Its foundations were probably laid in the sea, and 
were in all likelihood contemporaneous with the basalts and other 
igneous products of the Cyclopean Isles and Aci Castello, which 
belong to the period of the fossil shells of Nezzeti and Cefali. When 
that fauna flourished, the area where Etna now rises was probably a 
bay of the sea, afterwards converted into land by the outpouring of 
lava and scoriz, as well as by the slow and simultaneous upheaval of 
the whole territory. During that gradual rise the ancient river-plain 
of the Simeto, in which were embedded the remains of elephants and 
other quadrupeds, together with certain marine strata (those of 
Camulin) formed near the mouth of that river, acquired their present 
comparatively elevated position. The local eruptions of La Motta 
and Paterno took place about the same time—~. e., during, or im- 
mediately after the deposition of the older alluvium, when also the 
leaf-bearing tuffs of Fasano were formed. In the course of the same 
long period of elevation the cone of Trifoghetto, and probably the 
lower part of the cone of Mongibello, were built up. Still later, the 
cone last mentioned, becoming the sole centre of activity, over- 
whelmed the eastern cone and finally underwent in itself various 
transformations, including the truncation of its summit and the 
formation of the Val del Bove on its eastern flank. At length the 
phase of lateral eruptions, which is still in full vigour, closed this 
long succession of events—changes which may have required 
thousands of centuries for their devellopment, although in the same 
lapse of time the molluscous fauna of the Mediterranean has scarcely 
undergone a twentieth part of one entire revolution.” 

After a recapitulation of the principal arguments of the third part, 
the author concludes his admirably lucid and logical paper with the 
expressal of his conviction, that “ upheaval has no where played such 
a dominant part in the cone- and crater-making process as to warrant 
the use of the term ‘ elevation-craters’ instead of cones and craters of 
eruption—a conviction in which we think most reflecting geologists 
will concur, and which seems, through the medium of Sir Charles’s 
paper, to have attained influence in the head-quarters of the 
supporters of the “elevation-theory” from the fact, that the 
Geological Society of Berlin, at which city that hypothesis was first 
propounded, has, by permission requested of its author, translated it 
into German. 

No doubt the weight of such names as those of the late venerable 
Baron Humboldt and M. Elie de Beaumont caused the “elevation 
doctrine” to be received generally more from the credibility of such 
authorities, than from the merits of the doctrine itself. In the 


LYELL—ON CRATERS OF- ELEVATION. 5 Ey 


recent death of the first illustrious philosopher it has lost one of its 
most powerful supporters, and rumour even speaks of the second as 
a seceder, in having inclined to the opmion that the “crater of 
elevation theory” is now no longer tenable. 

Since the reading of the above paper. Mr. Scrope has supported i its 
arguments by a voluminous paper before the Geological Society. 
Sir Charles Lyell himself has also delivered a lecture on the subject 
at the Royal Institution, and has, in the last number of the Philoso- 
phical Magazine. published some remarks on Professor C. Piazzi 
Smyth’s supposed proofs of the submarine origin of Teneriffe and 
other yoleanic cones in the Canaries. This last brochure was drawn 
forth by a chapier on geology and volcanic theories, appended to a 
y; Report on the Teneriffe astronomical experiment of 1856” by the 
Scottish astronomer, in which it was stated that fossil shells had 
been found upon the slopes of the crater there. As this statement 
involved pomts of high theoretical interest, and was made to stand 
in the report as expressly confirming the “elevation” of the great 
crater of Teneriffe, Sir Charles wrote to the Professor to know under 
what geological circumstances he, or his informants, had detected 
such shells. It appears, however, that this statement of the fossil 
shells was made entirely upon mere report, and that itis without any 
foundation. As this was published under the sanction of the Ad- 
miralty, Sir Charles has felt himself called upon to refute it, and 
has added correct details of observations made by himself and Mr. 
Hartung at Teneriffe and in the islands of Grand Canary and Palma, 
which, so far from corroborating the “crater of elevation-hypo- 
thesis,” in this instance are directly opposed to it. 

Future observation will now probably add additional testimony 
to the more reasonable view of the general formation of volcanic 
cones and craters by eruptions ; and since attention is so thoroughly 
drawn to the subject there will doubtless be many other writers 
upon it: but, however numerous or excellent they" may be, to Sir 
Charles Lyell will ever be due the double merit of first detecting 
the dangerous spread of a false doctrine, and of having had the bold- 
ness of making the first attack upon it im the face of the support it 
had received from some of the most eminent of the continental 
geologists. 


328 THE GEOLOGIST. 


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 


CoMMUNICATED BY CouNT MARSCHALL. 


From the Proceedings of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, Vienna, 
October, 1858. 


1.—Parasitic Alge in Shells. 


Certain channels met with in the shells of several Acephalous and 
Gasteropod mollusca have generally been considered to be nutritive 
channels, and to stand in organic connection with the pores of these 
shells. Professor Wedl after close examination of a number of re- 
cent and fossil specimens, has proved them to be accidental deteriora- 
tions of the shells, owimg their origin to parasitic algse of most delicate 
structure. In the recent specimens these channels stand in com- 
munication with exiguous cavities, including pedunculated cellules, 
fillme up the channels themselves, and emitting a great number of 
lateral ramifications. The presence of Amylum in the nucleus, and in 
the cellules connected with it, manifests itself by the vivid brown tints 
they assume when brought in contact with diluted tincture of Iodine. 
The algze themselves have of course ceased to exist in fossil speci- 
mens, but the characters of the channels in them, their irregular 
distribution, their connection with minute cavities, &c., are such that 
the identity of origin with those observed in living individuals can 
hardly be doubted. As far as investigations have hitherto proceeded, 
it may be inferred that fresh-water shells suffer more from these 
vegetable parasites than those of marine species. 


2 .—Native Platina. 


Prince B. Demidoff has lately presented to the Imperial Mineralo- 
gical Museum a pepite of native Platina, weighing 11; lbs., found in 
his mines of Nishney Tagilsk, together with other large masses of 
the same metal, of which the most considerable have been very 
liberally offered by the noble owner to the museums of Berlin and 
St. Petersburg. The Vienna pepite measures 5 inches in length, 4 
inches in breadth, and 3 inches in height. Its surface is covered 
with impressions similar to those on several pepites of native gold, 
indicating its origin within a fissure, and bearing some analogy (as 
the late P. Partch had remarked long ago) with the superficial im- 
pressions peculiar to meteoric iron. The impressions are partly 
filled with chromate of iron, which is generally associated with 
native Platina, 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 329 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 


SuMMER-MEETINGS OF THE GeoLogists’ Association.—As a member of the 
Geologists’ Association, I must ask permission to trespass on your space for the 
means of suggesting that it would be desirable for that Society to institute 
field-meetings durmg the present summer-season. I know there are other 
members who like myself regret that our labours appear to have terminated 
with the winter-session of paper-reading and lectures. Now, Sir, I know it was 
felt at the outset of the Association by very many of the working geologists 
who so freely came forward to join it, both those resident in London and those 
in the country, that such field-meetings were as, or even more, essential to the 
instruction of young and working geologists, and to the general progress of the 
science—for I am one at least who thinks the humblest labourer of some value 
in the community—as the instructive readings and discussions at the Society’s 
chambers. It is not altogether in-door instruction we really want; there is far 
more to be learnt in the field; and doubtless there, too, we should find gentle- 
men with the right, both legal and intellectual, to add the F.G.S. to their names, 
ready to aid and assist us, as we have done already at the Society’s rooms. 

Some one, I think, before the institution of the Society, did propose such 
field-meetings, and I would ask, could not one, at least, be held with advantage 
annually in some locality or place of geological interest, when suitable papers 
might be read, and followed by discussions; fossils and other objects brought 
together ; excursions made, and cther means adopted for collecting and impart- 
ing information ? 

Perhaps something might be established in imitation of the plan of the British 
Association for the Advancement of Science, though, of course, less pretending. 

One or two hundred working members might be got together, and by a steady 
onward course for a few years, a large amount of valuable material might be 
got up. It is true we have the Geological Societies of London and of Edin- 
burgh, two most important and influential bodies; but these Societies, from 
the restrictive character of their respective constitutions, and the nature 
of the rules by which they are governed, are totally useless to the elass of per- 
sons which the Geologists’ Association was designed to benefit, and I believe 
this class to be far more numerous than it is generally thought. 

I cannot help thinking the time has arrived when we should set about doing 
something of this kind, and I shall look for the next month’s Grotoeist with 
no small anxiety, in the hope to find that some such course of action shall have 
been determimed upon, and that the Society you so freely helped to established 
may, without attempting to emulate the more learned bodies, properly develope 
another, and not the least important of its sources and means of instruction. 

I have, moreover, preferred that my idea should, by your kind consent, be 
propagated in your pages, as many members of the Association are included in 
the multitude of your readers, and hence suggestions will most likely be made 
which may add to the value of mme. The excursion-trains, at this period run- 
ning on every line in the kingdom, afford the means of country-members meet- 
mg at any appointed place their city brethren, and imterviews and introductions 
would thus take place to which higher fares and less agreeable travelling would 
be a barrier in the winter months.—I am, dear sir, your well wisher and reader, 
A ProvinctaL GEOLOGIST. 

CHEAP CABINETS FOR Fosstts.—S1r,—What is the cheapest way of getting 
eabmets made for fossils and minerals? It seems almost impossible in the 


300 THE GEOLOGIST. 


country to buy any suitable articles of this kind second-hand. Even a moderate- 
size new cabinet seems usually to cost not less than ten or twelve pounds, 
Could common chests of drawers be made available by any alteration which 
would not be expensive ?—I am, sir, yours, &., A Constant READER. 

The cheapest kind of cabinet which can be made, and which is also one of 
the most useful, is formed by a set, of greater or less number, of plain deal 
trays with marginal rims. These trays can be rested on cross-bars in a simple 
deal case, a cupboard, or recess. 

Such travs can be made in town for about three shillings each. 

Mr. Charlton, the resident housekeeper of the Geological Society, can be 
recommended for the manufacture of very excellent cabmets of a superior 
character. 

Casr or A Toap.—At one of the meetings of the Wernerian Natural History 
Society, a notice was given of the incarceration of a /ive toad in the wall of 
Fort-William Barracks, Calcutta, for the long period of fifty-four years. 

RESPIRATION OF Frogs.—It appears, from a series of curious experiments 
performed by M. Edwards, and detailed mm the “Annales de Chimie et Physique” 
for January, 1819, that frogs, toads, and lizards are preserved alive and in health 
under water for weeks, by means of the air contained in the water, which they 
abstract, not by the hings, but by the skin. 

Count D’Arcutac’s Noricr or “ Strurta.”—Count d’Archiac was charged 
by the President of the Geological Society of France with a report of the prin- 
cipal changes which Sir Roderick Murchison had made in the last edition of 
« Siluria,’* and his notice of that work recently published in the Bulletin of 
the French Geological Society, is not only the best resumé of the objects and 
intentions of Sir Roderick’s masterly labours we have yet seen, but offers also 
several observations and suggestions well worthy of. note. The report follows 
in historical order the various advances made from the substitution (in 1835) 
of the Silurian System, with its ground-work of arrangement, for the vague ill- 
digested accumulation of rocks known under the ancient general denomination 
of grauwacke, to this last most comprehensive description of the Lower Palzo- 
zoic rocks, both in their details and in their entirety. Interesting as it is to 
know how far and how thoroughly the labours of any of our countrymen are 
appreciated by foreign savans, our object is now more to draw attention to a 
sent addition which M. d’Archiac has made to this work in his review. 

In speaking of the admirable list of fossils prepared for “ Siluria’”” by Messrs. 
Salter and Morris, Count d’Archiac repeats the remarks he has already made 
upon similar lists executed in England, namely the absence of a numerical table 
expressive of, lst, the total number of genera and species of each class; 2nd, 
the total number of species im each geological division; 3rd, the species common 
to two or more of the geological divisions, im such wise as to be able to deduce 
the degree of importance of their zoological relations, and consequently the 
analogy or difference of the circumstances under which the strata were depo- 
sited. This want M.d’Archiac fills up by a table prepared from the list above 
referred to, which, for the benefit of English geologists, we transfer to our pages. 

How highly the great French geologist values those untirmg and unceasin 
efforts that have produced that Silurian system which, founded on a limite 
portion of the British Isles, has been now, by the investigations and researches 
of foreign, and of our colonial geologists, applied in its integrity to the whole 
world, 1s given best and briefly in his own words :—‘“Sriurtia, dont nous 
espérons que Vauteur domnera encore plus dune édition, restera toujours 
comme le magnifique couronnement d’un vaste ensemble de travaux dont les 
annales de la science nous offrent peu d’examples.” 


* For a notice of this admirable book see THe Guonogist, Vol. II, p. 88. 


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do2 THE GEOLOGIST. 


REVIEWS. 


Illustrated Index of British Shells, containing figures of all the recent Specles, 
with names and other information. By G. B. SowErsy, F.L.8. London: 
Simpkin, Marshall and Co., 1859. 


The magnificent work on British shells by Mr. Hanley and the late Professor 
Forbes, must remain, for a long time at least, the standard book on British 
mollusca. Its price, amounting to some pounds, however, is a barrier to its 
being more extensively accessible, while there are thousands of inquiring minds 
who desire some reliable source from which, by comparison of the shells they 
find with some good figure, they can at least recognize a species, and thus find 
some firm foundation on which to continue their investigations. Such a source 
is Mr. Sowerby’s book, although it is little more than an illustrated catalogue 
of our native shells. The figures are very good, and appear to be original 
representations of properly selected specimens ; no slight consideration, for our 
attention has been often drawn to the evil effects of the practice of copying 
from other plates, in presenting false ideas, by depatures from the Hose and 
proper outlines of the object thus occasioned, the errors of the draughts- 
man, often rendering the determination of species difficult and obscure, and 
otherwise impeding the progress of science. We rejoice that Mr. Sowerby’s 
book has passed well through our scrutiny on this pomt, and that we can con- 
sistently wish it the extensive sale it merits. 


Advanced Text Book of Geology, Descriptive and Industrial. By Davip Pacer, 
F.G.S. Second edition, revised and enlarged. London and Edinburgh : 
William Blackwood and Son. 1859. 


This treatise, the first edition of which, so well known, is reported to have 
sold to the extent of twenty thousand copies, was designed as a sequel to the 
author’s “ Introductory Text Book,” although it has been prepared im such a 
manner as to stand also as a separate and mdependent work. The latter or 
introductory work gives an outline of the science intelligible to beginners, and 
sufficient for a general acquaintance with its leading facts; that under notice, 
or the “ Advanced Text Book,” presents the subject more in detail, and is “ in- 
tended for senior pupils and those who desire to prosecute the study im its 
principles as well as deductions.” 

The author’s views are good of a right system of teachmg; and no geological 
book for scholastic purposes in the English language surpasses Mr. Page’s in 
this respect ; nor is the carefulness displayed im the correctness of the general 
material of the work to be passed over without laudatory comment. 

This second edition has been enlarged, “firstly, to embrace whatever is new 
and important in the science; secondly, to afford space for additional ilustra- 
tion; and thirdly, to combine, as far as possible, the principles with the de- 
ductions of the geology.” 

This additional matter is ordinarily given “in subordinate type and im such a 
form as not to imterfere with the contimuity of the original textual arrange- 
ment.” So far so good; and the matter thus introduced is certainly not with- 
out much value, but we caution against increasing the dimensions of a Text 
Book. It is, in our opinion, dangerous both to its practical and to its pecuniary 
success ; while it is desirable for its attractiveness to the student—no mean 
consideration—to restrain it within the most moderate limits. 


REVIEWS. ae 


We are glad to find Mr. Page himself entertains an opinion of this kind, for 
he says that it has been his aim “to improve rather than to enlarge—to keep 
the volume abreast with the latest discoveries and advancing views of our 
leading geologists, and yet to prevent it from exceeding the limits of a com- 
pendious Text Book.” We hope Mr. Page will rigidly adhere to these views, 
for we should be sorry indeed to see so good and useful a book run to seed. 

Amongst the new matter introduced of importance are the remarks upon the 
characters and structure of the Himantopterus, the Pterygotus, and Eurypterus, 
illustrated by some very fairly executed woodcuts, and a fuller notice of the 
oolitic mammals than appeared in the first edition. 

A woodcut of the seal discovered by Mr. Page in the Pleistocene clays of the 
Clyde is another new addition. Mr. Page has also given us the improved 
classification of the members of the Old Red Sandstone, in accordance with the 
late observations which Sir Roderick Murchison has brought together with so 
much labour and acumen, and has grooped with his usual skillfulness of general- 
ization. . We have also the results of Dr. Bigsby’s laborious revision of the 
classification of the North American Paleozoic rocks; and two more definite 
and comprehensive lists of plants and animals, instead of the mere outlme-notes 
of the former edition. 

It would, however, be supererogatory of us to extend our notice or criticisms 
of a book which, from its usefulness and its moderate price, is sure of extensive 
circulation, and will probably also very generally replace and supplant the 
former edition in the hands of its former readers; and for this very reason will 
have its merits and demerits (however few these last may be) so fully criticised 
and exposed by others, that neither will escape observation and comment. 
Hence we may fairly be content to close our notice with the advice to the 
teacher, the scholar, and the student, that they can not spend their money, nor 
their time upon a better book. 


A Week’s Walk in Gower, from the pen of Dr. Bevan, who is known to our 
readers from his contributions to this journal, is written in a fanciful style, and 
tells us what the author saw, and what we should see if we spent the same 
amount of time in the peregrination of that small peninsula of South Wales. 

The reviewer’s task may generally be similized to that of Tom Moore’s “child 
at a feast,” who but “sips of a sweet, then flies off to the rest.” And true to 
the simile we have selected, and in this case leaving all those other attrac- 
tions of “iron-bound coasts with glorious sea-views, picturesque little valleys 
and inland dells, old churches, still older castles and camps, and druidical 
remains,” so pleasing and attractive to other tastes, we fly at once to the 
geological nectar of the mellifluous sweets of Gower, and take our readers to the 
famous Bacon and Mitchin Holes—two caves which have made Gower famous. 

Dr. Bevan tells us to get a guide to them if we can, and, next to that, 
considers the most important thing “to get good bearings; for what with 
devious lanes and sand-drifts, it is by no means an easy place to find, for the 
caves themselves, though large, all face the sea, and are so overhung by the 
cliffs that it is altogether impossible to see them from the land. I have found 
one of the best landmarks to the Bacon Hole to be Pennard Church tower, 
which is almost in a straight line with it. The Bacon Hole, more particularly, 
is an extremely interesting place, as bones are still to be procured; but a pick- 
axe is required, the ordinary geological hammer being of little avail against the 
hard breccia in which they are enveloped. The interior has been systematically 
quarried and blasted to obtain the bones, most of which are to be seen in the 
Swansea Museum; but the details of the operation, and of the successive 
layers that were exposed, are so very instructive, that I cannot help borrowing 

Wiig 10s Cc Cc 


334 THE GEOLOGIST. 


an account from Mr. Starling Benson’s excellent paper in the Transactions of 
the Institution. The floor of the cave will be seen to fall from the entrance 
towards the inner part, while the interior of the roof is pointed (the two sides 
meeting at an angle), and is covered by a layer of stalactite, and the floor is 
also overlaid with stalagmite, which was blasted through, and a cross trench 
opened down to the solid limestone. First, then, they arrived at a bed of 
alluvial earth, in which were recent shells (still to be found there) and bones of 
ox, red-deer, roe-buck, and fox, succeeded by a thickish layer of stalagmite. 
Then came a bed of hard breccia, with bear-, ox-, and deer-bones ; then more 
stalagmite, below which was more breccia, and a deposit of cave-earth,—the 
grand treasure-house of osseous remains. ‘Then came bones of the gigantic 
mammoth, rhinoceros, hyena, wolf, bear, ox, and deer. The lower layer of the 
black sand seemed to be almost exclusively occupied by mammoth-bones, the only 
others being a tooth of badger, and one of a kind of pole-cat. The mammoth- 
remains are most wonderful, and almost worth a special journey to Swansea to 
see them. The tusk was two feet round, and five feet five inches long; besides 
which, there were humeri, femora, tibia, ulna, radius, and several phalanges. 
Below this important bed was more stalagmite, with shelly sand, containmg 
OClausilia nigricans, Littorina littoralis ; also bones of birds and of arvicola. Here 
was a grand storehouse of fossil remains, and a large field for speculation as to 
the conditions under which all these inhabitants lived. How the shells got 
there at the bottom of all these layers, and at a height of thirty feet above the 
sea, is easily explained. When they lived, the coast had not been elevated ; 
consequently, the mouth of the cave was probably under water at high tide, 
allowing the shells to be deposited, and birds and water-rats to enter at 
low tide. 

With regard to the Clausilia, however, which is a land shell, it was probably 
not deposited until the floor of the caves began to be dry, and above water. 
This elevation, which is to be found in all the caves of Gower, is quite borne 
out by the water-worn appearance of the rocks in Caswell Bay. When the 
floor of the cave was dry, the mammoth took possession, and lived in it. It is 
not very likely that his bones were drifted in by the sea, for two reasons: 1sf, 
that they were in a state of good preservation, which would not have been the 
case if they had been well beaten about by the waves; and, 2ndly, they all 
appeared to belong to the same imdividual, as if he had lived and died there. 
Then came animals of smaller kinds in greater profusion, succeeded at the top 
by red deer, &c., animals which have not been for such a great length of time 
extinct. ‘There are no traces of man below the upper stalagmite; but im the 
black mud above are pieces of English pottery—a fact of which I was unaware 
im one of my visits, but which I sincerely regretted afterwards; for, seemg a 
rapacious cormorant fishing just below me, I flung at it a piece of pottery, 
which I took to be of more modern extraction; on examining the bones at the 
Museum, I recognized the antiquarian remains that I had so ignorantly cast 
away. ‘There is another cave in Gower, which we shall presently visit, in 
which human traces have been found*—to the best of my knowledge the only 
two in Great Britain in which such has occurred. A little to the west is the 
Mitchin Hole, a larger hole than the other, but possessing no remains ; so we 
will wander along the cliffs until we come to Pennard Castle. Pennard Castle 
is rather a mystery as to where it came from, and where all the rest of the 
place is gone to. It was very likely built at the same time as most of the 
other castles; but tradition has been unusally busy, and has asserted that it 


was built in one night, and destroyed in the same space of time by sand blown 
over from Ireland.” 


* Traces and relics of man are reported in other instances in Britain. —Ed. Grot, 


REVIEWS. 330 


Another of the Gower lions is a bone-cave, situated under the cliffs in the 
neighbourhood of Paviland. Dr. Bevan’s book does not, however, give the 
utmost encouragement to the visitor for trymg to get there; for he tells us he 
made a fruitless effort himself with that object ; that he only “got half way, 
and was well pleased to return and take for granted that Dr. Buckland’s 
description, in his Reliquie Diluviane, was correct. It is possible, however, to 
get a boat at Port Eynon, but it is a long way round, and after seeing the 
Bacon Hole, scarcely worth the journey; but if the traveller can happen to 
hit the fortunate conjunction of low-water and spring-tide, he may then get 
down to the caves without bemg sea-sick or breaking his neck. It was made 
public about 1822, although known to the peasants some time before; but in 
the following year Dr. Buckland visited it, and published the account in the 
work before mentioned. These caves (for there are two) are the most 
important in Gower, and the antiquary will share the interest with the geolo- 
gist, simce human relics were found in the shape of bones, articles of ornament, 
coms, &c. On the cliff above are the remains of a British camp, which, doubt- 
less, was contemporaneous with the skeleton found below; the largest of the 
caves 1s the Goat’s Hole, in which the floor ascends, and is covered with dilu- 
vial loam, mixed with fragments of limestone and spar, recent marine shells, 
and bones of elephant, rhinoceros, bear, fox, hyena, wolf, horse, deer, ox, rats, 
birds, and fragments of charcoal. The recent shells and bones of birds were 
most plentiful in the interior extremity, and the material in which they were 
found was earth, cemented by stalagmite.. The skeleton was that of a female, 
the bones stained of a dark red colour, and covered with a coating of raddle, 
tinged by red oxide of iron. Fragments of ivory too were there, cut into 
curious and fantastic shapes (probably charms). The coms were of the reign 
of Constantius. In the second cave—which, from its position as regards the 
Goat’s Hole, Dr. Buckland conjectures was connected with it, and, im fact, with 
the other, formed part of a large cave, cut away by denudation—were more 
bones of animals, covered with a bed of fine pebbles. The mquiring paleon- 
tologist will find a unique collection of these bones, as well as those from the 
Goat’s Hole, in the Swansea Museum, where they are well arranged and 
preserved.” ; 

The Worms Head is a noted place also in Gower. It is the most westerly 
peint of Gower and Glamorganshire—the end, in fact, of that county in 
general and of our locality in particular; and with it we conclude our review, 
as affording a remarkable instance of the abrading power of the sea-waves. It 
was a noted pomt im old Leland’s day, and he tells us, in his quaint but accu- 
rate book: ‘Ther is im Gowerland by-twixt Swansey and Lochor a litle pro- 
montori caulid Worms Head, from the wich to Caldey is communly caullid 
Sinus Tinbechicus.” Dr. Bevan says that “it has obtaimed its name from the 
curious arrangement of the rocks which compose it—two or three successive 
elevations, with causeways between, which, seen from the channel, certaimly do 
look like a large sea-serpent with uplifted head. The force and action of the 
waves is mightily shown by the queer and fantastic shapes of the rocks, the 
footpath i one part bemg carried across the boiling sea by a narrow arch, peri- 
lous enough when a strong south-wester is blowing. Immediately in front is 
the Head, a sheer precipice of more than 200 feet; and yet, high as it is, I 
have seen the waves dash over the very top, and that too when there was 
searcely a ripple visible on the surface of the sea. It is rarely that this phe- 
nomenon is visible, but the effect is wonderful—a dense volume of water run- 
ning up the side of the rock, and breaking over the summit in a vast fountain. 
Whenever this is seen, calm and bright as the weather may be, the fishermen 
know that rough weather is impending, and they account for the circumstance 
by the meeting of two under-currents. One of the most singular facts about 


6 


36 THE GEOLOGIST. 


eo 


the head is that it is all hollow—a vast cavern—with an opening seaward, and 
another, called the Blow Hole, about the size of a finger, on the land, which 
makes up for its want of size by its noise, which is very great, and most pecu- 
liar on a quiet day, when there is a ground swell. A curious and unearthly 
sound it is, like that of a mighty rushing wind proceeding from the interior of 
the earth, as if all the gnomes of the Hartz Mountains were busy at their 
work. The cause of the noise is this: a heavy sea breaks into the cave, 
driving before it all the air into one corner, where the orifice is situated ; for, 
by listening at the hole, you can mark the approach of each wave by the 
increasing volume of air. Leland agam mentions this. ‘Ther is also a won- 
derfulle hole at the Poynt of Worme Heade, but few dare enter into it, and 
men fable there that a Dore withem the spatious Hole hathe be sene withe 
great nayles on it—but that that is spoken of water reuninge under the 
grounde is more lykely.’” The cave, as far as is known, has been entered only 
once, and that was on an extraordinarily calm day, when Beynon rowed a party 
of visitors into it. He had, however, very vague notions respecting its size, 
and his prevailing feeling seemed to have been satisfaction at gettmg safe out 
again. 


Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers. By Memperrs of the Aupine Crus. London: 
Longman and Co. 1859. 


In the charming volume before us there are many scenes, incidents, and 
descriptions which might delight general readers more than those particulars 
which we shall here set prominently before our own. We have properly to 
deal with specialities, and however tempting even to ourselves the digression 
into the most flowery paths, the pathways of science are the routes we are 
conscientiously compelled to follow. 

The opening chapter, ‘‘ Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers,’ describes to us the 
passage of the Fenetre de Salena by a party of the Alpine Club, with the dan- 
gers and difficulties of its accomplishment, and their accompanying rewards of 
wild and magnificent scenery, and those wonderful atmospheric beautifications 
which seem to be locked up and cherished in those caskets of Nature’s recesses 
to which only the most daring can reach the key. 

Amongst the wild scenes in this expedition, we have a vivid portraiture of 
a night encampment on the inhospitable slopes of the alpme heights of Salena, 
where the party halted within a few yards of a glacier-torrent, whence, when the 
morning dawned, they gazed out “upon a scene of savage grandeur, for wild- 
ness and desolation almost without a rival, even among the Alps, of which the 
sole components are crag, precipice, snow, ice, and aiguille, combined in every 
variety of stern and awful grandeur.’ From this “ citadel of winter,” a short 
but arduous walk in the earliest morn brought the mountain-travellers into a 
“oarden of summer,” the grass beneath their feet fresh and moist, and almost 
dazzling to the eye with the brilliancy of its emerald green; hardly a stone’s 
throw from them, ‘the rich valley of Ferret stretched out on either hand, 
studded with chalets, dotted with sheep and cattle, sparkling with cultivation, 
instinct with life and luxuriant beauty. The dark masses of the great chain 
bounding the valley on the south were clothed with wood and herbage nearly 
to their summits, and a thin veil of delicate haze which hung upon them, 
showed how great was already the power of the autumn sun.” Even the 
glacier-torrents they had so lately left, now flowed behind a rismg ground, 
so that not an object remained in sight to remind them of the desolate region 
of eternal frost they had so lately quitted. 

The second chapter, by Professor Tyndall, gives an account of his ascent of 
the Col du Geant, in July, 1857, and, commencing with a not very satisfactory 


REVIEWS. Son 


compliment to readers in general, about other engagements, refers to a six- 
weeks’ examination of the Mer de Glace and its tributaries, assisted by Dr. 
Hirst, with a view to the investigation of the motion of the glacier, and the 
connection of the veimed-structure of the glacier with the stratification of the 
névé. But no scientific information on these points is given, and the whole 
chapter, however nicely penned, is therefore reduced to little more than the mere 
personal adventures of a man and a boy for a day among the seracs of the 
Glacier du Géant, one of the few imstructive passages bemg the description of 
the ice-cascade through the defile formed by Le Rognon and the promontory of 
the Aiguille Noire. 

The fourth chapter, by Mr. W. Matthew, contains several years’ excursions 
amongst the mountams of Bagnes, and abounds im notices of the movements 
and aspects of the six great glaciers which pour their frozen streams into this 
fine valley, ploughing up the green herbage of the meadows before them in 
the slow but irresistible passage, or stranded there, msensibly melt away, 
leaving great ruinous heaps of rock or moraines as mementos in future ages of 
their past existence. 

The description of the interrupted feast, in Mr. Hinchoff’s excursion from 
Zermatt to the Val d’Anniviers by the Trift Pass, is not only amusing, but 
affords an excellent idea of the fall and scattering of great blocks of massive 
rocks from the mountain’s side, as also of the process by which the debris of 
the moraines is originally accumulated. 

Mr. Ball’s visit to Zermatt in 1843, in some degree fills up the noticeable 
blank in Professor Tyndall’s paper by some casual observations on Professor 
Forbes’ statements, and by some intelligibly recorded facts and suggestions 
of his own. To these are added some new remarks upon the intensities of 
moonlight and early dawn at great heights. 

One passage in Mr. Anderson’s interesting descent from the Schreckhorn, so 
forcibly conveys the constant and perpetual degradation of the granite rock- 
masses of the higher peaks, that we think it quite worthy of quotation, as 
showing how great in aggregate result must be the effects of the frosts and 
other atmospheric influences which are uninterruptedly exerted at these great 
mountain-heights. He tells us in the descent of his party they saw nothing 
but bare rock. ‘‘There seemed no end to it. Once only I remember that the 
scene was varied, when a change took place in the mineral character of the 
rock, and we passed from the granite—too constantly disintegrated by the frost 
to permit of vegetation formmg upon it—to a formation which, by its compo- 
sition or the direction of its cleavage, is more capable of resisting that mighty 
leveller of the high places of the earth. There the cliffs were clothed with 
lichens of the most beautiful and varied colours, affording a charming relief to 
the eye.” 

The cause of such destructive mundations as those of 1852, in Switzerland 
and Savoy, is simply and intelligibly explamed by Mr. Ball, in his expedition 
from the Grimsel to Grindelwald. 

“T had,” he says, “already been struck with the fact that on the Grimsel, 
and even on the Siderhorn, we had on the previous day encountered rain 
instead of snow, whereas on former visits, durmg bad weather, I had found 
deep snow at the Grimsel in August. The thermometer, during the preceeding 
thirty-six hours, had not fallen below 47 degrees Fahrenheit, showing that the 
current from the south, whose over-charge of aqueous vapour had caused the 
heavy rain of the last five days, had maintained a temperature unusually high, 
even for the height of summer. This was the real cause of those destructive 
inundations which made the month of September, 1852, long remembered in 
many parts of Switzerland and Savoy. Such mundations would be far more 
common if the enormous fall of rain in the lower valleys of the Alps were not 


338 THE GEOLOGIST. 


neutralized by its being converted into snow in the region of the higher moun- 
tains and glaciers. ‘The usual supply from this latter source is greatly dimi- 
nished at such times, and though the small streams are swollen, the great 
torrents that issue from the glaciers are reduced to less than half their usual 
volume. But the case is very different when rai several degrees above the 
freezing point falls upon the great fields of ice and névé. The whole of it 
goes to swell the glacier-streams, and, moreover, the entire of its surplus heat 
is consumed in melting the ice and snow with which it comes in contact. 
After endeavouring to estimate the prodigious amount of water that, under 
such circumstances, must be carried down within a few hours into the principal 
valleys, I was not at all surprized when, a few days later, in ascending from 
Sallenches to Chamouni, I found bridge after bridge swept away—some of 
them seventy or eighty feet above the usual level of the water—and masses of 
stone and rubbish brought down, sufficient in one instance to bury a house and 
mill so completely, that only a small portion of the latter, and the roof of the 
building, remained projecting from the surface.” 

Chapter eleven, by J. F. Hardy, although not one of the most scientific, is 
nevertheless one of the most delightful, for its easy flowing style, m the whole 
book; and Mr. Bunbury’s visit to the Col de la Jungfrau, affords an example 
of what can be seen by those who have either not the “head” and daring, or 
are too indolent and un-enterprismg to attack the higher and more formidable 

eaks. 
: In the note appended to this chapter, the editor’s suggestion that the plants 
which we find at great heights on small oases in the ice-region are the remains 
of a more abundant vegetation, which has dwindled to its present trifling pro- 
portions owing to the extension of the glaciers, is a novel and perhaps a 
valuable one. 

Refreshing, indeed, at the end of the book comes Professor Ramsey’s con- 
tribution to the “ Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers.” 

There is an honest English bluntness of expression in his sentences which 
causes their truthfulness to fall with force upon the apprehension. All that 
we have previously read in the book amounts to little more than a modernized 
version of enterprizing ascents, by which the accomplishments of bag-wigged 
De Sausure and his attendants, i wading through snow-fields, or scramblng 
over precipitous mountain-slopes and crags, have been excelled and exceeded. 
Professor Ramsay takes the mind back to times remote, when the lords of 
creation were the great carnivora that preyed on the gigantic mammoths and 
herbivora who were then the chief mhabitants of the earth. He talks to us 
about the o/d glaciers of Switzerland and of North Wales. He makes us 
think about the age of the great frozen ice-masses by that one still shding 
down the mountain sides of Switzerland; and he shows us the great moraine- 
heaps of rocks and boulders still encumberimg the mountain-valleys of Wales. 
He produces evidences in the marks on the precipitous cliffs of the Alps of the 
ancient greater depth and wider extent of the still veritable glaciers; and he 
shows us in the mountamous regions of Wales, the roches moutonnees, the 
striations of the rocks, and the heaps of debris of British glaciers long since 
melted away. 

There are still those who would speak of geology in disparaging terms ; but 
the interest and point of this book is certainly concentered in this geological 
history of those mighty ice-mountains. Nor are these mere speculations ; they 
are, indeed, true inferences, substantially built upon accredited facts. 

The first part of his article opens boldly and to the point at once. “ Every- 
one,” says he, “familar with the Alps is aware of fluctuation in the dimensions 
of the glaciers. It is recorded in the pages of Forbes, that since the year 1767, 
the glacier of La Brenva rose three hundred feet above its present level, and 


REVIEWS. 339 


again declmed; and the terminal moraines of the Rhone glacier, arranged con- 
centrically one within another, bear witness to its recent gradual diminution. 
The great Gorner glacier of Monte Rosa, also, is even now steadily advancing, 
and is said within the memory of men not old, to have already swallowed u 
forty chalets and a considerable tract of meadow-land. But all such historica 
variations in the magnitude of glaciers are triflmg compared with their wonder- 
ful extension in pre-historic periods. There is, perhaps, scarcely a valley in the 
High Alps in which the traveller, whose eye is educated in glacial phenomena, 
will not discern symptoms of the former presence of glaciers where none now 
exist ; and in numerous instances, far from requirmg to be searched for, these 
indications force themselves on the attention by signs as strong as if the 
glacier had disappeared but a short time before the growth of the hving vege- 
tation. So startling imdeed, are these revelations, that for a time the observer 
scarcely dares to admit to himself the justness of his conclusions, when he finds 
in striations, moraines, roches moutonnees and blocs perches unequivocal marks of 
the former extension of an existing glacier more than a long day’s march 
beyond its present termination; and further, that its actual surface of to-day is 
a thousand feet and more beneath its ancient level.” 

As it is with the glaciers of the Aar, which the professor selects as examples, 
so is it with many other alpine valleys, and so has it been im North Wales. 
After this follow interesting observations on the disappearance of moraines, 
the former state of the Grimsel, the Aletech glacier, the Kirchet, on the inter- 
esting question whether a glacier ever reached the Jura? and on the great 
perched blocks of Monthey, one of them twenty paces in length, and eight 
thousand or nine thousand tons in weight. 

These blocks lie in great quantities m and upon sandy gravel roughly strati- 
fied, comparable more in their semi-angular character to the partially-rounded 
chalk-flints of our ordimary “drift” gravels. “Similar drift-like strata encircle 
the Lake of Geneva, rismg high above its level, and thence range across the 
low lands of Switzerland, at the base of the Jura towards Zurich and Schaff- 
hausen, covering the hills hundreds of feet above the level of the lakes. of 
Zurich and Zug, each of which lies more than a hundred feet above the Lake of 
Geneva. 

“Tf this view of the subject be correct,” it is argued, “it follows that 
during part of the period when the North of Europe was submerged to receive 
the drift, Switzerland also lay beneath the sea, at least two thousand feet 
beneath its present level, that bemg about the height of the blocks of Monthey 
above the sea.” 

The ancient glacial phenomena of Switzerland are then shown to accord with 
those of North Wales; and the tract between the Snowdon range and the 
Menai Straights is described, in which we are favoured with examples of docs 
perches, roches moutonnees, erratic blocks, polished and striated rocks, and 
moraines, by which the region of Snowdon is brought promimently before us as 
the site, in geological and pre-historic times, of mighty glaciers, of which the 
only evidences that now remain are the inscriptions they have themselves en- 
graven, ages since, in their irresistible passage. 

Snowdon, the highest and noblest mountam of the district, ‘is bounded on 
three sides by six vast hollows or valleys, which have been scooped out from 
time to time in the rock-masses of which the mountain is formed. In one of 
these, Cwm-glas, some of the most perfect remaims of glacier-action are to be 
found in the form of moraine-debris and heaps of clay, boulders, and angular 
blocks identical in composition and in general aspect with the Swiss moraines.” 
| Professor Ramsay then proceeds with others of these valleys describing their 
| beauties and their evidences of ancient glacial phenomena, coming to the con- 
clusion that Snowdon formed the centre of six glaciers having an ice-thickness 


340 THE GEOLOGIST. 


generally of nearly five hundred feet, and that these flowed from the peak down 
those six lateral valleys we have already mentioned. From his own observa- 
tions he estimates the greatest formerly attained thickness of ice at the Pass 
of Llanberis at from eleven hundred to thirteen hundred feet. 

We are now introduced to another phase of the subject, the relations of the 
glacial drift to the glaciers. Everyone who has given any attention to tertiary 
geology is aware that a large portion of the low country of the North of 
Europe and a considerable portion of the British Isles are covered more 
or less by loose superficial detrital accumulations, contaiming large boulders 
and rocks which have been brought often many hundreds of miles from their 
original beds. These deposits are, as we might have presumed they would be, 
regarded by the Professor, according to the modern glacial theories, as the pro- 
duce of melted icebergs. 

This glacial drift rises to very considerable heights (upwards of two thousand 
feet, and containing shells at thirteen hundred feet) above the sea in this Snow- 
donian region; and much of it, though rudely stratified, resembles ordimary 
moraine-matter. From its arrangement in terraces it is considered to mark suc- 
cessive stages of elevation of the land in its emergence from the glacial waters ; 
and that as the average height of the loftiest mountains could not during that 
era have attained more than from fourteen hundred to two thousand feet, the 
formation of glaciers upon them proves the intensity of the cold at that period. 
From these glaciers icebergs broke off at the sea-board, strewing the regions 
around in their dissolution with rock-boulders and drift-gravels. 

Some remarks follow on the grinding and scooping out, by the glacier im its 
motion, of the hollows since converted into lakes and tarns; and the paper is 
concluded by some speculations on the possibility even of the eyes of man havy- 
ing gazed on those old glaciers of Wales. 

A chapter on Etna and some suggestions for Alpine travellers finish this 
excellent and tasteful book, which we hope will have very many readers, for 
the reason that it can neither be read without interest nor without profit; and 
we are pleased to observe that a second edition is already called for. 


Map of Hereford. By T. HE. Curtzy, Esq., C.H. 


We gladly notice this map, sent to us a short time since by Mr. Curley; for, 
although a local production, and consequently limited in its uses and applica- 
tion, it presents a step in a right direction, which, if followed out m like 
manner in other districts, would render material aid to a very extended and 
minute knowledge of the stratigraphic condition of these islands. Mr. Cur- 
ley, engaged upon the drainage of the town of Hereford, has necessarily met, 
in the execution of the works he has been superintending, with numerous 
opportunities of acquiring an intimate knowledge of the rocks and soils of that 
town and its vicmity. Some of the information thus obtained, carefully worked 
out into two sections exhibiting the disposition of the gravels and local drift- 
beds on the adjacent new red-sandstone, have been added with good effect to 
the map. We hope other engmeers will follow this excellent plan, and that, 
ere many years, all our town plans will have as much geological information 
sae to them. The practical value of such additions cannot be over- 
estimated. 


THE GEOLOGIST. 


SEPTEMBER, 1859. 


THE COMMON FOSSILS OF THE BRITISH ROCKS. 


eos. J) Mackin E.G.S., £.8-A. 
(Continued from page 192.) 
Cap. 4. First Traces of the Succession of Life. 


Rocks. 


The Lower Silurian 


How sweet the communing with oneself; the thoughts that rise 
and flee ; the dreams of solitude, away from the busy hum of men— 
* quiet—alone with God, thinking of His wonders and His powers, 
the beauty and skillfulness of His works. As late at night I sat at 
my open study-window gazing over the forest of roofs and chimneys 
of the sleeping city, with its towers and church-spires pointing to 
the holy heavens and star-lit sky, for the first time I heard the 
great bell of Westminster toll out the midnight hour—sonorons, 
solemn, slow, as if clinging with throbbing pulse and quivering 
frame to Time’s flowing garments to arrest him in his sturdy march. 
Solemn and slow the changing hours of past creations have passed 
away, with no “ Big Ben” to mark their passage; but solemn and 
slow has Time himself impressed his footsteps on the yielding sands 
of earth, and left us his own record of his onward course. 

In this chapter we pass on to the first change of scene, and as we 
found it necessary, at the commencement of our work, to have a 
clear idea of the succession of the great rock-masses of which the 
fossiliferous crust of our globe is constituted, so we shall find it 
imperative for a right comprehension and a clear understanding of 
the succession of organic hfe upon our planet to have a knowledge 
of the great types upon which the various members of the animal 

VOL. II. DD 


342 THE GEOLOGIST. 


and vegetable kingdoms are constructed, and which have been 
selected by naturalists as the principles on which to ground those 
arbitrary divisions and sub-divisions of scientific arrangement so 
necessary for facilitating the acquirement of knowledge and for the 
progress of investigation. 

All animated or living things belong to one of two markedly dis- 
tinct groups—the animal or vegetable; hence in scientific nomen- 
clature the greatest distinctions are given to these thoroughly 
decided divisions, and they are consequently termed kingdoms. 
Taking either plants or animals it is apparent that of either we have 
many sorts, and also that these sorts are evidently constructed on 
different plans, as for example seaweeds and trees, insects, crustacea, 
starfish, shells, quadrupeds ; hence we have principal divisions into 
sub-kingdoms, classes, and orders. Taking the members of any one 
of these divisions, we find that, though there may be a common 
resemblance on the whole, yet the typical form, upon which all of 
them are more or less constructed, is nevertheless variously modi- 
fied, and that numerous forms, although subservient to the type, are 
still modelled more directly upon some certain deviation or pecu- 
larity. For example, the class Mammalia has the characteristic 
features of the Vertebrata in the possession of an internal bony 
skeleton, consisting of a cranium, vertebral column, and two fore 
and two hind limbs for terrestrial locomotion. But how distinctly is 
this vertebrate type modified to suit the particular exigencies, habits, 
and conditions of other vertebrate classes, such as fish, reptiles, 
birds, whales, man. Hach of these classes again displays many dis- 
tinctive modifications, as, for example, the eagle and the sparrow, 
the herring and the shark; hence arise other subdivisions or orders, 
and these again exhibit subservient modifications, as for instance the 
eagle and the hawk. Those which have thus a great resemblance 
for each other are included in one family, and are distinguished from 
each other by a generic name, or in other words each family is made 
up of different sorts or genera. These again are susceptible of divi- 
sion by individual or special characters, whence the denomination of 
species, the still minor variations of which—brought about by 
difference of existence, physical conditions, or local cireumstances— 
are indicated by the term varieties, 


MACKIE—FIRST TRACES OF THE SUCCESSION OF LIFE. 343 


The first glance at the familiar objects around us assures us that 
all living things have not the same values of structure or the like 
capabilities of life. We perceive at once that some are of far lower 
grades both of intelligence and action ; that in point of fact there is 
a scale of development of the social rank both of animals and 
vegetables. These conditions are so apparent and so well known 
that it would be useless to dwell upon them. We proceed therefore 
at once to mark out the divisions of the animal and vegetable king- 
doms, and the particular characters by which each is indicated, 
premising that, as in the morganic world there is no decided 
natural line of division between one rock-mass and the others, one 
stratum and another, in the succession of formation, and that what 
appears a break in the series in one place is filled up by some 
deposit in another, so in the organic world each genus, family, and 
order are so linked by modifications and divergences to others, that 
the actual lines of division are essentially arbitrary, and especially in 
the more minute scientific and natural divisions, as between species, 
genera, and families; the higher groups appearing, however, as far 
as our present knowledge extends, to be merely linked together by 
similitudes, or by the devarication of one type into an apparent re- 
semblance to another rather than by any natural affinities between 
them. 

We now present in Table I. the primary constituent members of 
these great divisions as nearly as may be in the ascending order of 
their organic development and rank, thus placing Man, the highest, 
at the top, and the Rhizopods—Protozoans at the base of the series. 
The groups of animal-forms must not be altogether regarded as in- 
dicating a progressive increased rank of organization; many of 
them are of equal value with each other, and the exact position of 
others has not been thoroughly determined. Moreover, no system 
of classification of organic forms, whether vegetable or animal, can 
be as yet regarded as perfect ; the best can only be considered artifi- 
cial and provisional, requiring many modifications and improve- 
ments; hence the student or general reader must not therefore 
be dismayed at the difference of position assigned by different 
naturalists to particular organisms, nor think that naturalists are 
ignorantly differing from each other in their ideas. Nor must they 


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TSUN  : “Xif — ‘SHWOdSONWAY 
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“SNVVOLAIAYO 


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34-4. 


‘VIVUIALUAANT “SUOT}Ip 


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MACKIE—FIRST TRACES OF THE SUCCESSION OF LIFE. 345 


allow themselves to get confused with the variety of terms used by 
different authors to designate the same or nearly the same classes of 
animals or plants. Such differences are no more than the natural 
results of the attempts to found a perfect system of classification 
while necessarily beginning to make that effort with imperfect 
materials, which through many deficiencies in our knowledge present 
also great gaps and voids in the desired continuity of the order of 
arrangement of organized begs. By degrees such gaps are filled 
up in the progress of our investigations, and by the acquirement of 
additional knowledge of the structural character of known species, 
or the discovery of new forms. 

Under the scientific classification presented in further detail in 
Table II., existing forms of animals can be more or less harmoniously 
arranged. It may be regarded as that generally received, the terms 
being those ordinarily in use by the principal writers; and in it we 
have included the latest revisions and amendments in the arrange- 
ment of the Mammalia by Professor Owen, whose indefatigable 
researches, skilful observation, and perspicuous deductions have long 
since placed him in the foremost rank of naturalists, whether past or 
present. 

By him this most important class has been primarily grouped, 
according to the characters of the brain, into four principal divisions, 
which thus displayed also exhibit their comparative intellectual 
capacities. 

For the complete grouping and arrangement of the animal and 
vegetable kingdoms it is necessary that all those fossil forms, often so 
widely different from those existant, which paleontology has added, 
and is still daily adding, to the fauna and flora of our planet in its 
completeness, should be included and brought into one and the same 
harmonious grouping. Thus does every new form exhumed from the 
great cemetery of the Past add some new link to or produce some fresh 
deviation from our latest and most complete results of arrangements. 
Tt is, however, not a little curious to find the relics of past ages sup- 
plying the gaps and deficiencies of the creation around us, and form- 
ing the links between what were previously considered aberrant and 
abnormal conditions ; every step of progress adding to the beauty, 
harmony, consistency, and unity of the great plan of creation. 


ope MA. { 


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THE GEOLOGIST. 


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WOGONTY TVWINV HHL JO DNIGNOUD TVERNHO— II WIGVL 


346 


OF LIFE. 347 


OF THE SUCCESSION 


FIRST TRACES 


MACKIE 


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ISIOJO J, 


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349 


FIRST TRACES OF THE SUCCESSION OF LIFE. 


MACKIE 


taprdg 
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302 THE GEOLOGIST. 


We proceed now to detail the chief characters of each of the 
above great groups, beginning with the lowest, and the type-plans 
- on which they are constructed. To say what is the lowest form of 
animal-life is indeed difficult, as 1t is also of the vegetable. We 
have certain moving and apparently living cells and frustules, such 
as the monads, diatoms, and other organisms, commonly termed 
(from their usual presence in vegetable infusions and stagnant 
water) Infusoria; but the discussion is still strong as to their proper 
position, although the stronger evidence is at present on the side of 
those who group them with the vegetable kingdom. At all events 
the minutest and simplest forms of organized objects are simple 
cells; and as all animals and vegetables, whatever their rank, are 
built up of an organic structure composed of cells, it is at least 
difficult to determine either the identity with each other of such 
primitive cells; the commingling in them of the rudimentary 
stages of both kingdoms; or from their smallness, delicateness, and 
similarity of chemical composition and their structural resemblances, 
to point out the essential distinctions. ) 

These primitive cell-forms, too, possessed of no solid parts, and 
lable to almost instant decay after death, enter not into the domains 
of palzontology ; and it is only in the case of the diatoms and 
siliceous or calcareous loricated (shelled) forms that we find any. 
traces in a fossil state. These, however, are found in such abund- 
ance in some of the later Tertiary deposits as to form whole beds, 
which are, as in the case of the Tripoli and the Berg-mehl, used for 
industrial or domestic purposes. But as these belong, according to 
most authorities, to the vegetable tribes, we shall notice them more 
fully under that head and when we come to treat in the progress of 
our work of the Tertiary rocks. 

The first class then which we notice of the Protozoa are the 
Rhizopoda or root-foot animals. The Protozoa are all more or less 
globular or amorphous; for even the sponges or Porifera have 
generally a spherical shape, although in some genera of this 
higher group the true globular form is indented into funnel- 
shaped cavities or elongated into tubular stems. In the lower 
group recognized in the fossil-state by the innumerable shells of 
Foraminifera, abundant in many rocks, but best known in the 


MACKIE—FIRST. TRACES OF THE SUCCESSION OF LIFE. 309 


Secondary and Tertiary formations, the animals, although they put 
on nautiloid or Nautilus-resembling forms, are not truly such 
chambered shells as those of the cephalopod, but are in reality a 
congeries of either constricted, flattened, or inflated globular minute 
masses of shell-covered jelly-like flesh, or sarcode, which are so con- 
eregated together by the natural imperfect self-division or fissi- 
partition of one from the other. The original animal consists of a 
mere little globular mass, apparently without nerves or organs of nu- 
trition or digestion, the enveloping cuticle of which hardens into a 
calcareous, horny, or siliceous shell, full of minute pores, through 
which the sarcode is protruded in fine threads for the purposes of 
prehension or locomotion. 

At the period of growth or self-division this sarcode is exuded 
and forms a second globule, the containing cuticle of which hardens 
in the Lke manner into an enveloping shell, but which remains 
attached on the side whence it was exuded to the parent globule. 
These repeated exudations take place on more or less regular plans ; 
sometimes each overlaps the other to form a nautilus-like forami- 
nifer ; sometimes they are developed in a straight line or a continuous 
shght curve ; sometimes the arrangement is spiral; sometimes on a 
flat plane; and sometimes commencing in their young state on one 
plan, they are continued on to their adult state on another. 

From the Foraminifera we ascend to the sponges, still gelatinous 
animals, but having an internal support of horny, calcareous, or sili- 
ceous threads or spines (spicula), and also inhalent and exhalent chan- 
nels for the in-draught and expulsion of currents of water, by which 
means the sustenance of the sponge is obtained. 

The next class in the scale of animal-life shows a structural plan of 
a radiate or star-like character. There is a central plate, point, or 
cavity whence the parts of the organism radiate, like the spokes of a 
wheel from its nave. This is seen in the polypi or coral-animals, the 
sea-anemones (Actinia), and the hydras of our ponds. We see the 
like type-form in the jelly-fish and little balloon-like Beroes (Cy- 
dippe pileus); and we see it also in the sea-urchins and star-fish, 
and in the fossil crinoids or lily-animals. 

In the Articulata, the typical form of structure is that of jointed 
seoments or rings, aS we observe in the common earth-worm and 


354 THE GEOLOGIST. 


the leech, and in the various modifications offered in the lobster and 
crab-tribes, the spiders, the centipedes, and ordinary insects, as 
beetles, moths, and flies. 

All these classes (termed, as a whole, Invertebrates) are remark- 
able for the absence of any wternal skeleton or support, except in 
the cuttle-fish, the “pen” or solid plate of which 1s internal, although 
not approaching the character of a framework of bones, while the 
animal is otherwise, through the nautilus thoroughly identified 
with the more usual characters of the mollusca. 

Between this class and the true Mollusca are certain animals 
which possess more or less similar parts and organs to the shell- 
fish proper, but which yet differ from them in either being seated 
in cup-like cells linked together by a horny or calcareous stem, 
or in being enveloped in a bag-like skin or tunic, and in bemg 
divested of any proper shell. These are termed Molluscoidea, or 
Mollusca- (shell-fish) resembling animals. Such are the Bryozoa 
or moss-like encrusting-animals—Flustra, Hschara, Plumatella, 
&e., and both the simple and the compound Ascidians or 
Tunicata, 

In the Mollusca (soft-bodied animals) or shell-fish are included 
very considerable ranges of development in the rank of organic life. 
All possess a stomach, nerves in the form of ganghonic cores and 
threads, organs of digestion, and more or less of locomotion, and a 
single (univalve) or double (bivalve) solid calcareous shell. Some, 
the lowest in grade, are headless, as the oyster ; others are of high 
organization, and approach towards the fishes, namely, the Cepha- 
lopoda, or cuttle-fish. 

The next great division of the animal-kingdom, which we now 
approach, is characterized on the contrary by the possession of an 
internal framework of osseous supports or bones, and especially of a 
continuous series of a particular form, vertebra, connected together 
by muscles and hgaments into a vertebral column or back-bone, as 
it is famiharly termed. This vertebral column is cartilaginous 
and almost rudimentary in some fishes, while in others it is com- 
paratively solid and bony. In the Fish-tribe the whole column is 
adapted to flexible motion, generally lateral or from side to side, 
and the ribs, skull, and fins are also modified for the free propul- 


SALMON—-ON THE FORMATION OF ORE-VEINS. 355 


sion of the creature through the water, the medium in which it is 
destined to pass its existence. 

From the fish we pass upwards to the Sele in which we have 
a considerable advance of organization, and the first decided traces 
of fore and hind limbs or legs for terrestrial or amphibious locomo- 
tion. The heart of reptiles has but one ventricle, and the circulation 
of their blood is sluggish and slow; and indeed their whole organ- 
ization is far inferior to the animals of the next and highest class of 
animals, the Mammalia. ‘ : 

In these last the blood is warm ; the heart is possessed of auricles 
and ventricles; the circulation free and rapid; and the internal 
skeleton of the highest perfection of development. At the top of the 
class stands man, the most intellectual and most highly organized of 


all created things. 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE FORMATION OF 
ORE-VEINS. 


(Translated from the German of PRoressoR BERNHARD CortTa, of 
Freiberg, with an Introductory Notice on the Study of Mineral 
Vems and Metalliferouws Deposits, by H. C. Satmon, Esq., Plymouth.) 


I propose, from time to time, in the pages of this magazine, to 
bring before geologists and geological students translations or 
abstracts of some of the most authoritative memoirs of foreign 
geologists on the subject of mineral veins and metalliferous deposits. 

Notwithstanding the great commercial value of the metallic mines 
of the United Kingdom, the subject of mineral veins and metal- 
liferous deposits has not, of late years, occupied the serious attention 
of many men of recognized scientific position in this country: the late 
Sir Henry de la Beche, Mr. W. Jory Henwood, and Mr. Warington 
Smyth are those best known. The strong distaste which un- 
doubtedly exists to inquiries in this field of geology is due to many 
causes which it would be out of place to discuss here. I may 
nevertheless be permitted to say that, however just this feeling may 


356 THE GHOLOGIST. 


have been in its origin, a continued shrinking from all attempts to 
grapple with the difficulties which admittedly beset this subject is 
likely to retard the progress of some of the most important branches 
of chemical and physical geology. The successful solution of many 
obscure problems can only be hoped for from a long, patient, and 
accurate examination of the never-ceasing processes of nature work- 
ing deep in the recesses of the earth, and which are only open to 
observation in those wonderful excavations which, by the patient 
toil of years upon years, have been made accessible to us in our 
mining’ districts. 

The history of science teaches us that the prevalence of specula- 
tion (theorising) is generally in inverse ratio to that of observation. 
When correct facts are few, the vaguest speculations are the most in 
vogue. The subject at present under our consideration forms no ex- 
ception to this experience. While our knowledge of the facts of 
metalliferous deposits seems, to me, to have remained almost 
stationary for the last generation, the same cannot be said of specu- 
lations, or so-called theories, as to their origin. These have been 
abundant enough; but although they form an injurious and retard- 
ing element to the progress of true information, they do not stand 
alone, nor I believe pre-eminent, in this respect. The great evil 
connected with this subject is a tendency to state as facts what are 
in truth often nothing but opimions—and probably very incorrect 
opinions: “dWillusions systématiques qui nous porteraient 4 con- 
sidérer comme des faits positifs ce qui n’est encore que dans le 
vague des conjectures.”* The grave errors arising from this cause 
are, | am satisfied, far greater than are at all suspected. On future 
occasions I shall take an opportunity of referring to some that have 
come under my own observation. 

If we now turn to the Continent we find, if not a very brilliant 
advance, yet a certain and steady progress both in observation and 
generalization. This of course is almost entirely due to the ex- 
istence, in the principal continental states, of educated mining corps, 
under whose immediate superintendence all operations must be 


carried on—the government whom they represent being in most 


* Fournet, “Htudes sur les dépots métalliféres,”’ p. 385. 


SALMON—ON THE FORMATION OF ORE-VEINS. See 


cases the proprietors of all mines and minerals in their respective 
countries. In France, in Germany, in Russia, and in other states, a 
very extensive and a very high-class literature is devoted to the sub- 
ject; and the result, if not equal to what English energy would 
produce with the same means, at least surpasses, a hundred-fold, any- 
thing we do possess. Among these, the German mining literature, 
as might be expected from the countrymen of Werner, stands pre- 
eminent ; and is particularly valuable from its characteristic minute- 
ness, and also from the great and accurate mineralogical knowledge 
of the German engineers.* 

As I am strongly convinced of the importance of the study of 
mineral veins, not merely for useful purposes, but also in a purely 
scientific point of view, it has struck me that the publication, m an 
accessible form, of some of the most considered of these observations 
and disquisitions would afford a secure basis as to facts, and a worthy 
guide as to opinion, invaluable as an aid to the student who, quitting 
the more beaten paths of paleontology, may venture to enter 
upon the as yet almost unfrequented road to distinction offered 
by the exploration of the mineralogical, chemical, and physical 
departments of geology, of which the inquiry into the circum- 
stances of the origin of mineral veins is undoubtedly one of the 
most important. 

In selecting memoirs for translation or abstract, I shall take par- 
ticular care to include those which represent the distinctive schools 
of opinion. Professor Cotta’s memoir which follows is generally 
considered to be the most compact exposition known of the hypo- 
thesis which it sets forth. 

As loose and inaccurate language is fatal to satisfactory nvestiga- 
tions of any branch of science, and as the nomenclature of mineral 


* Tn institutimg a comparison between English and foreign mining literature 
J am not unmindful of the publications of the Geological Survey. The most 
valuable of these, relating to mining subjects,—Sir H. de la Beche’s memoir 
on South Wales, and that of Mr. Jukes on the South Staffordshire Coal-field— 
do not relate to metallic ves, and are consequently excluded from the scope 
of my observation. This leaves Mr. Warington Smyth as the only Survey 
writer on metalliferous deposits. His papers are, with those of Mr. W. J. 
Henwood, about the only modern ones of much value that we possess; for they 
are the result of rea/ observation, and not mere industrious collections of 
hearsays. 


NO. TH: eH 


358 THE GEOLOGIST. 


veins abounds with this looseness and inaccuracy, I take the present 
opportunity of giving a few definitions on the subject, which I shall 


continue as occasion may require. 


DEFINITIONS RELATING TO VEINS AND Meratiirerous Deposits. 


I. English miners commonly say that such and such a rock con- 
tains no mineral, meaning thereby that it contains no metallic 
mineral, or mineral of the useful metals. As all rocks consist of 
minerals, of course such an expression is incorrect. In speaking of 
the minerals of the useful metals they should be described as metallic 
minerals or ores. 

II. As all rocks consist of minerals, it is evident, when the ex- 
pression mineral-vein is applied exclusively to those vems containing 
ores, that such limitation is also incorrect. Mineral-veins are uni- 
versal in every formation, but ore-veins only are generally valuable 
to man. Rock-veins also occur. The following are definitions of 
these three classes of veins :— 

Rocx-Vetns are fissures filled up with such mineral aggregates as 
also occur in large masses as rocks; as for example, granite, elvan, 
ereenstone, or sandstone. 

MInERAL-VEINS, on the other hand, are fissures filled up with 
minerals, or combinations of minerals, such as do not occur as rocks ; 
as for example, crystallized fluor-spar, baryte, quartz, &e. 

OreE-VEINS are either mineral-veins or rock-veins, in which ores are 
always present. 

iil. From these definitions it appears that ores may occur in rock- 
veins as well as mineral-veins. They may also occur in rock-masses 
which are not veins, but may be beds, or stocks, which latter is the 
German word for an ore-containing rock-mass that is neither a vein 
nor a bed. Stocks are divided into 

STANDING-STOCKS, irregular ore-containing rock-masses with some- 
thing vein-lke in their character ; 

Lyinc-Srocxs, the same, with something of a bed-like character. 

Brps are accumulations of ore, or of rock-masses containing ore, 
lying parallel to the stratification in stratified rocks. 


IV. The expressions mineral-veins and metalliferous deposits are 


SALMON—ON THE FORMATION OF ORE-VEINS. 359 


not identical. The latter is applied to all ore-containing deposits, 
whether the ore be in rock-veins, mineral-veins, beds, stocks, or 
irregular and undefinable masses; while the term mineral-vein is 
always used within the strict limits of the definition. 

V. The study of mineral-veins has a geological interest in no wise 
depending on those veins containing ores ; and the study of the dis- 
tribution of the ores of the useful metals, in whatever form they may 
occur, has a scientific interest quite distinct, and of a different class, 
from that of mineral-veins. The study of mineral-veins, and, the 
study of metalliferous deposits, are consequently not identical pur- 
suits ; yet they are very nearly allied, inasmuch as by far the greater 
mass of metalliferous or ore deposits do occur in mineral-veins. 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE FORMATION OF OrzE-VEINS. From 
the German of Brernyarp Corrs, Professor of Geognosy at the 
Mining Academy of Freiberg.* 


The formation of ore-veins should not, in any case, be regarded as 
an isolated phenomenon ; it is intimately connected with the forma- 
tion or metamorphism of certain rocks, and is only a particular, or 
special, effect of certain geological causes. 

It was a very general and not unnatural mistake of the early in- 
vestigators in the modern school of special geology that, freed from 
the general and vague hypotheses on the formation of the earth pre- 
valent in the past century, and having their attention concentrated 
on the observation of isolated geological phenomena, they should 
consider and endeavour to account for them as being independent 
of each other and without any necessary connection. The explana- 
tion discovered or devised to account for one particular case was be- 
lieved to be applicable to all others in any measure analogous to it. 
The consequences were, on the one side, too sharp a separation of 
special branches, and on the other, too great a striving after large 
generalizations. As they endeavoured to explain the origin of one 
ore-vein without reference to the meidents of its particular locality, 
so they would have it that all ore-veins, without distinction, 
originated in a similar manner. Indeed, some of the latest and 


* Gangstudien, Vol. L., p. 85. 


360 THE GEOLOGIST. 


most eminent writers on this subject have fallen into this mistake. 
It almost appears as if they had forgotten that the expression vein 
only distinguishes the form of an occurrence, by no means its nature; 
and that particular species of ores (native metals, sulphides of 
metals, oxides and hydrates) are found in veins with very varied 
combinations, and under very diverse circumstances. 

Another mistake of early geologists was that they were always 
prone to consider geological events as caused by a wholly peculiar 
state of things belonging to an anterior world concluded with the 
appearance of man. This doctrine was but too favourable to the 
growth of the most unsound and groundless hypotheses. Nothing 
was at that time impossible in the eyes of geologists; they had no 
regard to the analogies of existing causes; scarcely much indeed for 
the essential laws of nature. It was chiefly Sir Charles Lyell who 
successfully combated this doctrine. He showed that the magni- 
ficence of the result was extraordinarily heightened by the per- 
manency of the causation; and that we had not necessarily to assume 
new sets of causes, different from those now in action, in order to 
account for the earth’s surface as we now see it. According to this 
geologist, existing causes acting through periods of unlimited dura- 
tion are sufficient to explain all geological phenomena. But he and 
his school have evidently carried this doctrine to an extreme, since 
he insists that there exists no recognizable proofs of any progressive 
development in the state of our earth, only a constant metamor- 
phism ; while an immense mass of facts affords very strong evidence 
of a progressive development of the earth, arising from its continued 
gradual cooling. Of these, I shall here merely point to the very 
remarkable differences in composition and structure that exists be- 
tween the older and newer eruptive rocks, and to the succession of 
the various types of organic life recognized by fossil remains. This 
succession most undoubtedly leads, by its convergence, to a vanish- 
ing point, when as yet there existed no organic life on the earth. 

The acceptance of the doctrine of a gradual development of the 
earth by slow cooling is supported by many facts, and suffices to 
explain the totality of geological phenomena and the general forma- 
tion of the solid crust of the earth, although isolated cases of 
obseurity still remain. 


ee ee, ee 


SALMON—ON THE FORMATION OF ORE-VEINS 361 


Assuming, consequently, this mode of development, I shall now 
endeavour to throw a passing glance at the peculiar processes of 
vein-formation in general. In the present state of science of course 
such an assumption is to a great extent a mere matter of belief’; 
but, believing it, we cannot, although it may be incapable of absolute 
proof, wholly banish it from science. If we take it only so far as it 
is supported by facts, and always bear steadily in mind that beyond 
that it is merely hypothetical, the assumption cannot be productive 
of disadvantage. On the other hand hypotheses have their use, if 
we do not absolutely and blindly resign ourselve to them, since they 
challenge further confirmation, and thereby lead to investigations in 
definite directions. 

I shall consequently here endeavour to give a general geological 
explanation of ore-veins, without particularly specifying the grounds 
upon which it is based. These I shall pre-suppose as generally 
known and recognized, and shall only in some cases, where I deem 
it necessary, go into a nearer examination. 

With the exception of some, consisting almost wholly of iron- 
stone, we find ore-veins pre-eminently in the older rocks. Most 
frequently in the crystalline schists (gneiss, mica-slate, &c.); in 
ancient eruptive formations, as granite, syenite, greenstone, por- 
phyry, &c.; in grauwacke formations ; and as far as the Magnesian- 
limestone (Zechstein). Rarely, on the other hand, in the newer 
sedimentary formations ; in such they occur in the Muschelkalk and 
Lias at Milhau, in the south of France, and in Chili and Algiers in 
members of the chalk-formation. Their occurrence is equally rare 
in trachytic, basaltic, or phonolitic rocks. 

like the old crystalline rock-masses, the veins are in general 
found in mountain districts, not in plains, and very usually in con- 
nection with these rocks—eranite, greenstone, porphyry, &c., which 
for the most part are penetrated by them. 

These general facts point to a certain connection between the 
older eruptive rocks and ore-veins, to which Fournet also, in a trea- 
tise translated by me, specially directs attention. But the proba- 
bility of such a co-ordination is much increased by the circumstance 
that, at least in Germany, the relative age of these eruptive rocks is 
almost the same as that of the ore-veins, that is, they both belong to 


362 THE GEOLOGIST. 


one great period. Here also they only in general penetrate the sedi- 
mentary formations as far as the Magnesian-lhmestone, into which 
certainly ore-veins have more frequently penetrated than have 
granite, porphyry, or greenstone. 

Now if we examine these old crystalline massive rocks somewhat 
more closely, we find that they contain, tolerably often, the elements 
of ore-velns as accessory mixtures, or chemically combined with 
their essential constituents. These (metal-contents) usually increase 
with the diminution of the volume with which the rocks project on the 
earth’s surface. Where the latter occur in great masses they are then 
mostly very free from metallic particles, or only contain them on 
their contact edges and in their small stock- or vein-formed ramifi- 
cations. The following may serve as examples: the Zinnstockwerke 
of Altenberg, Zinnwald, Geier, &c.; the ore-containing greenstones 
of Schwarzenberg; many magnetic-iron stocks, and ore-contaiming 
porphyry-veins. Indeed, the outer solid crust of massive rocks seems 
often to be richer in metals than the regions lying beneath it; and 
from the destruction of such a crust may have been derived the rich 
stream-works, which are or have been found in districts where in the 
contiguous rock scarcely a trace of tim-ore can be discovered, as 
for example in the granite country at Weissenstadt in the Fich- 
telgebirge. 

Can we not, under these circumstances, suppose the massive rocks 
to be the original bearers of the metal contents of ore-veinms? It is 
a supposition which can be brought into the most beautiful harmony 
with the theory of the cooling of terrestrial bodies. Of course, pro- 
visionally, it can be nothing but a hypothesis. But let us endeavour 
to build further on this hypothesis, and by means of it to explain 
certain facts. Of course we must guard ourselves, in doing so, from 
subordinating and accommodating the facts to the hypothesis; the 
hypothesis must rather be modified to suit the facts, and if not it 
must be abandoned. 

Let us likewise assume, also provisionally, an original distribution 
of the elements of ore-veins in the crystalline massive rocks, that 1s, 
in the eruptive portions of the original fluid nucleus, and let us see 
how this assumption suits the facts. Where these rocks occurred in 
great masses, they cooled very slowly, with the exception of their 


A ae 


SALMON—ON THE FORMATION OF ORE-VEINS. 363 


outer edges and upper crusts. In consequence of which the heavier 
and more fusible particles (in comparison to the rest of the mass) 
which were not chemically combined, had time to sink to the 
bottom, somewhat as in our blast-furnaces; and this may be the 
reason why the great masses of the eruptive rocks contain rich 
metallic mixtures in the highest degree at their rapidly-cooled con- 
tact-edges and upper crust. Similarly, in the small stock- or vein- 
formed ramifications of great masses the cooling supervened more 
quickly, so that the metallic particles in them frequently not having 
time to sink down, solidified simultaneously with the mass; and 
the same holds good also, ina certain degree, for many of these 
massive rock-yeins which are to be considered as the pressings-up of 
the still fluid under-regions into the already consoldated upper- 
parts. In fact, veins of granite in granite, syenite, and granulit 
oftener contain metallic particles, particularly magnetic-iron ore and 
pyrites, than those great rock-tracts themselves ; so that it is tolerably 
equal whether they penetrate merely the solidified crust of their 
mother-rock, or that of the neighbouring rock, only that in the latter 
case their cooling may have supervened more quickly. 

The smaller masses, or stocks, of granitic rocks are particularly 
distinguished by containing tin-ore. This ore, as well as its usual 
companion, wolfram, les partly finely distributed in the mass of the 
rock (granite, greisen, porphyry,) and partly crystallized out into 
fine reticulated contraction-fissures, which were probably generated 
by cooling before the constituents were all solidified. Quartz, 
chlorite, mica, and tourmaline are crystallized out with these ores ; 
and if these small ore-veins contain, at the same time, here and 
there, galena, apatite, blende, or asphalt, fluor-spar, iron-spar, arra- 
gonite, or a second quartz deposition, and stolzite or lead-salts, then 
these were evidently not formed until afterwards, by sublimation or 
infiltration, or generated by a partial change of existing constituents. 
But when the deeper regions of these particularly rich metallic 
stocks, in which, in spite of the rapid cooling of the surface, still 
more metallic particles had accumulated than on the superficies, and 
remained longer fluid on account of their easier fusibility, became 
again eruptive or injective, that is, penetrated into the fissures of the 
former solidified or of the neighbouring rock, they could then form 


364 THE GEOLOGIST. 


compact tin-holding ore-veins (like those at Hhrenfriedersdorf in 
Saxony) in and near the stock-formed masses. 

We here see four or five modes of vein-fillimg in connection with 
one principal event—the eruption of a crystallized massive rock : 
they are, crystallization out of the yet soft neighbouring rock, sub- 
limation, infiltration, alteration, and injection in a hot fluid con- 
dition; and many of these modes of filling up are found combined 
in one rock-fissure. 

Similarly situated to these tin-containing granites are the ore- 
containing greenstones in the neighbourhood of Schwarzenberg in 
Saxony, only the latter are mostly pressed into narrow parallel 
fissures in the slate, and are therefore, although not more important, 
much richer in metal than the former. I think I have already, in 


1833, sufficiently proved their injective origin.* In them also the - 


sublimation-, infiltration-, and alteration-products are added to the 
original injected vein. When we find, in the same neighbourhood, 
greenstone-veins as free from ore as the others are rich in it, we 
must remember that the circumstances of the injection and cooling 
may have been extremely different. . 

It is a distinguishing feature of all these plutonic injective and 
secretion veins that their mineral species (which they contain) are 
never carbonates, fluor-spar, or baryte, but hornblende, augite, 
garnet, quartz, mica, and felspar, and such other minerals as usually 
eccur as constituents of massive rocks. 

The porphyry-veins also, in the environs of Freiberg, contain 
manifold ores. In the vein which passes near the Muldener Hiitte, 
pyrites is found thickly sprinkled; and in a new quarry opposite 
this same Hiitte there are a number of druses and vein-like cavities 
m the porphyry, covered with coatings of pyrites, galena, blende, 
calespar, and baryte. These same minerals occur here not only in 
lenticular clefts and fissures, but also entirely enclosed as small nests 
in the porphyry, to which they evidently most intimately belong. 
Similarly, the porphyry-veins of the Nonnen- and Fursten-waldes at 
KI. Waltersdorf are interpenetrated with many ore-holding quartz- 
branches. 


* Krlauterungen zur Geogn., Karte von Sachsen, Th. IT, 8S. 217—246. 


ee ee ee ee 


SALMON—ON THE FORMATION OF ORE-VEINS. 365 


At Hutte, two leagues from Freiberg, on the edge of the Tha- 
rander porphyry-mass, and in an isolated stock-form mass, galena, 
blende, and pyrites likewise occur in drusy vesicles of the porphyry, 
and gold is even said (although not on entirely reliable authority) to 
be found in the pyrites. But what are particularly and indisputably 
important for our considerations are the ore-holding felsite-rock or 
porphyries in the neighbourhood of Braunsdorf, near Freiberg, 
which H. Miller has investigated and especially described in this 
volume. 

Now is it not, at all events, a very remarkable circumstance that 
in the eruptive porphyry-formations of the environs of Freiberg the 
same ores and minerals occur disseminated which entirely prevail in 
the ore-veins of the same neighbourhood? Certainly, these ore- 
veins are in general of more recent origin than the porphyries, 
which they almost everywhere penetrate. But H. Miller has shown 
that, at the Reimsberger Gliick Mgg. of Emanuel Erbstolln, the oldest 
Freiberger ore-veins, those of the great quartz-formation, are also 
penetrated and disturbed by certain porphyries, and that consequently 
both formations—ore-veins and porphyries—belong to one epoch, 
in the sense that the fillmg-up of the ore-veins in general is to be 
considered as a consequence of the porphyry-eruptions. 

A new set of statements or a novel experience can never be sup- 
ported by too many facts. I shall therefore here again cite that the 
dolomitic limestone, which at Tharander lies in the oldest clay-slate, 
sometimes contains, exactly at the point where it is disturbed by the 
porphyry, crystals of pyrites, copper-pyrites, galena, blende, and 
baryte, in drusy vesicles. May we not suppose that the occurrence 
of these minerals here is conditional upon the contiguity of the por- 
phyry, as in the Freiberger ore-veins ? 

As volcanic activity on the land or at the bottom of the sea really 
by no means consists merely in the pressing-up of lava, but 1s most 

intimately connected with great earthquakes—the opening of 
"fissures, the exhalations of gas and vapours, and the production of 
hot and mineral springs—so it is also certain that the pressing-up of 
the older massive rocks was combined with hke complicated events. 
And if, in those earlier periods of geological time, we are entitled to 
assume the existence of a thick heavy atmosphere, and, as a con- 
VoL. ll. GG 


366 THE GEOLOGIST. 


sequence, at the level of the sea itself a higher boiling point of 
water, coupled with a generally higher temperature of terrestrial 
bodies, it must follow that the dissolvmg power of water was ex- 
tremely heightened, as indeed is even now the case in deep fissures 
and under high pressure, as for example in the geysers of Iceland. 

Under such circumstances it would be possible that the water dis- 
solved not only quantitatively but also qualitatively far more consti- 
tuents than is at present the case, and especially than we can 
dissolve in our laboratories. In consequence of the general higher 
temperature of the earth, it was at the same time possible that the 
water could raise these dissolved ingredients to a higher level than 
at present. G. Bischoff has shown that the constituents of those 
class of ore-veins which in their composition resemble those at Frei- 
berg are soluble in water under certain circumstances and in certain 
combinations. With reference to this, I think we can place the 
most implicit confidence in the excellent memoir on the subject in 
Leonhard and Bronn’s “ Jahrbuch,” 1844, p. 257, although I cannot 
share the opinions founded thereupon as to the infiltrative formation 
of all ore-veins. I must admit, however, that Bischoff has proved 
the possibility of the infiltrative fillmg-up of such ore-veins as those 
of Freiberg. It is required, therefore, on this subject only to show 
that the hypothesis is in harmony with the independent facts and 
with the foregoing remarks. The first can only be done step by 
step in this volume, the last I shall proceed at once to investigate. 

A necessary consequence of the inequality of the temperature in 
the deeper and higher regions or zones of the water-filled fissures or 
fissure-systems must have been a constant circulation of water. 
That which at a great depth it dissolved out of the heated eruptive 
rocks (which are, according to our supposition, the primitive seat 
of metallic elements) it again deposited at a certain level above it, at 
a definite temperature. The deposition went on, according to cir- 
cumstances, either more or less energetically, or slowly and period- 
ically, and the deposit was in consequence either massive or 
stratified. The amount of this deposition must, at any one time, 
have been unequal at the various levels of the fissures, according to 
their temperature ; and also, in like manner, the variable conduct- 
ibility, chemical affinity, and dissimilarity of the neighbouring rock 


SALMON—ON THE FORMATION’ OF ORE-VEINS. 367 


must have exercised an influence upon it. But if, on the extinguish- 
ing of the plutonic activity of the whole district the mean tempera- 
ture of each level continued, in consequence of the cooling, to 
decrease gradually while these processes of dissolving and vein- 
depositing still continued, it is evident that the zones of unequal 
deposition must descend deeper, and become mixed together pro- 
miscuously. Since we have found that the original inequality of 
temperature and the variations existing im the neighbourig rocks 
might give rise to a zone-like distribution of the materials, so the 
result would necessarily become much more complicated by the 
alteration of one of these conditions—temperature. The same 
materials which were deposited at the beginning in the upper levels, 
next the walls of the fissures, as outer bands, would by the con- 
tinued cooling be repeated in deeper regions, in the middle of the 
vein. But the consequences would become yet more complicated, if 
we must assume that in a vein-district all the fissures were not 
opened at the same time, but by degrees, at successive periods, and 
after the process of filling up had already begun; and further, that 
of those formed at the same time, some became quite filled up before 
others. As there results from a gradual depression of the tempera- 
ture of the whole vein-region a kind of series and succession of suc- 
cessively deposited minerals, so it would happen from the different 
periods of fissure-formation that certain fissures might only contain 
the earliest mineral-deposits, others only the latest, while some 
would haye a very extended succession. Thus, and no otherwise, 
can the so-called vein-formations of distinct districts have originated. 
They are nothing else than the products of unequal stadii of cooling 
of one and the same eruptive or vein-forming process. The frequent 
parallelism and grouping together of veins of similar formation is 
very easily explained by the circumstance that earthquakes generally 
open more or less parallel fissure-groups. We need only consider 
such a vein-region as a region in which, in the course of a thousand 
years, many fissure-opening disturbances have followed upon each 
other. 

If these so-called vein-formations sometimes show great analogies 
of mineralogical composition and of successive age in very remote 
regions, we need not after this consider them in any way as contem- 


368 THE GHOLOGIST. 


poraneous—as formations acted upon by processes affecting the 
whole earth’s surface at the same time. If our supposition be cor- 
rect, they are only the everywhere tolerably analogous consequences 
of local eruption, which may have been very far separated from each 
other by time. The baryte-veins at Freiberg, in the Thtiringer 
Wald, and in the south of France, may belong to very different 
geological epochs; they are to be considered, wherever they are 
found, as representing the same stadium of local eruptive activity. 
The same holds good for the regular succession of minerals found in 
veins, druses, and amygdaloids ; the same series may have repeated 
itself at very different times. The stages of this series cannot, 
therefore, be used generally to define age like those of the 
sedimentary formations ; they intimate only the relatwe age of the 
isolated local process of formation. 

We shall now endeavour to apply these general theories to the 
more essential phenomena of the Freiberg ore-veins. 


(To be continued). 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 


Fretp-MEETINGS OF THE GEOLOGISTS’ ASssocIATION.—Sir,—In the last 
number of your excellent magazine a letter appeared, in which a suggestion 
was brought forward that it would be well for the Geologists’ Association to 
institute occasional field-meetings.. Such a course would be, without doubt, 
exceedingly advantageous, as it would tend to make the members better 
acquainted with each other, and to increase their interest in the science. For 
my own part I should be very glad to see the plan adopted, knowing that a 
lecture giving at a natural section and on the fossils zz setu is far more valuable 
and instructive than one illustrated by the most expensive diagrams. The 
committee of the Geologists’ Association, however, feel they are not in a posi- 
tion to carry out the proposal durig the present year; but they hope, and 
they have deputed me to make this statement, that durmg the next they shall 
be able to invite the members to a geological ramble, and to spend a summer’s- 
day both pleasantly and profitably—I am, Sir, yours faithfully, Tuomas 
WILTSHIRE. 

ARTIFICIAL OricGIN oF Rock-Bastns.—In your magazine, valuable on 
account of the popular style in which it treats our beautiful science, I was last 
month very pleased to read the remarks of Mr. Rupert Jones on the weathermg 
of granite, and especially that portion of them referring to the rock-basins of — 
Dartmoor. Having been born and brought up in the neighbourhood of this 
district, I happen to know the rock-basins, logging-stones, and cheese-shaped 
granite-rocks well; and it is because | am obliged to take exception to the 
remarks of Mr. Rupert Jones on the formation of the “ rock-basins,” that I 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 369 


am induced to ask you to find room in your next issue for these cursory 
remarks of mine. 

I may perhaps remark first that there is a fine specimen of a logging-stone 
at Lustleigh, somewhat similar in shape to that of St. Levin’s, Cornwall, shown 
in your engraving last month. 

Lustleigh is a small village in the Dartmoor district, about four miles from 
the Blackistone Rock, also shown im one of your engravings. The wildness 
and beauty of the neighbourhood of this village will amply repay a visit from 
any of your readers who may happen to take the West for their holiday-ramble 
this year. It is about fourteen miles from Exeter. The precipitous hills, per- 
haps I ought to say mountains, for mountains they are in a geological sense, 
and the immense granite-rocks, im vast numbers, protruding from the ground 
give an air of the wildest confusion to the scenery, so that we might easily 
picture to the mind the tumultuous scene once upon a time enacted there, and 
which may be yet again. 

Being a somewhat of an antiquarian, as well as a geologist, I cannot keep 
silence when I see the formation of the rock-basins scientifically explained 
away, yet explained away it is not, for nothing is settled; and the suggestions 
of both Dr. M‘Culloch and Mr. Ormerod seem to me highly improbable, as in 
a great measure also do the remarks of Mr. Jones. 

Jn all the basins, whether deep or shallow, at times may be found quartz and 
felspar fragments of an angular shape, and sometimes schorl mixed with it. 
These materials form a sand of various degrees of coarseness—sometimes fine, 
sometimes coarse, and are blown into the basis by the wind, but in no case 
are they formed of the débris of the granite-basin in which those materials are 
found. That many of the basins have been enlarged by the decomposing power 
of water and the action of the atmosphere cannot, I think, be doubted; but to 
ascribe the actual formation of all the rock-basins to such a cause is a far- 
fetched supposition, and totally unwarranted by the facts. 

Much of the porphyry of Dartmoor is of a very soft nature, extremely lable 
to decomposition from the united agency of the atmosphere and water; and 
the eye can quickly detect the harder and softer rocks. These rock-basins 
were undoubtedly at one time all circular, and were equally undoubtedly the 
work of Druidic hands. This is not the place to enter into the mystical 
symbolical circlic rites of the Druids, suffice it to say, therefore, that the circle 
was to them a holy thing; that such basins were used by them in their 
worship ; and that they chose earth’s wildest scenes as their temples. 

About eight or nine years since there was near Blackistone Rock a series of 
basins cut one into the other, in perhaps one of the hardest and most solid 
rocks of the whole district (the following sketch is a section) ; and, moreover, 


on one of the faces of the rock was carved a representation of a bullock, some- 
what worn away it is true by the mouldering work of centuries, yet still 
beautifully plam. The various basins were, so hard was the rock, almost as 


370 THE GEOLOGIST. 


fresh and as smooth as when they were first cut. Unfortunately, this perhaps 
most splendid Druidical remam in the kingdom, was sold by the farmer, Mr, 
Amory, on whose estate the rock lay, to a granite-mason of Exeter, who, an 
old and experienced hand, considered this the hardest and best piece of rock he 
had ever worked. No sign of apparent stratification, no tabular formation, no 
flaw, no crack in any part, but one sold, compact mass, without sign of decay 
anywhere. The plan of all these basins is the circle. Thus has this beautiful 
remnant of the past been lost to us, and methinks Mr. Jones’ remarks in this 
instance will quite fail in their application. The carving of the bullock and the 
circles are so decidedly Druidie, and the character of the rock so different from 
what is laid down in Mr. Jones’ remarks, that the contrary conclusion must of 
necessity be come to, viz., that this rock-basin at least was not caused by 
atmospheric action. There are many others which, though not so elaborate, 
must yet be put down in the same category. Some of the basis are indeed 
carved on rounded tors, the sides of which are sloping or smooth, and in which the 
projecting beds are neither frequent nor bold; such as do project being for the 
most part rounded at the edges, simply because the carvers looked not so much 
at the degree of hardness of the rock as to its position for the required purpose : 
therefore, as might be expected, the atmospheric and aqueous agency of cen- 
turies have elongated the circles by the wearmg of their sides in the manner 
described by Mr. Jones. Moreover, these rock-basis are not found in any part 
of the world where those executors of mystic forms could not reach to work, or 
where, perhaps, Druidic rites were not known. Surely, if the atmosphere is 
the cause, these rock-basins might be found in all granite regions, and in all 
latitudes. 

Whilst speaking of rock-basins I may perhaps mention the locality where 
they may be found in another and very different material. About a mile from 
the town of Chudleigh, and withim nine or ten miles of the district I have been 
speaking of, is Ugbrooke Park, the seat of Lord Clifford, one of the most 
beautiful for scenery, both near and distant, in the kmgdom. Aqueous agency 
in the old time did much for this beautiful park, in the conformation of the 
ground, from many parts of which bold masses of coralline rock, known as 
Devonshire marble, protrude from the surface. Near what was once a Danish 
encampment—which has a high mound round it about a mile in extent, and 
is as near a circle as possible—is a deep rocky gorge about half a mile in 
length, the walls m many places bemg quite perpendicular for a depth of 
perhaps two hundred or three hundred feet, in other places the slope from 
the top to the bottom is gradual and thickly wooded. Along this are 
footpaths to the bottom, and to various parts of the rocks. In the hollow 
lie some of the débris of this chasm—some blocks of stone, bemg cubes 
probably of twenty feet each way. Amongst these blocks flows a brook 
of beautiful water, sometimes bounding over them in cascades. We need 
not search far for the principal cause of the formation of this gorge. It 
is due to that frisking, sparkling brook (very often a torrent) at the foot. 
In these rocks are several large caverns where stalagmite and stalactite may be 
procured in abundance. Beautiful specimens also of magnesian markings on 
the limestone may at times be had of the quarrymen, but these are very scarce. 
I have some in my collection. There are several mines, chiefly of lead, im the 
neighbourhood, between the town of Chudleigh and the village of Christow, 
where beautiful specimens of minerals may be obtained. Very near also is the 
Bovey coal-field, a visit to which will repay the amateur geologist. Fossils 
may be obtained by the diligent searcher in many places around. 

But to return to the rock-basins. In the wildest part of the chasm many of 
them may be found cut in the large blocks of stone. They are uniform in size, 
quite circular, about six feet in diameter, and four or five feet deep, with flat 


toed 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 371 


bottoms, perpendicular sides, and as smooth as glass. Here too their position, 
regularity, and manner of formation, pot them out not as the operations of 
nature, but as the works of our forefathers, who delighted to worship the “ God 
of the storm, the thunder, and the tempest ;”’ who knew not the God of love, 
and who chose their temples accordingly—Francis E. Drake, Hill Field 
House, Leicester. 

THe DiscovVERER OF THE OLDHAMIA.—DEAR Sr1R,—In the last number 
of your most useful periodical, THe Gxrotoeist, which has reached me here— 
namely that for May 1859, I find what appears to be an erroneous statement. 
In anote at page 184 yousay, “The Oldhamie found in 1847 by Dr. Kinahan 
in the Cambrian-rocks of Bray Head were the first relics found in the Cambrian- 
rocks.” And again, at page 189, speaking of Bray Head, you remark, “ It was 
there, however, nine years before Mr. Salter’s discoveries in Shropshire, that 
the first relics of a primordial organized life were found by Dr. Kmahan.” I 
see also in another journal, the “Atheneum,” of April 23rd, 1859, in a brief 
notice of my zealous colleague and collector in Ireland, Mr. Flanagan, that he 
is stated to have been the “discoverer of the Oldhamia.” 

I think it desirable to place on record the facts of the case, not because I 
suppose that there is any credit attached to such a discovery, but simply be- 
cause it is always well to fix accurately the date of such circumstances. 

In vol. 11. of the “ Journal of the Geological Society of Dublin,” pages 57 and 
60 you will find a notice of a paper on Bray Head read by me to the Society, 
in which you will see these fossils noticed. I stated that I had not, up to that 
time, been successful in findmg “organic remains in the slate rocks of Bray 
Head, with the exception of some small zoophytic markings, which did not ap- 
pear referable to known genera.” This was first laid before the Society on the 
8th of May, 1844, and finally read on the 12th June, 1844. The paper was 
accompanied by a large collection of these zoophytes. This series was subse- 
quently submitted to my dear friend Edward Forbes, who carefully examined 
them, and on the 15th November, 1848, described their characters to the 
Geological Society of Dublin, giving to them the generic name of Oldhamia, 
which had been suggested two years before by Sir H. de la Beche. 

Mr. Flanagan subsequently, under my own directions—I beimg at that time 
in charge of the Geological Survey in Ireland—visited Bray Head, and carefully 
examined it for fossils. I personally pomted out to him the places where I had 
found these Oldhamia, and to the then known localities Mr. Flanagan added 
several others ; but so far from being the discoverer of these fossils, he was 
sent there specially by me to collect them. 

You will see from the above that the Oldhamiz were not discovered by Dr. 
Kinahan in 1847, but were publicly exhibited and referred to in 1844. They 
were in reality known to me in 1840, and I have sketches of them of that date ; 
but they were not made public till 1844. 

To Dr. Kinahan, geologists are indebted for very valuable contributions to 
our knowledge of these curious remains—additions made since I left Ireland, 
and I trust he may long continue to investigate the natural history of his 
native land with equal suecess—1l am, dear Sir, yours faithfully, THomas 
OxtpHam, Calcutta, 2nd July, 1859.—Mr. Mackie sincerely regrets the in- 
advertance referred to m Professor Oldham’s letter, which he prints in full, 
believing there are others who have been accidentally misled in like manner 
with himself, and that it is proper the real discoverer should have his just 
merit fairly acknowledged. 

ANCIENT CaNnoEs.—Sir,—Is there any reason, antiquarian or geological, 
why some of the rude canoes of very early date which have been found in peat 
and estuary deposits in this and other countries should not belong to that 
early age of the primitive men who were possibly associated on our planet with 


372 THE GEOLOGIST. 


the mammoth, the great herbivora, and the cave-animals ? Have any investi- 
gations of the deposits im which such relics have been found been made 
with sufficient care in any instance to determine their proper geological age ? 
T think such cases are well worthy of consideration in reference to the present 
highly interesting geological topic.—Yours truly, F. 8. A., London. 
Cretaceous Rocks in Norrouk aNnp SurrorK.—S1r,—On what geological 
formation are the eretaceous rocks in Norfolk and Suffolk superposed.—T. 
Warp, Ickworth—For the most part, we believe, on the Kimmeridge Clay. 


REVIEWS. 


Geological Survey of Canada.—Report of Progress for 1857. Toronto: J. 
Lovell. 1858. 


The report of progress of the geological survey of an important colony like 
Canada must always be, w.atever the merits of the report, a matter of 
much interest. It is a matter of interest alone to know how much or how 
little has been accomplished. The report which has recently been forwarded 
to us is that for the year 1857, presented to the Legislative Assembly on the 
31st March, 1858. 

One interesting item in it is the survey of the Huronian formation (the 
equivalent of our “ Longmynd” rocks) along the north shore of Georgian Bay, 
the chief seat of copper-mining in Canada. 

The rocks of this region are much distorted and dislocated, and those ex- 
amined in the district around Lake Hcho are altogether of Huronian age, with 
the exception of the flat parts near the shores of Lake George and the St. 
Mary river, which are probably unconformable Silurian strata. In order to 
follow out the structure of these altered and contorted Huronian rocks, a band 
of associated limestone was selected as the best developed feature, as well for 
its peculiar mineral character as from the presence above and below it of a 
very remarkable conglomerate. This band was followed for considerable dis- 
tances, and is about two hundred feet in thickness. It presents alternate 
layers of pale blue or whitish limestone and greenish calcareous and siliceous 
slate, usually in thin strata. About the middle of the mass there is a calca- 
reous breccia, generally in a massive bed, contaming angular fragments of 
greenstone, trap, and dark blue or blackish impalpable grained slate. 

The slate-conglomerate, both above and below the limestone, contains 
numerous rounded pebbles of various kinds, chiefly of syenite, quartz, gneiss, 
and jasper. The rocks beneath the lower slate-conglomerate are greenish 
siliceous slate and pale greenish quartzite; these are underlaid by greenstone, 
and below is a highly altered green chloritic slate, which is exposed in nearly 
vertical strata, forming high precipices at the extreme head of the lake. 

Above the upper slate-conglomerate a thinly lammated dark blue or blackish 
slate of very fine texture was observed interstratified with thin beds of dark 
grey quartzite, overlaid by whitish or pale grey quartzite in some parts suc- 
ceeded by a mass of greenstone, and in others gradually passing upwards into 
a quartzose conglomerate with blood-red jasper-pebbles. 

Great masses of trap appear to be irregularly interposed among the strata, 
which are also intersected by numerous fine-grained, compact, greenstone dykes. 

The order of succession and the thickness of the beds are thus given :— 


REVIEWS. ane 


Green altered slates of a chloritic character ...... 1,000 feet 
OT PEELS UTILS See ree ee 400 ,, 
Greenish siliceous slates interstratified with pale 

PEPE MIN GUALGALLO Foo... eccacesescvseevaes ages 1200 x 
PPMPEMUOPESIENE TALE (oc 5.50. cs. ved evcoslasdeceeectacers TSO008 55 
220018 LDS ner eae ee 250% 
“5 OE OT nr eR 800 _,, 
Dark-blue or blackish fine-grained slates with 

MSL Y QUALUZILEL «665.2 lee SLO 


Whitish or whitish-grey quartzite, passing into 
quartzose conglomerate with blood-red jasper- 
“EL LES od Gee eo dG Oe Rg er TOO 


EL BELDSIADTIG eet teat eg eae ae St ene ae 700:- ;, 


6,850 feet. 

Mr. Richardson contributes a valuable paper on the peninsula of Gaspé, his 
investigations having had for their object the ascertaming of the precise 
boundaries of the Lower and Upper Silurian, and Devonian rocks. 

The Gaspé sandstones are of Devonian age, and contain some remarkable 
fossil plants; they rest on the great limestone of Cape Gaspé (probably Upper 
Silurian), and this is again placed uncomformably on the dies of sandstones, 
conglomerate, limestone, and shale of the Middle and Lower Silurian. 

Mr. Robert Bell, attached to the exploring party of Mr. Richardson gives a 
report on the recent shells which he was instructed to collect. At the Brandy 
Pots, amongst other shells are recorded Mytilus edulis, Mya arenaria, 
Littorina rudis, Buccinum undatum. At other places visited during the expedi- 
tion were taken Pecten Islandicus, Spirorbis nautiloides (?), Solen ensis, Purpura 
lapillus. 

While walking through the woods of Hare Island, Mr. Bell observed 
numbers of Helix hortensis on the trunks of trees and on the leaves of wild 
grasses. ‘The species, he says, is one well known to have been imported from 
Europe; and the number of vessels from thence which take advantage of the 
safe anchorage of that place readily accounts for the presence of those snails. 

In speaking of the capeling, which the fisherman there use as bait for cod- 
fish, Mr. Bell states that the shoals of those fish “are occasionally so dense 
that the fish on the outside preventing those on the inside from escaping, a 
fisherman may go in amongst them without a possibility of their getting away, 
and take them out with a bucket or any other vessel,” as Sir William Logan 
informed him his Indians did in 1845 with a frymg-pan, “and in this way 
obtain bushels of them in a very short time.” On such occasions many of 
them are sometimes thrown on the beach by the waves, and occasionally they 
appeared to Mr. Bell to leap ashore, dying before they could struggle back. 
“T observed hundreds of them,” he says, “lying dead alone the margin of the 
water, and I can readily believe what I have heard, that in some parts they are 
occasionally found lying in heaps which would contain several bushels mingled 
with shells, seaweeds, and the remains of land-plants.” : 

One such heap observed by Sir William Logan measured thirty paces along 
the margin, while it was a foot deep in the middle and several feet wide, taper- 
ing away at each end. 

Mr. James Hall adds a valuable paper on Graptolites, to be illustrated by six- 
teen plates of specimens collected by the officers of the Canadian Survey. Mr. 
Billings, the paleontologist of the survey, has nearly thirty pages of the report 
devoted to his descriptions of the fossils obtained during the expedition, and 
determined by himself during the previous year. 

Mr. Sterry Hunt reports the results of his chemical investigations, in con- 

VOL. II. H 


374: THE GEOLOGIST. 


nection with the survey, for the previous year. These are chiefly analyses of 
various dolomites and magnesian limestones, and experiments to serve to ex- 
lain the conditions and mode of their formation. 

The term dolomite is employed to designate a mineral which, im its purest 
state, is composed of equivalent weights of carbonate of lime and carbonate of 
magnesia, these being in the proportion of 50 to 42, or im 100 parts of 54°35 
carbonate of lime, and 45°65 of carbonate of magnesia. ‘This compound is dis- 
tinguished from carbonate of hme by its superior density (2°85 to 2:90), by its 
somewhat superior hardness, and by its bemg much less readily attacked by 
acids than carbonate of lime. At ordimary temperatures it does not perceptibly 
effervesce with nitric or muriatic acids unless reduced to powder. Calcined it 
is said to yield a stronger mortar than ordinary lime, but slakes slowly and 
with little evolution of heat. 

A portion of the magnesia in dolomite is often replaced by protoxyd of iron, 
and more rarely by oxyd of manganese; those dolomites contaimimg carbonate 
of iron being generally yellowish or reddish on their weathered surfaces from a 
change of a portion of the iron into hydrated peroxyd, and those containing 
carbonate of manganese become brownish-black on the exterior from a similar 
cause. 

Besides the crystallized dolomites which occur in vems and cavities in 
various rocks, and have received the names of d¢tter-spar and pearl-spar (the 
latter in allusion to the pearly lustre of the faces of the rhombohedrons 
which are generally curved), we find this double carbonate forming great beds 
of a rock which 1s also known by the name of magnesian limestone. The 
yellow magnesian limestones of the Permian system in England are those best 
known, and have in some cases a total thickness of 300 feet. These are im- 
mediately overlaid by gypseous marls, to which succeed the limestones, gypsum, 
and rock-salt of the Triassic series. Similar magnesian limestones occur in the 
Devonian and Carboniferous formations in England and Russia; and, descending 
in the geological series, we find in the Saliferous group of Western Canada and 
New York-beds of dolomite with gypsum. Immediately below, in the Niagara 
group, there occurs a remarkable deposit of dolomite. Dolomites also occur 
mterstratified with pure lmestones in the Hudson River group; while im 
Michigan, Iowa, and Minnesota, the calcareous strata overlymg the Potsdam 
sandstone, and corresponding to the Calciferous sand-rock, are highly mag- 
nesian, often constituting true dolomites. 

Thin layers of dolomite are also met with among the limestones of the Chazy 
division in the island of Montreal. The argillaceous limestone from this for- 
mation at Hull (Canada), employed as an hydraulic cement, also contains about 
20 per cent. of magnesian carbonate. 

Beneath the oldest known fossiliferous rocks of Canada, among the lime- 
stones of the Laurentian series, are great beds of dolomite, sometimes fer- 
riferous, and often containing serpentine and other siliceous mimerals. 

Ascending from the Permian, we find the Jurassic formation of the Huropean 
Alps containing immense masses of dolomite; and the same occurs in the like 
deposits of France and Germany. 

In Gascony, and in the Paris basin, dolomites occur in the Cretaceous for- 
mation; and there is a deposit of dolomite in the Tertiary strata of Pont St. 
Maxence, in the valley of the Oise, in France. This latter, formimg irregular 
beds or masses several feet in thickness, reposes upon nummulitic limestone, 
and is overlaid by the calcaire grossier. Its condition is that of an incoherent 
sand, which consists, according to Damour, of nearly pure crystalline dolo- 
mite, with a little bitumen and some quartzose sand. Between it and the 
overlying fossiliferous limestone is a thin layer of yellowish tufaceous cellular 
limestone, which does not contain a trace of magnesia. 


REVIEWS. 375 


Mr. J. D. Dana has poimted out a dolomite of recent origin in Matea, an 
elevated coral island, near Taluti, where, among the limestones which he sup- 
poses to have been formed by the solidification of coral-mud, is one containing 
8°3 per cent. of magnesia, and another which, according to Prof. Silliman jun., 
yields 38°07 per cent. of carbonate of magnesia. This dolomite is compact, 
finely granular, tenaceous, and at the same time cavernous; its density in 
powder 2°83, its hardness above 4:0. Mr. Hunt’s analysis gave 38°25 per 
cent. of carbonate of magnesia 0°39 silica, 60°50 carbonate of lime. 

The preceding dolomites belong to marine formations, but dolomites are also 
said to occur in the lacustrme limestone at Dachingen, near Ulm, and in the 
brown-coal formation at Giessen. 

From the facts stated, it appears that the production of dolomites has been 
continued from the times of the earliest stratified rocks to the Tertiary period, 
and that it is even now going on. 

Apart from the altered crystalline dolomites of metamorphic strata, the 
generally crystallie texture of those of unaltered regions 1s remarkable. In 
some cases the rock is an aggregate of pearly, cleavable grains of dolomite, 
which occasionally have but little coherence, or are in the form of loose sand. 
At other times the rock is concretionary, having an oolitic or a botryoidal 
structure, the masses often exhibiting a radiated arrangement; more rarely 
compact varieties of dolomite are met with. The concretionary action has 
sometimes so far disturbed the original arrangement as to obliterate the marks 
of stratification ; and most dolomites exhibit cavities which have often been 
subsequently filled with deposits of other minerals, and seem to indicate a con- 
traction, apparently attendant upon chemical change after the deposition of the 
rock. 

A remarkable mode of occurrence is that im which dolomite forms the 
cement of breccias and conglomerates. Rocks of this kind occur im the 
Quebee division of the Hudson River-group, where rounded fragments of 
limestone, shale, and even of dolomite, have been re-cemented into a rock by 
the introduction of a crystalline ferriferous dolomite. Analagous to this is the 
well known conglomerate of the Permian formation near Bristol and in other 
parts of England, where, in hollows of the mountain-limestone are found ac- 
cumulations of fragments of this limestone, with others of coal-shale, mixed 
with the bones and teeth of saurians, the whole cemented together by a red or 
yellow dolomite, and resting unconformably upon the carboniferous strata. 
Similar conglomerates occur in the same formation in Normandy, where they 
inclose concretionary masses of nearly pure dolomite; while in the Permian 
rocks of the Vosges concretions of sandy dolomite occur, imbedded in layers of 
micaceous sandy clay, itself sometimes aggiutmated by a dolomitic cement. 

A crystalline ferriferous dolomite fills the shells of Orthoceras, Pleurotomaria, 
and Murchisonia, as well as small fissures m the non-magnesian “ Trenton” 
limestones of Ohawa; and similar examples occur in the Chazy-limestones of 
Montreal. While these dolomitic casts thus occur im pure limestone, on the 
other hand beds of the Niagara formation, m some places, present purely cal- 
careous corals embedded in a yellow magnesian limestone. 

Mr. Hunt then gives us analyses and more minute descriptions of numerous 
limestones and dolomites from various parts; the separation of the dolomitic 
portion from the limestone being effected on the principle laid down many years 
ago by Karsten, who pomted out that acetic acid in the cold scarcely attacks 
dolomite, although it readily dissolves carbonate of lime; hence, the magnesian 
limestones, when treated with this acid, leave a residue of dolomite. We have 
seen that pure dolomites consist of equal equivalents of the two carbonates : 
there are not wanting, however, rocks in which the magnesian carbonate pre- 
dominates over the lime, leading to the supposition of a mixture of magnesite 


376 THE GEOLOGIST. 


with the dolomite. Such examples occur in the Muschelkalk of Thuringia ; in 
the bituminous magnesian rock of the Salzberger Alps; in the brown-coal 
deposits of Giessen; in the Calciferous sand-rock of Lake Superior; in the 
variegated marls of the Keuper of Germany; and in a dark-grey rock of the 
same formation at Tubingen, and at Solothurn, in the analysis of some of 
which we perceive the transition from dolomites to a ferriferous magnesite. 

The question of the origin and formation of dolomites and magnesian lime- 
stones has long been regarded as one of extreme difficulty, and among the 
many solutions hitherto proposed, none appear to be satisfactory. We will, 
however, review them briefly. 

It is a well known fact that carbonate of magnesia occurs in but very small 
quantities in calcareous tufas and travertine. ‘The same thing is true in the 
case of limestones of organic origin, which are generally pure carbonate of lime. 
Such limestones are made up for the greater part of the remains, often finely 
comminuted, of corals and molluscs; the living species of these are in 
general nearly pure carbonate of lime, and recent corals usually contain less 
than one per cent. of magnesian carbonate. Miullepores are in like manner 
in the greater proportion, constituted of carbonate of lime; in some, however, 
the carbonate of magnesia attams from 16:0 to 19-0 per cent. of the morganic 
portion. These millepores are often very abundant, and a non-magnesian species 
forms beds on the northern shores of France that are worked for burning into 
lime; while a species, containing a large proportion of magnesia is very abund- 
ant on the coast of Algiers. M. Damour has called attention to the part 
these mellipores may play in the production of magnesian limestones in the 
“Annales de Chimie et de Physique” (8rd series, vol. xxx, p. 362). He, 
however, describes them as dissolvmg readily m acetic acid, and which would 
seem to indicate the absence of dolomite. 

The carbonates of lime and magnesia are both much more soluble in carbon- 
ated water than the double carbonate, which, according to Bischoff, yields little 
or no magnesia to a solution of carbonic acid. Grandjean and, after him, Sand- 
berger, supposes that certam dolomites may have been formed from limestones 
containing an admixture of carbonate of magnesia by the action of carbonated 
waters, which might give rise to dolomite and a soluble bi-carbonate of lime ; 
the iron and other metallic oxyd, bemg thus concentrated in the residue, their 
presence in some dolomites would be explained (Liebig and Kopp, “ Jahres- 
berischt,” 1848, English edition, vol. ii., p. 501). 

Forchammer, in attempting to illustrate by experiment the formation of 
dolomite, found that when a solution of bicarbonate of lime is mingled with 
sea-water at a boiling heat, the precipitated carbonate of lime carried down 
with it 12°33 per cent. of carbonate of magnesia; while, if carbonate of soda 
be mixed with the solution of bi-carbonate, the proportion of magnesian car- 
bonate in the precipitate may rise to 27°93 per cent. The amount of magnesia 
according to his statements appearing to augment in proportion with the in- 
crease of temperature. 

_ Haidinger long since endeavoured to explain the formation of dolomite and 
its frequent association with gypsum, by supposing that a re-action between 
carbonate of lime and sulphate of magnesia might give rise to sulphate of 
lime and carbonate of magnesia. At ordinary temperatures, however, the 
mverse affinities prevail. Mitscherlich found that a solution of gypsum 
was completely decomposed after fourteen days contact with carbonate of 
magnesia into sulphate of magnesia and carbonate of lime; and the same de- 
composition takes place when a solution of gypsum is filtered through dolomite. 
Haidinger, however, conjectured that at an elevated temperature these affinities 
might be reversed, and this has been confirmed by Morlot, who found that 
when a mixture of one equivalent of crystallized sulphate of magnesia, and two 


REVIEWS. 300 


equivalents of calcareous spar is heated in sealed tubes to 200 degrees centi- 
grade, it is completely converted into dolomite and sulphate of lime. 

Marignac, in like manner, found that at 200 degrees centigrade, carbonate 
of lime, with a solution of chlorid of magnesium, slowly gave rise to a double 
carbonate of lime and magnesia ; after six hours the product contaimed 52:0 per 
cent. of carbonate of magnesia (Favre. Bull. Soc. Geol. France, vol. vi., p. 318). 

De Sénarmont found in some experiments with mingled solutions of bi- 
carbonate of magnesia and chlorid of calcium, that at the ordinary temperature, 
and at temperatures below 100 degrees centigrade, a precipitate of pure car- 
bonate of hme separates, provided that the proportion of chlorid of calcium 
present is more than equivalent to the magnesia in solution; but at 150 degrees, 
whether the lime-salt be im excess or not, a precipitate of carbonate of magnesia 
is obtained with little or no hme. 

Taking the experiments of Morlot and the theory of Haidmger as a point 
of departure, Favre attempts to explai the formation of dolomites. He 
supposes that eruptions of igneous rocks at the bottom of a sea 500 or 600 
feet in depth would afford the necessary conditions of heat and pressure; and 
since the dolomites of the Alps are associated with melaphyres, which are more 
or less magnesian, he supposes a simultaneous evolution of sulphurous and 
hydrochloric acids; these acting upon the ejected rocks, would produce the 
magnesian salts necessary for the conversion into dolomites of the adjacent 
limestones, which, according to him, are interstratified near their base with 
pyroxenic tufa. These dolomites of the Tyrol are filled with small cavities, 
while they retain the marks of stratification, and exhibit the remains of corals 
and encrimites. Favre supposes they were originally deposited as pure lime- 
stones, and became cavernous in their subsequent conversion into dolomite ; 
and he conceives that the sea, beneath which the volcanic eruptions took place, 
was widely extended, and thus explams the formation of dolomites far away 
from any intrusive rocks; at the same time he admits that compact dolomites 
in many stratified rocks have been originally deposited as such, and are not the 
result of alteration. 

The famous theory of Von Buch, based in great part upon these dolomites of 
the Tyrol, supposes that the dolomitization of limestones has been effected by the 
intervention of some volatile compound of magnesia evolved during the erup- 
tion of the porphyries of that region. In support of this hypothesis Durocher 
made the experiment of heating together to low redness, in an iron tube, frag- 
ments of porous limestone and anhydrous chlorid of magnesium for some hours. 
The soluble matter being then washed away, the residue effervesced strongly 
at first with hydrochloric acid; but the action then became feebler, and 
the residue exhibited transparent crystals under the microscope, which were 
supposed to be dolomite, but were not further examined (Philosophical Maga- 
zine, vol. u1., p. 504). 

To Von Buch’s theory it must be objected that no known compound of 
magnesium is volatile; and that it is only by the intervention of water that 
we can at all connect the dolomitization of limestones with the eruption of 
igneous rocks. Fournet, too, has since shown that the melaphyres associated 
with the dolomites of the Tyrol, so far from beimg intrusive, are themselves 
stratified rocks, probably of the carboniferous age, metamorphosed 2 situ, and 
that their alteration was effected long before the deposition of the dolomites, 
which are of the Jurassic period; for between those metamorphic strata and 
the dolomites are beds of unaltered Triassic rocks, including the Muschelkalk 
and a conglomerate which contains rolled pebbles of the subjacent melaphyres 
(Bull. Soc. Geol. de France, vol. vi., p. 506). 

Delesse has remarked that m many instances limestones which have been 
regarded as dolomitized by the proximity of igneous rocks, have been rendered 


378 THE GEOLOGIST. 


crystalline, but contain no magnesia. Delanoué has pomted out examples of a 
similar error in the crystalline limestones of the calamine mines in Belgium, 
where in cases of supposed dolomitization by contact with igneous rocks, he 
found no increase in the proportion of magnesia. 

These facts show that dolomities have been formed under conditions where 
the theory of the intervention of voleanic and metamorphic agencies is inad- 
missible, and we are to conclude that they have been deposited as magnesian 
sediments in seas, or sometimes in lacustrme basins, from waters which often 
permitted the development of animal life. The conditions required for the 
separation of carbonate of magnesia from the sea or other waters, therefore, 
naturally claim our attention as a first step towards the solution of the problem 
before us. Mr. Hunt has already shown im a previous report, that the precipi- 
tate produced by carbonate of soda in water containing soluble salts of lime 
and magnesia consists In great part of carbonate of lime, the magnesium 
salts bemg decomposed only after the lime has been removed; and some ex- 
periments smce made with carbonated waters serve further to illustrate this 
geologically important fact. 

Lf to an artificial sea-water, containing, besides common salt, chlorids of cal- 
cium and magnesium in the proportion of one equivalent of each, we add a so- 
lution of bi-carbonate of soda in water saturated with carbonic acid, a gelatinous 
precipitate separates, which immediately becomes crystalline. This precipitate 
being separated after a few hours, and submitted to analysis, gave three succes- 
sive precipitations from the same liquid of 2°20, 2-00, and 1°23 per cent. of car- 
bonate of magnesia, the remainder being carbonate of lime; the proportion of 
magnesia thus diminishing as the magnesian salt became predominant in the so- 
lution, which now gave no further precipitate with bi-carbonate of soda, but 
deposited by evaporation to dryness, a granular residue of hydrated carbonate 
of magnesia with a little carbonate of lime. 

Bineau has shown that if we evaporate solutions contaming bi-carbonates of 
lime and magnesia in presence of sulphate or muriate of lime either at the or- 
dinary temperature or by artificial heat, the carbonate of lime is deposited 
with but a trace of magnesia. From this he concludes that the carbonates 
of magnesia exhibit, with all the soluble salts of lime, the same reactions of 
incompatibility as the corresponding carbonate of potash and soda (Ann. de 
Chim. et de Phys., vol. li, p. 302). 

Another cause which prevents the precipitation of carbonate of magnesia 
with the carbonate of lime, even when other salts of lime no longer exist im the 
solution, is found in the great solubility of bi-carbonate of magnesia as com- 
pared with the bi-carbonate of hme. According to Bischoff, carbonate of lime 
requiries for its solution about 1,000 parts of water saturated with carbonic 
acid; and Mr. Hunt states that he has found it quite easy to obtain solutions 
containing 10-0 grams of magnesia, equal to 21:0 grams of carbonate of mag- 
nesia to a litre of water, or 2:1 per cent. Bineau found that by the aid of a 
current of carbonic acid prolonged for several days, a solution might be obtamed 
contammg 11:2 graims of magnesia, combmed with nearly two equivalents of 
carbonic acid, in a litre of water. Such solution by spontaneous evaporation in 
the open aur loses carbonic acid and deposits carbonate of magnesia, finally re- 
taming only 0°108 graims of magnesia in a litre, with carbonic acid sufficient to 
form a sesqui-carbonate. 

When recently precipitated hydrated carbonate of magnesia is added to a 
solution of bi-carbonate of ime, it immediately dissolves, but the transparent 
solution soon after becomes troubled from the precipitation of carbonate of 
lime. ‘This reaction is precisely analogous to that produced by carbonate of 
soda, which, with bi-carbonate of lime, gives a precipitate of neutral carbonate. 
The results of a variety of experiments, undertaken m the hope of producing a 


REVIEWS. 379 


double carbonate of lime and magnesia, have shown that when the bi-carbonates 
of lime and magnesia are dissolved in pure water, in solutions of sea-salt, of 
chlorid of magnesium, or of carbonate of soda, and evaporated at the ordinary 
temperature, or heated to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the carbonate of lime is de- 
posited as in the previous experiments, carrying with it only traces of the mag- 
nesian carbonate, which is afterwards separated by elevating the temperature 
nearly to boilmg point or by farther evaporation. 

The addition of chlorid of calcium suffices, even at ordinary temperatures to 
decompose the magnesian bi-carbonate and to precipitate carbonate of lime ; 
but when the solution of the two bi-carbonates is boiled, even mm the presence 
of chlorid of calcium, a portion of the magnesia falls down with the carbonate 
of hme. In none of these conditions, however, do we obtain that double car- 
bonate of lime and magnesia, insoluble in acetic acid, which forms the base of 
the magnesian limestones ; nor have we in them any evidence of the formation of 
a true dolomite. 

Mr. Hunt has found in the course of his experiments that the introduction 
of a soluble sulphate modifies, i an unsuspected manner, the results already 
described. Mitscherlich found gypsum to be incompatible at ordinary tempe- 
ratures with carbonate of magnesia, but it is no longer so in the presence of an 
excess of carbonic acid ; in fact, gypsum may be crystallized from a solution of 
bi-carbonate of magnesia. 

If to a solution of bi-carbonate of lime, sulphate of magnesia is added, and 
the liquid allowed to evaporate at any ordmary temperature to a small volume, 
the whole of the lime is deposited in the form of crystalline gypsum. The same 
result is obtained when bi-carbonate of lime is added to a solution contaiming 
sea-salt, chlorid of magnesium, and sulphates. By evaporation at a temperature 
of from 90 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit the gypsum is entirely deposited before 
the separation of the sea-salt commences, while the bi-carbonate of magnesia 
remains in solution, and is only separated by evaporation to complete dryness, 
or by ebullition. This reaction may help to explain the frequent association of 
gypsum and dolomite, as well as im the occurrence of both im fresh-water for- 
mations ; but “it is evident,’ Mr. Hunt says im conclusion, “that with the 
facts as yet before us we are not able to determine with certainty the manner 
in which dolomites have been formed. 

“ Bi-carbonate of magnesia may, however, be produced in two ways :—first, 
by the action of bi-carbonate of lime upon waters containing both sulphates and 
magnesian salts, gypsum bemg generated at the same time; and secondly, by 
the action of bi-carbonate of soda upon magnesian waters from which the lime 
has previously been separated either as a carbonate by the previous action of 
bi-carbonate of soda, or by evaporation in the form of sulphate, as takes place 
during the concentration of sea-water. From these solutions beds of carbonate 
of magnesia may readily be formed by evaporation in limited basins, precisely 
as we conceive gypsum and rock-salt to have been deposited; and if we suppose 
an admixture of carbonate of lime deposited from alkalme waters or any other 
source, we have all the elements of dolomite, although not chemically combed 
as a double salt. M. St. Claire Deville im his beautiful researches on the 
double carbonates, found that when a mixture of basic carbonate of magnesia 
with bi-carbonate of soda and water is exposed to a gentle heat, a slow combi- 
nation ensues, and the mixture is transformed into a mass of small transparent 
erystals, which are an anhydrous double carbonate of soda and magnesia, 
insoluble in water—in fact a soda-dolomite (Ann. de Chim. et Phys., vol. 
meKE, p: 69). 

“A sumilar reaction between the mingled carbonates of lime and magnesia, 
under conditions not yet understood, may probably result in their gradual trans- 
formation into dolomite.” 


380 THE GEOLOGIST 


Although we have given Mr. Hunt’s paper only in a slightly condensed form 
and almost in his own words, the portions we have omitted are not by any 
means valueless, but should be read by those who are specially interested in 
this curious subject. We have abstracted sufficient to give the general reader 
a clear notion of the state of investigation up to this pomt. 

In the “ Canadian Journal” for May, 1859, Mr. Hunt has published some ad- 
ditional remarks upon this iuteresting subject in confirmation of his view “ that 
dolomites have been formed in sea-basins, from which the soluble salts of lime 
have been completely separated, as sulphate or as carbonate by the agency of 
alkaline carbonates, which afterwards gave rise to carbonate of magnesia,” 
which carbonate “appears capable, under certain conditions, of slowly combining 
with carbonate of lime, and forming with it a double carbonate, which is 
dolomite.” 

Referring to the Report under review, he says, “I have (there) shown two 
processes by which sediments of magnesian carbonate may be formed. First, 
by the action of solutions of bi-carbonate of soda on basins of sea-water, which 
precipitate all the lime as carbonate, and then give rise to a soluble bi-carbonate 
of magnesia; and secondly, the action of bi-carbonate of lime on solutions con- 
taining sulphate of magnesia. I have found that the presence of this salt 
greatly increases the solubility of bi-carbonate of lime in water—bi-carbonate of 
magnesia and sulphate of lime being formed by double decomposition. By 
adding alcohol to such a solution, or by evaporating it at a gentle heat, 
gypsum is deposited, leaving the more soluble bi-carbonate of magnesia in 
solution. 

“Tn the same way, alcohol separates gypsum from a mixed solution of bi- 
carbonate of lime and sulphate of soda—an alkaline bi-carbonate remaining dis- 
solved. 

“The subsequent evaporation in shallow lakes, or basins, of solutions of bi- 
carbonate of magnesia, formed by either of the above-mentioned processes, must 
give rise to deposits of hydrated carbonate of magnesia more frequently 
mingled with carbonate of lime, supplied by springs containing either bi- 
carbonate of lime or chloride of calcium. The hydrated carbonate of magnesia, 
at 160 degrees C., and perhaps at a lower temperature, under pressure to pre- 
vent the loss of carbonic acid, is converted into magnesite or anhydrous car- 
bonate of magnesia; but if carbonate of lime be present, the two combine to 
form a double carbonate, which is dolomite, and may be separated from inter- 
mixed carbonate of lime by the action of dilute acetic acid, at 32 degrees F., 
which readily dissolves the latter, but attacks the dolomite more slowly. 

“T have found this union of the two carbonates to take place alike in the 
presence of earthy and alkaline chlorides, sulphates, and carbonates, at tempe- 
ratures between 130 and 200 degrees centigrade. A portion of the magnesia 
is always, under these conditions, converted into magnesite, and may be par- 
tially separated from the dolomite, by taking advantage of the fact that it is 
less polnkle in acetic acid at the temperature of 60 degrees F. than the double 
carbonate. In nature, the combination must take place at the lowest possible 
temperature, and one which is probably insufficient to produce the insoluble 
magnesite. This, when once found, I have shown to have no tendency to unite 
with carbonate of lime. 

“The application of these observations to the various conditions in which 
dolomites and magnesites are met with in nature, and especially to their asso- 
ciation with gypsum and anhydrite, is evident.’ 

Some further interesting remarks are added by Mr. Hunt, in his report, upon 
Fish-manures ; and the volume is concluded by a paper by Lieut. E. D. Ashe on 
the longitude of some of the principal places in Canada, as determined by 
electric telegraph in the years 1856-7. 


THE GEOLOGIST. 


OCTOBER, 1859. 


THE COMMON FOSSILS OF THE BRITISH ROCKS. 
By 8S. J. Mackis, F.G.S., F.S.A. 
(Continued from page 355.) 


Cuap. 5.—First Traces of the Succession of Life-—The Lower Silurian 
Rocks, 


For the Vegetable Kingdom it is impossible to give any list composed 
with the same degree of elaboration as has been attained in the 
classification of animals. Modern plants are, it is true, as well 
known and as correctly grouped as modern animal life-forms; but 
our knowledge of fossil botany is not at all equal to our knowledge 
of fossil animals. The most minute divisions as well as the most 
important of botanical classifications are dependent upon the more 
fully developed and most perishable parts of vegetable organisms— 
the flowers and the fruits or seeds. Of these the former, the most 
essential of all, have rarely indeed, if ever, been preserved. One or 
two doubtful instances have been stated; but these have been by 
others disputed as being only incipient buds or leaflets, or as 
accidental appearances, and the investigator of the extinct forms 
of the vegetable creations of past geological ages has, at the best, to 
infer from the remains of leaves, branches, or stems, usually more or 
less decayed, the probable class to which the originals—often, 
indeed generally, of very different structures and organic characters 
from his existing types—belong. Not uncommonly, indeed, his only 
enides are vague and indefinite resemblances of form. Still, how- 
ever, if it be essential for the attainment of a knowledge of the exact 
concatenation of past events in the succession of organic life on our 
VOL. IL. II 


382 THE GEOLOGIST. 


planet, it is equally as important to note whether plants have been 
progressive in their development, as to determine this point in rela- 
tion to the animal-kingdom. Rudimentary vegetables, like rudi- 
mentary animals, are simple cells; and at a glance everyone would 
perceive the beautiful flowers in our gardens and greeneries to be far 
more highly organized than the toad-stool sprouting around the 
mouldering fence, or the leathery lichen clinging to the crumbling 
wall. The same questions, too, will naturally be asked, “ Were the 
simplest plants created first P’’ and “ What was the first vegetation 
that appeared on our earth P” 

Here, then, we have need of a connected list of the vegetable 
world, both in its present and past conditions, if we would rightly 
comprehend even those facts which geologists have been able so far 
to lay before us. Such a list, however, as one would desire is im- 
practicable in the present state of knowledge, and we therefore content 
ourselves with presenting one having a sufficiently modified aspect 
as to serve a useful purpose in our considerations of fossil plants. 

All plants are either simple cells, like the yeast-plant, or CELLULAR, 
that is, structurally composed of a simple aggregation of cells into a 
cellular tissue, such as the green scum-like Conferve of our ponds, 
the incrusting lichens on our trees and walls, the Fungi, or mush- 
room- and mildew-tribes, and the Algz, most familiarly known by 
the common seaweeds of our shores. Or they are VASCULAR, 7.e., 
composed of a tissue containing numerous vessels for the circulation 
of air, the conveyance of nutritive fluids and other purposes. These 
latter or vascular plants are again subdivided into CRyProGamMs, or 
those having no visible seed-organs, and PHANEROGAMS, or those 
in which the flowers and seed-vessels are evident. 

To the Cryptogams belong the mosses, equiseta (mare’s-tails), 
ferns, and lycopodia or club-mosses; and under the three great 
divisions of the Phanerogams are ranged the flowering-plants and 
trees. These divisions are constituted for the sub-grouping of 
(1st) Those flowering-plants that have but one seed-lobe or cotyledon, 
such as hhes, rushes, grasses, and palms, and which, from their growth 
by increase from within are denominated Hndogens. 2nd, For those 
with naked or unprotected seeds, such as the pine-apple and fir: these, 
in allusion to this peculiarity, are called Gymnosperms. 3rd, For such 


MACKIE—-FIRST TRACES OF THE SUCCESSION OF LIFE. 383 


as have two seed-lobes or cotyledons, as all forest-trees and shrubs, 
which also are characterized by the possession of true woody struc- 
ture, the mode of growth being by concentric external layers around 
the stem, hence the term by which they are denominated—LHzogens. 

The vegetable kingdom is, however, very variously grouped on 
different and excellent principles by various authors ; but the group- 
ing presented in the table below (Table III.) will be found sufficient 
for, and, we think, best adapted to, geological purposes. 

In our considerations of the lowermost of all fossiliferous rocks we 
have brought under notice the first, or, at any rate, the oldest and 
most remote forms of created beings as yet brought to light by the 
researches of geologists. These, if we compare them with the posi- 
tions of the classes to which they belong in the tables of the animal 
and vegetable kingdoms, will be found to be not of the lowest grades. 
The Oldhamia, whatever it may really be, is certainly above the 
monad or the diatom, and some naturalists have put it even as high 
as the Sertularidz ; the worm-holes indicate the existence of a more 
elevated class, the Annelida; while fragments of trilobites carry us 
still higher in the articulate group. Neither are the obscure vege- 
table traces with which we are first presented at the bottom of their 
kangdom, but they rank at least as high as the cellular alee. 

No foraminifers nor sponges, no animals of the globular type, pre- 
sent their remains; no traces of diatoms, lichens, or fungiappear. It 
may be said these were too perishable in their nature to be pre- 
served. True some might have been so; but others were not, for in 
rocks less remote in age, diatoms, sponges, and foraminifers abound. 

When in Shropshire we pass away from the Longmynds and reach 
the well-known Stiper-stones; or when in Wales, as at Harlech, we 
pass from the Cambrian grits to the “ Lingula-flags,”’ fossils become 
more abundant and more diversified. We have then entered into 
another phase of the great Paleozoic age, and new life-forms appear. 
One of these, a brachiopod Clingula Davisii) takes rank still higher 
in the scale of hfe than any of the few forms met with in the “Bottom- 
rocks’ and presents us with the first appearance of the molluscan 
type; while it occurs in such abundance, and within such a zone-like 
special range as to give a characteristic name to the rock-mass in 
which it is embedded. 


wyed-te Fy 
- wyed-oseg “wuyed-pooyy, 


poom-puog 
ofddeoutg. 
Tpoged. 
OUT 
euUvUeg 
JO.SULD) 
JOOLMOILY 


STYOIQ) 
ysnyy 


Ay 


urleqULypd-1048 A 


yyedesaeg “ue X 


GHOLOGIST. 


svokc ‘ssorddg ‘outg 
WITT Yeo OpPHION ‘osandg 


THE 


YwoF] “osomuiag 
vag ‘Oso 

umiuesoy ‘Kddog 

“utof-adh J, 


B84. . 


(OQII}-eIpuloIg) YaanyauoLg 
(OqI1}-SNSstoae |) 2a00880000 7 


(aqtay-lasuLy) vaoviaquhuz 
(2Q]-JOOI-MOLLW) Yaanunsoyzi 


Se ue ee 
PPPDP LEE O,-> 


DOIDSSILOT 
Voovhinooprlay 

(oqLuy-wyeq) voovumpng 

(oqity-peren,) veoupomm yy 


(sjojad yjim hpjosauay ) KC LAIOTVLA ‘[spaos payn | 
(oqity-sty) Paompoly SNULLISONWA 


(oqiay-esnyy) Yoonsnpy 


(OqLI4-StyoIQ) vYaovpryaQ) 
(aqi1y-Ysuyy) wxeonouns 
(aqiy-A[w]) vaonyvT 


(oqtiy-eustpy) Yaonusyy J 


eoe coe poe 


“* (soanay papnjpnoyor—burno.sb-2o NT) CNTIORLOICT 
‘(ynoib-pimnny) SNTOOUNI ‘IT 8r19 


a8 ere Care 


SHOWNAISONWAY ‘TT J 
SNOWUAESOIDNY “T 
(sppjad gnoypi yy) KIWLEEY 


‘| SJA8SAA-PIas YL 
(s]pjad ayy UO suaUnps YpIM ssanojy ) KAOTAITIONOD L*7 Bee Ae) 


SWUATSOLONY 
(LMI OY] UO SUOUD]S YZIA 8LONO]T) KAOTAIOXTVO 
(ajovpdavas ay) U0 suaunps YpMm sweno,y) KXOTWINVIVHY, 

OOO A "Maple 


‘dnosh- qn 
‘(yjnoub-9NQ) SNTPOXH ‘T ssvip 
*(syunjpd-bii.tanopy ) SINVDONUNV Hd— Noapnty-aag 


WOGONID WIEGVLIHOHA FAL 40 DNIGQOWD TVSHNAO— II WIAVL 


a) 


OF LIFE. 


SUCCESSION 


OF THE 


FIRST TRACES 


MACKIE 


YTNOTAG NT 
QLOMOTI ITA, 
BALOFUOD 
YOBIM-Bag 
9].oUR4-9SOY 


MOP “ULOOIYSN A, 
weary 


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SSOP 
SSOUL-QnTg 


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ete STN 


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ApoqAtog 
ULOJ-OOLT, 


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d0pog 


ourd-mo.r0g 
uped-jnu-Boo09g 
wued-odeqqra 
wyed-oyecy 


(oqia4-uloyeIq,) Yaonumojnay | 
(oqry-umrprusaq,) Yaonypuusay | 


f 
OqI14-SNON |) Lavon 
(oqly-untuR1o9) Yoowuunsay ) 

mets" (aqiig-snhungy) SXTVION OT Ree 
(2QU-UaYIVT ) SHTVNAHOVT 


(290t)-D.0Y)) ) waovavag) 
‘(yjnowb-snyoyT) INEPOTIVHL ‘AT 88”19 


(Sassou aynnasadouy) WOTLVANFT 
""* (sassou agnnasad() ) SHTVOSOTN, 


(aqi-umipodooN]) &LOVIGOLOO NT ‘[spassaa un savolsy| 
. A 


 (aqnp- naps) WAOVATISHVIN ¢ STOASOLONF 
 (aquu-unjasimby ) wCOVUISIADT 


vee 


(aqnay | 
-ONGUOT, S.appy) Yaonssojhorydy : 
(aqtay-ApoqAjog) vaanipodhjogy (Ogntpusay) SHOT J 


(oqiay-vaurq) veowvung 


‘(hyuayws wolf yin04)) YNTYOWOV “ILL 8P10 
(spumd-ssopsononT) SHV OOLIAWO— Woaonty-ang 


(OGI1]-SseLg) Yaonuuunsy ; 


(oqr1j-ospog) xaoniedliy (pasamoy-ajnog) WATTINAT 


(oqtyy-snurpueg) Yaovunpung 
200090) 
DOOODLY 
Dornydhsoy 


386 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Two very important theories have been broached, as it is well 
known, in regard to the development and succession of organic life 
upon our planet; the one known as the “progressive development 
theory,” deriving each succeeding higher form by transmutation out 
of or development from a lower one; the other regarding each new 
successive form, whatever its organic rank, as a special act of 
creative energy. It may be very truly said, when we consider the 
comparative values of these two great doctrines, that we have not 
yet all the evidence necessary to decide upon their respective merits; 
and, although in regard to the former, there is a natural tendency of 
the mind to dissent from the idea of the possession by any organic 
being of the capability of self-development into a higher form, there 
are so many resemblances, at least, of a series of lke and further- 
carried developments in the higher classes of plants and animals as 
to make us hesitate to reject as absurd or valueless doctrines which 
carry so many specious reasons for their consideration. No doubt 
the ever and anon exerted power of creation, the placing’ at 
intervals throughout all the vast ages of the Past, of new and suit- 
able forms of organisms upon our planet, in accordance with the 
requirements of its changed and altered conditions, is the more 
popular view, as it accords more with our preconceived notions of 
the unceasing watchfulness of the great Creator. 

Perhaps the truth may be found to be a modification of both, a 
certain amount of progressive development being possible within 
restricted limits, while creative energy from time to time supplies 
vacuities and deficiencies and the higher grades required by the 
more elaborated conditions of our globe. 

Be all this as it may, our duty is plainly to present facts as we 
find them, and rather to define what zs truly known than to enter the 
domains of speculation. One important fact is even now evident— 
that while apparently in neither vegetable nor animal kingdom do 
we start with the lowest group—while seemingly we begin neither 
with the protozoan nor the diatom—yet every successive great 
geological age has presented us with some marked successive 
development of, or the production of some more highly organized 
condition of animal- or vegetable-life. In the Lower Silurian strata 
molluses, annelides, and crustaceans (trilobites and bivalved ento- 


MACKIE—FIRST TRACES OF THE SUCCESSION OF LIFE. 387 


mostraca) abound ; fish next appear in number; then reptiles reign ; 
then dawns the era of the gigantic mammals; and then the Age of 
Man sets in. So in vegetation, as far as we can judge from the 
strange and singular fossil-forms presented to our view, the flower- 
less preceded the flowering plants and trees which so luxuriantly 
covered the Tertiary lands, and still adorn our own. 

But this remarkable advance, so evident when we regard the 
erander groups and the results of ages as a whole, becomes less 
apparent and indeed very obscure when we attempt to combine the 
seeming links of minor details and to trace one form developing 
itself into another. We see the age of reptiles succeed that of fish ; 
the age of man following on that of the lower mammals; and we 
have no difficulty in appreciating the higher stages of each, and the 
successively 1mproved conditions of our planet to which they were 
adapted; but when we attempt to trace out lnks to join the reptile 
with the fish, and the quadruped mammal with the man, we fail. 
We may see resemblances of development on either hand, but no 
true junction-forms ; and then again when, as between genera and 
families, we do meet with connecting species, such may occur in time 
either in advance or in arrear of the age or ages in which the forms 
so connected existed ; while, on the other hand, some genera, such 
for example as the Lingula we meet with for the first time in the 
Lower Silurian rocks, have lasted from their first appearance to the 
present hour with scarcely more than a specific difference between 
those primitive individuals and those now living in our seas. One 
thing, however, seems certain of the Lower Silurian mollusca, crus- 
tacea, and annelides, that their geographical distribution was far 
greater and much more universal than is the case with existing 
species; and although lines of demarcation have been attempted to 
be drawn between many of the American Lower Silurian fossils and 
those of our own country, it is very questionable, at least in some 
cases, if any real specific distinctions exist. 

The general appearance and character of the Stiper-stones have 
been well described by Sir Roderick Murchison, in whose wake, so 
great has been his own energy and so powerful the means at his dis- 
posal, a British author writing on Silurian strata, is almost com- 
pelled to follow. “Trending in a broken mural line from north- 


388 THE GEOLOGIST. 


north-east to south-south-west, these stony masses appear to the 
artist like insulated Cyclopean ruins jutting out upon a lofty moor- 
land ridge, at heights varying from fifteen hundred to sixteen hundred 
feet above the sea. On reaching the summit of this barren height, 
the traveller sees below him, to the west, a rapid slope, and beyond it 
a picturesque hilly tract, the strata of which are laden with Lower 
Silurian fossils, and diversified by a variety of rocks of igneous origin. 
In short he has then within his view the original type of formations 
which, raised to greater altitudes, and effected by a slaty cleavage, 
occupy large mountainous tracts in Wales.” 

In the outstanding bosses of the siliceous 
sandstone of the Stiper-stones, fragments 
of Lingule have been met with, which, as 
well as their relative position with respect to 
the underlying and the superimposed beds, 
identify these strata with the true Lingula- 
flags of North Wales. 

In the Stiper-stone rocks Mr. Salter has 
also found annelide-tubes, resembling, if not 


indeed identical with, Scolithus linearis, 
described by Prof. J. Hall, from the Potsdam 
sandstone; and with waving undulations and 


ripple-marks in the flag-like beds ramose 


and twisted forms are found, amongst which 


casts of a so-called seaweed, the Cruziana or 


Bilobites, are said to occur. The scolithi 
are better known in the North American rocks 
than in our own; we have therefore chosen 


our figure from a foreign specimen. 

The broken and contorted condition of the 
‘Lingula met with in the Stiper-stone strata 
renders it difficult to determine the species ; 
but there appears reason to doubt its being Lign. 5.—Sconrravs trzants. 
the Lingula Davisii of the Welsh strata, with LSE mers eee 
which, however, it is well known some other forms, as yet un- 


described, occur; and with some of these it may be hereafter 
identified, 


SALMON—ON THE FORMATION OF ORE-VEINS. 389 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE FORMATION 
OF ORE-VEINS. 


(Translated from the German of Prorgsson BERNHARD Cotta, of 
Freiberg, with an Introductory Notice on the Study of Mineral 
Vems and Metalliferous Deposits, by H. C. Satmon, Esq., Plymouth.) 


(Continued from page 368). 


These veins penetrate the crystalline schists, particularly the 
gneiss, in those localities where the latter are largely penetrated by 
porphyry. ‘They also generally penetrate the porphyry ; only a few 
exceptions from this rule serving to show that the porphyry- 
eruptions continued into the period of the formation of the ore-veins. 
These veins form three or four principal groups, according to their 
direction,* which groups in general differ both in age and in con- 
tents. Still, all vems by no means show similar directions in 
connection with similar contents, or the converse, only these pre- 
dominant characteristics often coimcide. Veins of distinctive con- 
tents are almost as much confined to certain localities as they are 
characteristic of definite directions. According to the contents we can 
distinguish three or four paragenetic combinations of different ages, 
but which often extend into one another in such a manner that one 
fissure sometimes contains the products of two or three of these dif- 
ferent periods. These paragenetic combinations of vein-contents are: 

1. Principally quartz and hornstone, with frequent fragments of 
the neighbouring rock. There are also found, partly interwoven 
with the quartz, and partly in numerous drusy cavities, Brown-spar, 
Manganese-spar, Calc-spar, Strontian, Fluor-spar, Rothgiltigerz, 
Weisserz, Glaserz, native Silver, common Arsenical pyrites, Argenti- 
ferous pyrites, Blende, Weissgiltigerfedererz, Iron-pyrites, &c.f 
This so-called “ great Quartz-formation” predominates in the fissures 
in the neighbourhood of Braunsdorf and Siebenlehn. We find about 
one hundred and fifty veins belonging to this combination. 

* Compare V. Beust’s Gangkarte. 

+ I have not considered it advisable to give the strict mineralogical names to 


the mineral-species enumerated. The characteristic German ores I have given 
in the original names. 


VOL. Ii. IK 1K 


390 THE GEOLOGIST. 


2. Quartz, Hornstone, Brown-spar, Cale-spar, and Spathic-iron are 
combined with Argentiferous galena, Blende, Arsenical pyrites, 
Argentiferous pyrites, and Copper-pyrites in moderate quantities. 
More rarely, and particularly in druses, there are found Chlorite, 
Baryte, Fluor-spar, Fahblerz, Rothgiltigerz, &c.: red-iron is found as 
a so-called “eiserner Hut” or “gozzan” to the foregomg. This com- 
bination has been named the “ Lead-pyrites formation,’ and pre- 
dominates east and south of Freiberg. About three hundred veins 
have been found belonging to it, and their direction is mostly forty- 
five degrees east of north. This combination is intimately connected 
with the following— 

3. Brown-spar, Manganese-spar, and Quartz, with Calc-spar, Ba- 
ryte, Spathic-iron, Argentiferous galena, Argentiferous blende, 
Argentiferous pyrites, Arsenical pyrites, Rothgiltigerz, native Silver, 
Federerz, &c., often forming symmetrical layers in definite succes- 
sion. Red Iron occurs as a gozzan. Over three hundred veins, 
mostly bearing forty-five degrees east of north, or north and south, 
belong to this “ great Lead-formation,” which, like the foregoing, is 
more particularly developed east and south of Freiberg. 

4. Baryte and Fluor-spar predominate, and alternate with Galena 
in many thin and regular layers. With these are associated, 
particularly in the druses in the middle of the vein, Quartz, 
Spathic-iron, Cale-spar, Brown-spar, Iron-pyrites, brown Blende, 
richly Argentiferous fahlerz, Copper-pyrites, Rothgiltigerz, native 
Arsenic, Rauschgelb, Grauspiessglaserz, native Silver, Glaserz, 
&c. The veins of this “ Barytes-lead formation,’ which mostly 
bear forty-five degrees east of south, predominate in the neigh- 
bourhood of Halsbriicke. We have counted about one hundred 
and thirty. 

These four combinations or formations may, perhaps, in considera- 
tion of the great similarity of the 2nd and 3rd, be reduced to three, 
of which the most general characteristics are as follows :— 

I. Quartz and Hornstone, with many fragments of neighbouring 
rock and with noble ores, particularly in druses. It predominates 
north and west of Freiberg. 

II. Quartz and Carbonates with Sulphides of metals, partly 
massive, partly disposed in layers. Predominates east of Freiberg. 


SALMON—ON THE FORMATION OF ORE-VEINS,. aoN 


Ill. Baryte and Fluor-spar with Galena, and some other ores, dis- 
posed in very regular layers. Predominates north of Freiberg. 

The order in which these combinations are given is also, at the same 
time, that of their relative age, and from this we can easily under- 
stand how the oldest combimation is characterized by quartz and 
fragments of the neighbouring rocks, while the newest is marked by 
a particularly regular layer-like form. 

According to our theory, the Freiberger ore-veins are due to the 
porphyry-eruptions. The eruptive force opened fissures from time 
to time, during a long period; and through these fissures water, 
perhaps sea-water, penetrating to a great depth, found in the still- 
heated deeply-lying porphyry-masses (which at Freiberg only pene- 
trate to the surface in isolated dykes) those earths and metals which 
are soluble under a high pressure at a high temperature and with the 
co-operation of alcalies ; and which it (the water) then subsequently 
deposited in its circulation through the upper and colder regions of 
the fissures. Of the earths, silicic acid, when dissolved in great 
quantities, crystallized again at avery high temperature. For this 
reason, it fills principally the oldest fissures, or forms the oldest por- 
tions in newer ones, or in those which, occupying a medium position 
in the whole vein-region, preserved longest a very high temperature. 
The other minerals followed it more or less periodically, according to 
their capacities for reduction or solidification, which certainly cannot 
as yet be specially authenticated, although G. Bischoff has already 
done much with reference to it. The depositions in the fissures en- 
sued at first very energetically and under continued disturbances, 
whence arises their breccia-form and the massiveness of their con- 
tents; while later, with a decreasing temperature and less dis- 
turbances, and with slower deposition, the layer-like form gradually 
made its appearance. Vapour- and gas-streams may have occurred 
later, in place of the slow continuous circulation of water, and accu- 
mulated in drusy cavities or more recent sublimation-clefts, or, by a 
change in existing contents, have introduced metamorphism and 
translocation. But as, according to this theory, the deep-lying 
porphyry-masses are the original bearers of the contents of the Frei- 
berg ore-veins, it should incite us to a further investigation, which 
might besides be important in a practical point of view. 


392 THE GEOLOGIST. 


The best examination would be if we could penetrate, by means of 
boring or by shafts, to a very great depth in some ore-districts, in 
order to reach the ore-bearing eruptive rocks, or a more richly 
metalliferous portion of the same. The stock-formed massive-rocks 
already metalliferous at the surface—for example, the Zimnstockwerke 
or the Braunsdorfer ore-bearing porphyries—might be best adapted for 
such an investigation. The problem would be worthy of a country, 
the mining-operations of which are amongst the most important 
branches of its industry. Certainly, on the other hand, the consider- 
ation may arise, that the slower cooling at the greater depths may 
have accelerated still more the smking down of the metallic particles. 

Let us now throw back a general glance. Our theory explains 
very well why the newer eruptive rocks (trachyte, phonolite, basalt, 
lavas) are much more rarely accompanied by ore-veins than the 
older ones, and especially why ore-veins seldom occur in the newer 
sedimentary formations, even where these, as in the Alps, are often 
broken and penetrated by eruptive formations. It explains it, since 
according to it the progressive cooling of the earth as a whole must 
have caused the zone of the deposition (determined by the tempera- 
ture) of the most abundant and notable constituents of ore-veins to 
have sunk deeper below the surface of the earth. If, besides, the 
whole phenomena of ore-vein-formation in volcanic districts still 
continue, they can, judging by the analogy of the old ore-vein- 
formations, only be going on ata considerable depth beneath the 
surface. Only some constituents are projected to the surface in 
recent volcanic fissures, such as Silica, Calc-spar, and Oxide of Iron; 
these in ore-veins partly extend throughout all periods, and partly 
occur only as the most recent or uppermost members (as gozzans), 
being, consequently, in the latter case deposited at a relatively lower 
temperature. 

The ironstone-veins, filled partly by means of sublimation (as spe- 
cular iron-ore), and partly by means of infiltration (as hydrated 
oxide of iron), are the only ore-veins which we can at present, in a 
measure, See originate. They are precisely, also, of all ore-veins the 
most frequently combined with the newer eruptive rocks, for ex- 
ample, the basalt formation. 


Tin-ore and platina seem hardly ever to occur in those veins which 


SALMON—-ON THE FORMATION OF ORE-VEINS. 393 


have originated purely by infiltration, although the first has been 
found in the Freiberg copper-veins and in the Annaberg silver ones ; 
and the spaces, too, of felspar-crystals in the granite of Cornwall can 
evidently have only been filled by infiltration, or sublimation. These 
metals belong, perhaps, principally to certain massive rocks as 
accessory constituents, out of the detritus of which are often derived the 
portions of those metals found in washings. Originally they occurred 
in common with the other metals, but it seems to be a pecuhar 
characteristic of their nature that they do not occur in purely 
infiltration-veins. 


Novres ON THE ABOVE Memoir. 


As Professor Cotta pre-supposes on the part of his readers a 
general acquaintance with the subject of mineral-veins and the diffi- 
culties which beset the solution of their theory, the force of many of 
his observations may not be remarked by those to whom this know- 
ledge is not familiar. For the benefit of such I have jotted down 
the following notes which, while serving to elucidiate this memoir, 
may also be useful as indicating some of the difficulties that beset the 
subject, and some of the more important preliminary problems 
necessary to be solved. 

I. Relation between crystalline and erwptiwe rocks and metalliferous- 
deposits—Prof. Cotta’s reasoning is entirely founded upon the gene- 
rally observed relation between crystalline and eruptive rocks and 
metalliferous deposits. That this relation is a nearly constant fact 
seems to be beyond doubt, although there are occasional exceptions— 
not, however, sufficiently numerous to destroy the force of the ob- 
served relations, which have passed into a proverb in most mining- 
districts. But merely observing the fact of this relation is one thing, 
and accounting for it ina satisfactory manner is another. The first has 
been done universally ; the second has never been seriously attempted, 
and probably, in the present state of our knowledge, is a problem im- 
possible of solution. The most we can do is, as Prof. Cotta has done, 
to suggest such a probable hypothesis, as may be useful in giving a 
definite direction to our ideas and to our investigations. 

Il. Whence are the metal-contents of ore-deposits derived ?—This 


394 THE GEOLOGIST. 


question is the first difficulty we have to grapple with, and it has 
been fruitful of hypotheses. The Wernerian theory that the contents 
of veins (the most common form of metalliferous deposit) were de- 
rived from above has been universally abandoned. There remain 
two others: one, that these deposits originate by segregation from 
the neighbouring rock; and the other, that they are derived, by some 
means or other, from beneath. The segregation theory is one well 
worthy of consideration, and undoubtedly applies to many metal- 
liferous deposits ; but it still leaves unsolved the main problem of the 
original source of the metals; for it completely fails to account for 
the abundant distribution of the metallic ores in some districts, while 
in others, in the same class of rock, they are entirely absent. To ac- 
count for all metalliferous deposits by segregation, irrespective of any 
other cause, we should have to have recourse to the alchemic doctrine 
of the possible transmutation of earths into metals. The theory of 
the metallic ores from beneath, has been suggested in every form; 
and is not without many difficulties to which I shall refer further on. 

Ill. Various forms of metalliferous deposits —Next to the question 
of the metallic ores, we are met with difficulties depending on the 
forms im which they are usually found. They generally occur in 
abundance in veins of a definite size and direction—the direction being 
constantly associated, in certain districts, with characteristic ores. 
But they are also found in forms that are not veins, such as in 
“stocks,” or in irregular and indefinite masses. Veins are not 
peculiar to ore-formations, but are found in almost every rock, and 
include every kind of mineral species. Still, as from their nature, 
veins are hidden far from our sight; we only become intimately ac- 
quainted with them when they consist of such minerals that the 
necessities of man lead to their exploration. Hence our knowledge 
of veins is principally confined to those containing ores, or other veins 
associated with them; and we are often consequently led, very 
erroneously, to imagine that no veins exist but ore-veins, or those 
connected with them, and to limit the occurrence of minerals in the 
pecuhar form we denominate veins exclusively to minerals of the use- 
ful metals: an idea productive of considerable misapprehension and 
confusion, 


IV. Most mineral-veins were fisswres, subsequently filled.—This is 


SALMON—ON THE FORMATION OF ORE-VEINS. 395 


almost universally received as an established fact, although it seems 
to be objected to in some English mining-districts by “ practical” 
men. ‘There can be no question as to its truth, which is demonstrated 
m numberless cases beyond all doubt; but, with respect to it, we 
must guard ourselves against supposing that all veins or “ lodes” 
have such an origin. Of course I here use the word vein in its proper 
Sense, and not as a necessary synonym of a re-filled fissure, as it is 
in some cases employed. Used in this sense, I shall in the next 
paragraph refer to a class of veins originating otherwise. The ob- 
jections referred to above originated from an imperfect acquaintance 
with the general principles of physical geology, without a knowledge 
of which it is useless to attempt to deal with the subject of mineral- 
veins, which, as Prof. Cotta remarks, are not “ to be regarded as an 
isolated phenomenon.” If we consider, for one moment, the great 
revolutions of upheaval and subsidence that every portion of the 
surface has undergone during ascertained geological periods, all of 
which, whether occuring by gradual or spadmodic movements, must 
have caused rents, we have no reason to be surprised at the existence 
of fissures. 

V. But all metalliferous-veins were not fissures—There are some 
metalliferous veins, “ lodes,’” or channels that we meet with which 
cannot be regarded as re-filled fissures. Considerable confusion has 
existed on this point; for it has been held, but rather rashly, that a 
metalliferous deposit must be either a re-filled vein-fissure, or a 
strictly stratified deposit thrown down contemporaneously with the 
embedding strata itself, like beds of coal, or rock-salt. The difficulties 
and umprobabilities connected with the latter hypothesis, have led to 
the acceptance of the supposed alternative of a “fissure” theory, which 
would not have been otherwise suggested by the individual facts. 
But more recent investigations in this direction now tend undoubtedly 
to show that such deposits may have arisen, without any original 
fissure, by a slow metamorphic action gradually replacing the original 
rock-constituent by the now-found metallic-ore. That under certain 
circumstances such changes have taken place, and are even at present 
slowly taking place by aqueous agency, seems now to be demon- 
strated, although of course the difficulty as to the source whence the 
metal is derived still remains. 


396 THE GEOLOGIST. 


VI. Contents of veins varying with direction.—No circumstance con- 
nected with metalliferous deposits has been productive of more difh- 
culty than this. Whether filled from above, or below, or by segregation, 
it seems at first sight unaccountable how two sets of veins in the 
same district—one running north and south, and the other east and 
west—should differ completely in their contents. Yet such is often 
the case; and a fact so unaccountable has been the source of more 
mysticism than any other connected with the theory of ore-veins. It 
has been freely attributed to some occult action of electricity, or 
“polar forces,” whatever that phrase may mean, and similar hypo- 
thetical causes. It must be understood that no general relation 
between the contents of veins and their direction has been established, | 
although it seems to be asserted by some persons that such a relation 
does exist. The only known relation is a local one. For instance, 
in Cornwall and Devon lead-ores are contaimed in north and south 
veins, and not in east and west veins; whereas, in the lead-district 
of central Wales the ores of that metal are found abundantly in east 
and west veins. 

VIL. Theory of Vein “Formations.””—According to this theory veins 
of certain classes were considered essentially characteristic of certain 
geological ages—were absolute “formations” in its geological sense 
of synchronous. It supposed special periods in the earth’s history to 
have been marked by special metallic emanations which entirely 
passed away with those periods, of which they were characteristic. 
This doctrine may be compared to the very similar one that all 
granite was primitive; and experience shows us that the one is as 
unfounded as the other. Analogous metalliferous deposits may have 
been produced at widely removed geological periods. When we 
speak then of older, or of more recent veins, we refer not to their abso- 
lute but to their relative age in the same locality ; or, when speaking 
of widely removed localities, we only refer to age with reference to 
other veins in each respective locality. 


(To be continued). 


BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING. 397 


pales ASSOCIATION MEETING. 


The 29th Meeting of the British Association opened on the 14th instant at 
Aberdeen, under the presidency of His Royal Highness the Prince Consort. 
The day followmg the various Sections were opened, that of Geology being 
under the presidency of Sir Charles Lyell. In his opening address, he said, 

“No subject has lately excited more curiosity and general interest among 
geologists and the public than the question of the antiquity of the human race ; 
whether or no we have sufficient evidence to prove the former co-existence of 
man with certain extinct mammalia, in caves, or in the superficial deposits com- 
monly called drift or ‘diluvinm’ For the last quarter of a century the oc- 
casional occurrence in various parts of Europe of the bones of man, or the 
works of his hands, in cave-breccias and stalactites associated with the remains 
of the extinct hyena, bear, elephant, or rhinoceros, have given rise to a 
suspicion that the date of man must be carried further back than we had here- 
tofore imagined. On the other hand, extreme reluctance was naturally felt on 
the part of scientific reasoners, to admit the validity of such evidence, seeing 
that so many caves have been inhabited by a succession of tenants, and have 
been selected by man as a place not only of domicile, but of sepulture, while 
some caves have also served as the channels through which the waters of 
flooded rivers have flowed, so that the remams of living beings which have 
peopled the district at more than one era may have subsequently been mingled 
m such caverns and confounded together in one and the same deposit. ‘The 
facts, however, recently brought to light during the systematic investigation, as 
reported on by Dr. Falconer, of the Brixham Cave, must, I think, have prepared 
you to admit that scepticism im regard to the cave-evidence in favour of the 
antiquity of man had previously been pushed to an extreme. ‘To escape from 
what I now consider was a legitimate deduction from the facts already accumu- 
lated, we were obliged to resort to hypotheses requiring great changes in the 
relative levels and drainage of valleys, and, m short, the whole physical geo- 
graphy of the respective regions where the caves are situated—changes that 
would alone imply a remote antiquity for the human fossil remains, and make it 
probable that man was old enough to have co-existed at least with the 
Siberian mammoth. But in the course of the last fifteen years another class 
of proofs have been advanced in France in confirmation of man’s antiquity ; 
into two of which I have personally exammed in the course of the present 
summer, and to which I shall now briefly advert. Jirst, so long ago as the 
year 1844, M. Aymard, an emiment paleontologist and antiquary, published an 
account of the discovery in the volcanic district of Central France of portions 
of two human skeletons (the skulls, teeth, and bones) embedded in a volcanic 
breccia found im the mountain of Denise, m the environs of Le Puy en Velay ; 
a breccia anterior in date to one at least of the latest eruptions of that volcanic 
mountaim. On the opposite side of the same hill the remains of a large number 
of mammalia, most of them of extinct species, have been detected in tufaceous 
strata, believed, and I think correctly, to be of the same age. The authenticity 
of the human fossils was from the first disputed by several geologists, but ad- 
mitted by the majority of those who visited Le Puy and saw with their own 
eyes the original specimen now in the museum of that town. Among others 
M. Pictet, so well known to you by his excellent work on paleontology, declared, 
after his visit to the spot, his adhesion to the opinions previously expressed by 
Aymard. My friend, Mr. Scrope, in the second edition of his ‘ Volcanos of 

MOLE UE: Li 


898 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Central France,’ lately published, also adopted the same conclusion, although 
after accompanying me this year to Le Puy, he has seen reason to modify his 
views. The result of our joimt examination, aresult which I believe essentially 
coincides with that arrived at by M. Hébert and M. Lartet, names well known 
to science, who have also this year gone into this inquiry on the spot, may 
thus be stated. We are by no means prepared to maintain that the specimen 
in the museum at Le Puy (which unfortunately was never seen 7 sifu by any 
scientific observer) is a fabrication. On the contrary, we mcline to believe that 
the human fossils in this and some other specimens from the same hill were 
really imbedded by natural causes in their present matrix. But the rock in 
which they are entombed consists of two parts, one of which is a compact, and 
for the most part thinly lammated stone, into which none of the human bones 
penetrate; the other containing the bones is a lighter and much more porous 
stone without lamination, to which we could find nothing similar im the 
mountain of Denise, although both M. Hébert and I made several excavations 
on the alleged site of the fossils. M. Hébert therefore suggested to me that 
this more porous stone, which resembles in colour and mineral composition, 
though not in structure, parts of the genuine old breccia of Denise, may be 
formed of the older rock broken up and afterwards re-deposited, or as the French 
say, remané, and therefore of much newer date—an hypothesis which well 
deserves consideration ; but I feel that we are at present so ignorant of the 
precise circumstances and position under which these celebrated human fossils 
were found, that I ought not to waste time in speculating on their probable 
mode of interment, but simply declare that in my opmion they afford no de- 
monstration of man having witnessed the last volcanic eruptions of Central 
France. The skulls, according to the judgment of the most competent osteolo- 
gists who have yet seen them, do not seem to depart in a marked manner from 
the modern Kuropean, or Caucasian type, and the human bones are in a fresher 
state than those of the Llephas meridionalis and other quadrupeds found in any 
breccia in Denise which can be referred to the period even of the latest volcanic 
eruptions. But while I have thus failed to obtaim satisfactory evidence in 
favour of the remote origin assigned to the human fossils of Le Puy, I am fully 
prepared to corroborate the conclusions which have been recently laid before 
the Royal Society by Mr. Prestwich, in regard to the age of the flmt-imple- 
ments associated, in undisturbed gravel in the north of France, with the bones 
of elephants at Abbeville and Amiens. These were first noticed at Abbeville, 
and their true geological position assigned to them by M. Boucher de Perthes, 
in 1849, in his ‘ Antiquités Celtiques,’ while those of Amiens were afterwards 
described, in 1855, by the late Dr. Rigollet. For aclear statement of the facts, 
I may refer you to the abstract of Mr. Prestwich’s memoir in the Proceedings 
of the Royal Society, for 1859, and I have only to add that I have myself ob- 
tained abundance of flint-implements (some of which are laid upon the table) 
during a short visit to Amiens and Abbeville. Two of the worked-flints of 
Amiens were discovered in the gravel-pits of St. Acheul, one at the depth of 
ten, and the other of seventeen feet below the surface, at the time of my visit ; 
and M. Georges Pouchet, of Rouen, author of a work on the ‘ Races of Man,’ 
who has since visited the spot, has extracted with his own hands one of these 
implements, as Messrs. Prestwich and Flower had done before him. The 
stratified gravel, m which these rudely-fashioned instruments are buried, 
resting immediately on the Chalk, belongs to the post-pliocene period, all the 
fresh-water and land-shells which accompany them being of existing species. 
The great number of the fossil instruments which have been likened to hatchets, 
spear-heads, and wedges is truly wonderful. More than a thousand of them 
have already been met with in the last ten years, in the valley of the Somme, 
in an area fifteen miles im length. I infer that a tribe of savages, to whom the 


BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING. 399 


use of iron was unknown, made a long sojourn in this region; and I am re- 
minded of a large Indian mound which I saw im St. Simond’s Island in Georgia 
—a mound ten acres in area, and having an average height of five feet, chiefly 
composed of cast-away oyster-shells, throughout which arrow-heads, stone-axes, 
and Indian pottery are dispersed. If the neighbouring river, the Alatamaha, 
or the sea, which is at hand, should mnvade, sweep away, and stratify the con- 
tents of this mound, it might produce a very analogous accumulation of human 
implements, unmixed, perhaps, with human bones. Although the accompany- 
ing shells are of living species, I believe the antiquity of the Abbeville and 
Amiens flint-instruments to be great indeed if compared to the times of history 
or tradition. I consider the gravel to be of fluviatile origi, but I could de- 
tect nothmeg in the structure of its several parts indicating cataclysmal action ; 
nothing that might not be due to such river-fioods as we have witnessed in 
Scotland during the last half century. It must have required a long period for 
the wearing down of the chalk which supplied the broken flints for the forma- 
tion of so much gravel at various heights, sometimes one hundred feet above 
the present level of the Somme; for the deposition of fine sediment, including 
entire shells, both terrestrial and aquatic ; and also for the denudation which the 
entire mass of stratified drift has undergone, portions having been swept away, 
so that what remains of it often terminates abruptly in old river-cliffs, besides 
being covered by a newer unstratified drift. To explain these changes I should 
infer considerable oscillations in the level of the land in that part of France— 
slow movements of upheaval and subsidence, deranging, but not wholly dis- 
placing, the course of the ancient rivers. Lastly, the disappearance of the 
elephant, rhinoceros, and other genera of quadrupeds now foreign to Europe, 
implies, in like manner, a vast lapse of ages separating the era m which the 
fossil implements were formed and that of the invasion of Gaul by the Romans. 
Among the problems of high theoretical interest which the recent progress of 
geology and natural history has brought imto notice, no one is more prominent, 
and at the same time more obscure, than that relating to the origin of species. 
On this difficult and mysterious subject a work will very shortly appear by Mr. 
Charles Darwin, the result of twenty years of observation and experiment in 
zoology, botany, and geology, by which he has been led to the conclusion that 
those powers of nature which give rise to races and permanent varieties in 
animals and plants are the same as those which, m much longer periods, pro- 
duce species, and, in a still longer series of ages, give rise to differences of 
generic rank. He appears to me to have succeeded, by his investigations and 
reasonings, to have thrown a flood of light on many classes of phenomena 
connected with the affinities, geographical distribution, and geological succes- 
sion of organic beings, for which no other hypothesis has been able, or has even 
attempted to account. Among the communications sent into this section, I 
have received from Dr. Dawson, of Montreal, one confirming the discovery 
which he and I formerly announced, of a land-shell, or pupa, m the Coal-forma- 
tion of Nova Scotia. When we contemplate the vast series of formations inter- 
vening between the tertiary and carboniferous strata, all destitute of air- 
breathing mollusea, at least of the terrestrial class, such a discovery affords an 
important illustration of the extreme defectiveness of our geological records. 
It has always appeared to me that the advocates of progressive development 
have too much overlooked the imperfection of these records, and that conse- 
quently a large part of the generalizations m which they have indulged in 
regard to the first appearance of the different classes of animals, especially of 
air-breathers, will have to be modified or abandoned. Nevertheless, that the 
doctrine of progressive development may conta in it the germs of a true 
theory, | am far from denying. The consideration of this question will come 
before you when the age of the white sandstone of Elgin is discussed—a rock 


AO THE GEOLOGIST. 


hitherto referred to the Old Red, or Devonian formation, but now ascertained to 
contain several reptillian forms, of so high an organization as to raise a doubt 
in the minds of many geologists whether so old a place in the series can cor- 
rectly be assigned to it.” 

Sir Ropsrick I. Murcutson delivered a discourse “On the Geological 
Structure and Order of the Older Rocks in the Northern Counties of Scot- 
land,” in which he explained the progress which had been made in the classifi- 
cation of the rocks of sedimentary origin in Scotlaad. He alluded to the great 
leaders of Scottish geology, Hutton, Playfair, and Hall, and his immediate pre- 
decessors, Jameson, M’Culloch, and others, and showed to how great an extent 
the chief point on which he was to insist—the metamorphism of. sedimentary 
strata of various ages into crystalline rocks—had been ably illustrated by Hut- 
ton himself. After his day, however, mineralogy chiefly occupied the minds of 
geologists, and comparatively little progress was made for some years In 
geology as at present cultivated. With William Smith, however, a new era 
arose in England, and the proofs which that sagacious man brought forward to 
show that each sedimentary formation was characterized by organic remains 
peculiar to it, and that there existed a regular order of superposition from the 
older to the younger strata, were the true foundations or keystones of modern 
geology. . Sir Roderick then gave a very full account of his researches in the 
northern counties of Scotland, and concluded by calling the attention of the 
meeting to the progress which was beg made by the Geological Survey of 
Great Britain under his direction, and under the special management in the 
field of his friend Professor Ramsay. Exhibiting certain sheets of maps, on 
the six-inch seale, of the counties of Edinburgh, Haddmeton, and Linlithgow, 
which explained the outcrop of the coal and limestone of these tracts, he 
trusted that the staff of geological surveyors at present allotted to Scotland 
would be soon augmented, and m that case he hoped to live to see the day, if 
maps were only provided, when all the geology of Aberdeenshire and the north 
of Scotland might really be worked out with accuracy. The present effort was 
chiefly confined to the application of recognized general principles of classifica- 
tion to the elucidation of the order of the older rocks of the Highlands; and 
nothing more could be attempted untilthe country possessed maps, the north of 
Scotland bemg almost the only country in Europe without an accurate map, a 
melancholy fact, on which he insisted a quarter of a century ago, when the As- 
sociation met in Kdimburgh in 1834. On that occasion the Association, at his 
request, memorialized the then Government; and this state of matters was 
being rapidly wiped away as regards all the tracts to the south of the 
Grampians ; and he hoped that the skill and energy of his friend Colonel James 
and the officers under him would be so warmly supported by Parliament and 
the public that Scotland would have before long a really good topographical 
map, without which no practically useful geological results could be worked 
out. Sir Roderick concluded his address by impressing upon the minds of those 
auditors who were not geologists the nature of the great difference between the 
formerly accepted notions of the order and equivalents of the older rocks of the 
north of Scotland, and those which he desired to establish by his reform, by 
pomting to two generalized diagrams. One of these, representing the old 
notions, exhibited a great central mass of rocks, termed gneiss, mica schist, 
quartz-rocks, with granites, porphyries, &c., flanked both on the east and the 
west coasts by Old Red conmloinente and sandstones. The other, on which he 
had previously lectured, exhibited the succession which had been evolved out 
of that which was previously an assemblage of crystalline rocks, distinguished 
ouly by their mineral characters, but undefined by their relative position and 
imbedded organic remains, and in which the rocks of the north-west coast were 
confused with those of the east coast. 


BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING. AQT 


Sir Cuartes LYELL moved a vote of thanks to Sir Roderick for the clear 
and admirable illustration he had given them of the Geology of Scotland, which 
Professor Puiiiies seconded, remarking on the high estimation m which Sir 
R. Murchison was held over half the globe as the master of the Silurian. 

Sir Davip BrewsTER, as Vice-president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 
then presented the Brisbane Medal to Sir Roderick, an act that met with great 
applause from the audience. 

The deputation of the council accompanying Sir David Brewster, consisted 
of Dr. Christison, Professors Allman and Balfour, and Mr. Robert Chambers ; 
the latter addressed Sir Roderick in the following speech :— | 

“ Sir Roderick Murchison,—The Royal Society of Edinburgh, viewing your 
late researches im the Highlands of Sutherland with an interest and admiration 
shared by the whole scientific world, has thought proper to vote to you the first 
example of a gold medal, founded by its respected President, Si Thomas S. 
Brisbane, for remarkable scientific services. In the paper read by you to the 
Geological Society m December last, the Society sees an admirable instance 
of laborious investigation in connection with a Scottish field. You have, sir, 
succeeded in putting into a new and correct place in the geological series, a 
band of formations which, from the days of M’Culloch downwards, has attracted 
a large share of attention, both on account of its constituent materials and the 
magnificent scenery which it forms ; and you have thus conferred a great favour 
upon your native country. It seems suitable that the Royal Society of Edin- 
burgh, which heard the first speculations of Hutton and of Playfair, should 
take upon itself to stamp with the national approbation services so distin- 
guishedas yours. The Society, however, must not and cannot overlook the fact 
that your researches in Sutherlandshire only follow up a most remarkable series 
of geological imvestigations performed during the last thirty-five years, and 
which have placed you so high among the great chiefs of living British 
geologists. Im succession, the mountams of Auvergne, the Alps, the Car- 
pathian, the Urals, have owned your genius for research. You have recalled 
to the world the story of the first ages of life upon its surface. In the wide 
plaims of Russia your diligence has been as conspicuously shown as in that 
Siluria which is all your own. ‘Two superb and voluminous works and a 
hundred separate memoirs but faintly express the amount of your geological 
writings. Nor, on the present occasion, should your services, as the head of 
the Geological Survey, and as the frequent President of the Geographical 
Society, be forgotten. Neither should we fail to remember that remarkable 
triumph of science of which you are the instrument—the vaticination of an 
auriferous region in Australia from the observations you had made in the Ural 
Mountains. Viewimg these many merits and your present active course, the 
Royal Society of Edinburgh cannot but feel proud in having the privilege of 
conferring upon you the first Brisbane prize ; and it is their earnest wish and 
prayer that you may long be spared to enjoy the many deserved honours 
which a grateful country and an admirmg band of fellow-labourers and a 
beneficent Sovereign have conferred upon you.” 

Sir Roperick Murcutson replied in very feeling language, that no honour 
ever conferred upon him had touched him more than this testimonial at the 
hands of his own countrymen. He was gratified beyond measure at receiving 
this honour from a Society which, of all others in Europe, is most chary in con- 
ferring its honours, and has a more limited number of honorary members. And 
all the more would it be esteemed that it was put into his hand by one of the 
most eminent of living philosophers. 

The followimg is a summary of the other papers read in the Geological 
section :— 


Dr. Black, F.G.S., “On Coal at Ambisheg, in the Island of Bute.” 


4.02 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Mr. W. H. Baily, F.G.S., Paleontologist to the Ivish Geological Survey, 
“On Sphenopteris Hookerii and Ichthyolites, trom Kiltorkan Hill, Kilkenny.” 

Dr. Brice, “Notice of the discovery of Upper Silurian Fossils in the 
Devonian Slates.” : : 

Dr. Anderson, of Newburgh, “On the Remains of Man in the Superficial 
Drifts.” His main object in bringing the subject before the meeting was to 
give a condensed view of the discovery of human remains in the superficial 
accumulations of pre-historic origi. Undoubted cases existed of human 
remains enclosed in hard compact concretionary rocks, buried deep in the silts 
of rivers, and high up in caverns, associated with the bones of elephants, lions, 
tigers, hyenas, and other extinct carnivora. As to the mstances occurring in 
the beds of lakes, rivers, and seas, he contended that a few years, or even 
months, often sufficed for the formation of a compact durable mass of calca- 
reous and siliceous rock, in which human bones, skeletons, pottery, coms, and 
implements were embedded. He referred to a case betwixt Aberdour and 
Burnt-island, in Fife, which he examined a few weeks ago, where an incrusta- 
tion was now forming of great depth, in which are embedded land-shells, 
branches of trees, and where on the face of the encrusted cliff, twigs of 
living trees are becoming entangled in the calcareous breccia. The Rev. Doc- 
tor quoted the case of a cannon-ball—a 32-pounder—lately presented to him 
by a fellow-townsman, deeply encrusted with ferrugimous mud, and completely 
indurated, which was raised by an anchor in the harbour of Copenhagen. The 
skulls at Amiens and Abbeville, the remains in the caverns of Torquay, and 
those in Scilly, the flint-weapons in veimed-limestone in Cantyre, and the arrow- 
heads with elephant-remains in Suffolk, were then successively brought under 
review. He saw no evidence deducible from the superficial drifts to warrant a 
departure from the usually accepted data of man’s very recent introduction 
upon the earth. ie 

Mr. Henry C. Hodge, “On the Origin of the Fossiliferous Caves of the 
Plymouth Limestone.” The author traced the origin of the caves to the de- 
composition of a variety of irregularly-distributed dolomite containing the 
carbonates of iron and manganese; and expressed an opinion, from an ex- 
amination of the geological position of the limestone and its relations to sur- 
rounding rocks, that at the time the bone-caves were formed they must have 
been situated at a much higher level than at present, and contamed no stalag- 
mite during their habitation by carnivora. He attributed the introduction of the 
remains in the caves to the agency of carnivorous cave-inhabiting animals ; 
but admitted that in some previous instances the evidence appeared to show 
that the animals had fallen into fissures. He adduced facts which, he thought, 
showed that the bone-caves had been re-opened for the admission of stalactite 
after the enclosure of their ossiferous contents, and he argued that the facts, 
if properly considered, would help to demonstrate that not merely was there 
no geological evidence whatever to prove the co-existence of the extinct animals 
with man, but that all the apparently powerful arguments based upon the 
occurrence of his remains in ossiferous caverns might be merely deceptive, and 
of no real significance or certainty whatever, as their presence in them might 
be easily accounted for through the operation of still existing causes. 

Mr. D. Page, F.G.8., gave m a report on the exploration of the Upper 
Silurians of Lesmahagoe, in terms of the Association’s grant to Mr. Slimon. 
During the last summer Mr. Shimon and his son had diligently explored the 
fossiliferous tract of Upper Silurian strata m the parish of Lesmahagoe, and 
the result of their operations had been to exhibit still further the highly fos- 
siliferous character of the Nilberry Silurians, and to give ample indication of a 
very varied and curious crustacean fauna, altogether new to paleontology. 

The Rey. Dr. Longmuir, “ On the Restoration of the Pterichthys.” 


BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING. 403 


Mr. D. Page next gave a brief and interesting Notice of some new Boreal 
forms of Mollusca from the Pleistocene deposits of Scotland. 

Rey. W.5S. Symonds, “ On some Fishes and Tracks from the “‘Passage-rocks,” 
and from the Lower Old Red Sandstone of Herefordshire.” 

Rey. H. Lloyd, “On the Affections of Polarized Light reflected from and 
transmitted by thin plates.” 

Professor Daubeney, F.R.S., “On certain Voleanic Rocks in Italy, which 
appear to have been subjected to Metamorphic Action.” 

Dr. M‘Gowan, “On certain Phenomena attendant on Volcanic Eruptions and 
Earthquakes in China and Japan.” 

Messrs. Garner and Molyneux, “ On the Coal-fields of Staffordshire.” 

C. Moore, F.G.8., “On Brachiopoda, and on the development of the loop in 
Terebratella.” 

Dr. Buist, F.G.S., “On the Geology of Lower Egypt.” 

The President read a letter from Dr. Dawson, F.G.S., intimating certain dis- 
coveries which he had made of a land-shell and reptiles in the South Jog- 
gins Coal-field, Nova Scotia, and enclosing two specimens. 

Professor Nicol, F.R.S.E., gave an able and imteresting notice on the “ Re- 
lations of the Gneiss, Red Sandstone, and Quartzite in the north-west High- 
lands,” illustrated by various sections. Professor Nicol had visited the High- 
lands, and had arrived at a different conclusion as to the succession of certain 
crystalline and sub-crystalline rocks from that arrived at by Sir R. Murchison. 
He contended that the great series of rocks im question were of older date than 
that assigned to them by Sir R. Murchison, and endeavoured to prove, by a 
reference to the sections which he exhibited, that the order of superposition 
which he advocated was the correct one. 

Professor Huxley read a paper on “ Newly discovered Reptilian re- 
mains from the neighbourhood of Elgin.” 

Rey. Professor Sedgwick, “ On Faults in Cumberland and Lancashire.” The 
object of the Professor’s description of the faults in Cumberland and Lanca- 
shire was to show that there was really no violation of the order of super- 
position of the strata. 

Professor Rogers, “Some Observations on the Parallel Roads of Glenroy,” 
in which he described the leading features of the district, and indicated as ie 
opinion that the shelves or grooves on the surface of the hills had been formed 
by water in motion, and not by water at rest, as had been supposed. 

Professor Harkness, “On Sections along the Southern Flanks of the 
Grampians.” 

Mr. J. Wyllie, “On some Old Red Sandstone Fossils.” 

Mr. C. W. Peach, ‘On New Fossil Fish from Caithness.” 

Mr. W. H. Baily, F.G.S., “On some Tertiary Fossils from India.” 

. Adolphe Radiguel, C.H., “On a Fragment of Pottery found in a Superficial 
eposit.”’ 

M. Gages, “On the Results Obtaimed by the Mecanico-chemical Examination 
of Rocks and Minerals.” M. Gages had invented a new mode of examining 
metamorphic rocks. Instead of reducing them to powder, he simply broke 
them down and then submitted them to chemical tests. By this means some 
remarkable results had been obtained. 

Mr. C. G. Thost, “On the Rocks and Minerals on the Property of the Mar- 
quis of Breadalbane.” 

Mr. Brady, “On some Hlephant-remains at Ilford.” The chief of these was 
the tusk of an enormous mammoth, identical with the Siberian mammoth. 
Remains of coniferous and other plants yet existant were found in the same 
strata. 

Mr. J. Miller, “On the Age of the Reptile sandstone of Morayshire.” 


AOA. THE GEOLOGIST. 


Mr. D. Page, “On the Structure, Affinities, and Geological Range of the 
Eurypteride.” 

Professor Harkness, “On Yellow Sandstones of Elgin and Lossiemouth.” 

Rey. Dr. Longmuir, “On the Remains of the Cretaceous Formation in 
Aberdeenshire.” 

Mr. T. F. Jamieson, “‘On Drift-beds of the North of Scotland.” 

Mr. John Cleghorn, ‘ On the Submerged Forests of Caithness.” 

Mr. Wm. Pengelly, F.G.S., “On the Ossiferous Fissures at Oreston.” 

Dr. G. D. Gibb, F.G.S., “On Canadian Caverns.” 

Mr. C. Moore, F.G.S., “On the supposed Wealden and other Beds near 
Elgin.” . 

Rev. Dr. Anderson, “On the Dura-Den sandstone.” 

Mr. J. Miller, F.G.S., “On some New Fossils from the Old Red Sandstone 
of Caithness.” 

Mr. A. Geikie, F.G.S., “On the Chronology of the Trap-Rocks of Scotland.” 

Mr. H. C. Sorby, F.R.S., “On the Origin of Cone in Cone-structure.”’ 

Rev. H. Mitchell, “On New Fossils from the Lower Old Red Sandstone of 
Scotland.” 

T. F. Jamieson, Esq., “On the Junction of Granite with Stratified Rocks.” 

Professor Nicol, F.G.S., “On the Geology of Aberdeenshire.” 

Rey. Dr. J. Longmuir, ‘‘ On Coast-section between Aberdeen and Dunnottar 
Castle.” 


NOTES AND OU Hh hens: 


Banpep Frints.—DeEar Srr,—Amongst the flmts of the Upper Chalk, I 
have met with some presenting bands of a whitish or grey substance, alternat- 
ing in layers with the dark flint of which the nodules chiefly consist. ‘These 
bands, or strie, vary considerably in thickness; im some specimens being only 
aline in breadth, in others fully a quarter of an inch. Sometimes they may be 
distinguished on the exterior of the flints, exhibitmg the appearance of a 
projecting spiral, or a series of discs. I have never found any two specimens 
offermg any great degree of similarity. I should be obliged by your express- 
ing an opmion upon this phenomenon in your valuable periodical. Yours 
&c., StreEx, Luton, Bedfordshire—Mr. N. 'T. Wetherell im a paper read before 
the Geological Society of London, in Nov., 1858, referred these banded-fiints, 
from which the rmged forms have been produced by weathermg and the action 
of water-wear, to a peculiar concretionary action in the consolidation of the silex 
into nodules. This paper was illustrated by avery large series of banded-flints, 
exhibiting the phenomenon both as sections and in the screw-like or weathered 
state. Such flnts are abundant at Whetstone, Charlton, &c., and the weathered 
fragments are of very common occurrence in all drift-gravels. 

OBSERVATIONS UPON CERTAIN GeEoLOGIcAL [yFERENCES.—SiR,—I should 
like to present your readers with a few remarks upon the subject of geological 
inference, inasmuch as it is one which appears to me to have been neglected, 
especially as regards the primary deductions upon which the science of Geology 
has been founded. The “logic of geology,’’ although perhaps a novel is a very 
telling phrase, and may to many appear somewhat ironical, although the term 
logic when applied to any positive science cannot but seem just: if therefore 
this phrase excites somewhat unpleasant feelings in a competent mind, especially 
When certain parts of the science are considered, there is @ priori reason for 
believing that some geological facts, or rather assumed facts, have not that 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 4.05 


consistency which strict logic demands, and are not therefore superior to or- 

inary hypotheses. From its nature, Geology can never attain that degree of 
certainty which characterizes the mathematical and other sciences; neverthe- 
less, as far as possible, strict logic may dictate all its facts. That this is not 
the case now I| will endeavour to show. 

Supposing that a man should for the first time behold the various strata in a 
well, or appearing slantingly in an ordinary dyke, it is probable he would 
imagine three things :—Ist, which was the oldest; 2, which was the earliest 
formed; and 3rd, were they originally placed as they now appear. These 
three questions strike me as forming the basis of geological science, as leading 
to the various ramifications into which this interesting inquiry is afterwards 
developed. 

As regards the question of antiquity it is judged, and rationally enough, that 
the rock which is universally found as the basis of every other is the oldest ; 
and this because it is absurd to suppose that the upper rocks and beds were 
first formed, and that the under-one was then miraculously (using this term of 
course in its highest sense) placed under them. This idea is quite un-needed, 
because the phenomenon can be explained in a simple and highly probable 
manner. Granite is this rock, and as it has never been found, which is for 
obyious reasons improbable, that any other rocks dip into it, no doubt as 
to its antiquity can remain; and this is absolutely confirmed upon considering 
that it is an igneous rock, and hence must have existed prior to its neighbours. 
The reasons of this are well known, or I should have given them. 

To determine the periods of the formations of various rocks, every one will 
allow that we can only judge, if we judge at all, by the rate of time the like 
operations progress at in the present age. Now, I maintain that this is a very 
doubtful rule upon which to rear theories, or assumed-facts, of such moment 
as have been laid down by geologists; and I find that Dr. Brewster agrees 
with me, whose remarks upon this subject I shall take the liberty of quoting. 
He says, in “ More Worlds than One,” “It is taken for granted that many of 
the stratified rocks were deposited in the sea by the same slow processes which 
are going on in the present day ; and as the thickness of the deposits now pro- 
duced is a very small quantity during a long period of time, it is inferred that 
nine or ten miles of strata must have taken millions of years for their forma- 
tion.” I apply this scepticism to every rock either above or below the earth’s 
surface since the commencement of human history. It cannot be said what 
time sedimentary deposits have taken to form, masmuch as their present pro- 
gress is no criterion. This may be denied, but the denial cannot be substan- 
tiated ; whereas it is quite easy to suppose that such deposits have been formed 
rey quickly. Hence this geological assumption is at the best an hypothesis, 
and in my opinion by no means a probable one. There is a logical flaw about 
it which renders it at once a matter of doubt. And if this notion of the high 
antiquity of the earth is put aside, there need be no controversy respecting the 
length of the days of creation: each day may coincide in duration with those 
of the present period. The world is in the Mosaic account said to have been 
created, and other changes follow, when we hear of the first day, from which I 
judge that all was effected withm this period. But, to keep to the philoso- 
phical part of the question, I do not think that the antiquity of the world, 
which geologists presume, is at all substantiated, to say nothing of the use, 
and consequently wisdom of such an act. 

The author I have quoted further remarks, “The dry land upon our globe 
occupies only one-fourth of its whole superficies, all the rest is sea. How 
much of this fourth part have geologists been able to examine? and how small 
seems to be the area of stratification which has been explored? We venture 
to say not one-fiftieth part of the whole, and yet upon the result of so partial a 

VOL. I. M M 


406 THE GEOLOGIST. 


survey there has been founded a startling generalization. The intellectual 
races, if they did exist, must have lived at a distance from the ferocious animals 
that may have occupied the seas or jungles of the ancient world, and conse- 
quently their remains could not have been found in the ordinary fossiliferous 
strata. Their dwelling-places may have been in one or more of the numerous 
localities of our continents not yet explored, or m those immense regions of the 
earth which are now covered by the great oceans of the globe; and till these 
oceans have quitted their beds, or some great convulsions have upheaved and 
laid bare the strata above which the races im question may have lived and died, 
we are not entitled to maintain it as a demonstrated truth that the ancient 
earth was under the sole dominion of the brutes that perish.” I confess I do 
not see that if intellectual races have existed prior to man, they must, as a 
matter of necessity, have lived at a distance from the ferocious animals which 
then peopled the world: they may have built habitations and fabricated instru- 
ments of defence. But as we find traces neither of these nor of themselves, 
and yet discover remams of pre-adamite animals, it must be concluded that the 
supposed intellectual races could not have resided amongst them. Yet J agree 
with Dr. Brewster that the generalization is hasty and unfounded; although 
far more probable than the former assumption, it is equally illogical. As a 
deduction it is quite as unsound. 

As an illustration of the shutting-out of causes, if I may use such a term, 
and the reducing of all phenomena to a few, which has rightly been said to be a 
passion with philosophers, geologists have rather cut short the origin of springs 
and lakes. I think that the following explanation has never received a place 
among others: they may arise from cavities running inland from below the 
level of the sea, and terminating either upon or below the surface of the land, 
thus forming either springs or lakes. According to this hypothesis the depth 
of such a lake, for it is not said that all lakes and springs are thus formed, 
would be determined by the height of the land where the cavity or sandy 
passage reached its surface, and the height of springs would vary in the same 
manner; according to the depth of the sandy cavity below the level of the sea 
would be depth or height of lakes or springs thus formed, supposing this hy- 
pothesis be received as correct. 

Proceeding to the third question, there is little difficulty im discovering that 
after convulsions have ruptured the once orderly arrangement of the sedi- 
mentary and igneous rocks, it is easy to perceive that mountam ranges have 
been caused by upheaval. This species of geological power produces flaws in 
the shape of contortions and faults, which volcanic power can alone bring to 
pass; the gradual enlargement and diminution produced by present stratifica- 
tion and disintegration produces regular series of rocks, where occur no 
faults or other imperfections. It is probable that when the earth was formed, 
the igneous rocks cooled so as to allow the materials of our present aqueous 
rocks to be gradually precipitated upon them. Hence regular strata would be 
the result, and for once assuming an hypothesis to be true, from this it must 
be that the various mountain-ranges were called into existence after this event, 
and that the defective strata which form them, and all which occur, are the 
work of after voleanic agency. It may be thought that I here condemn myself 
by assuming that which ought to be absolutely proved. But I would urge 
that such an inference as this is in the highest degree probable, and thus may 
be assumed as demonstrated, in which it differs, although only in degree, yet 
immeasurably from the inferences already noticed. 

The development of this latter question has lead many to theorize altogether 
apart from experience, when no real advancement of knowledge has, from the 
nature of such a course of conduct, ensued. Logic has been separated from 
experience ; men have argued metaphysically instead of physically; and thus, 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 4.07 


geological inferences, improperly so called, have rather provoked merriment than 
serious attention, which, combined with the habit of assuming no very probable 
conjectures for demonstrable truths, has rendered Geology somewhat unpopular 
even among professed men of science; and the term “logic of geology,” or some- 
thing similar, expressive more of ironical contempt than anxious expectation, 
or even the present condition of the science. But, throwing off every hasty 
habit, and discarding every hasty generalization, the student of geology will 
truly progress ; for their’s is a science happily capable of philosophical inference, 
and one which will amply repay the study devoted to it. J. A. Davies.—At 
all times we give insertion to any sensible remarks, whether they convey informa- 
tion or pourtray doubts or mis-comprebensions for solution. A wrong im- 
pression produced on one reflecting mind by a want of full information, or a 
wrong reading, or misunderstanding of abstruse facts may be produced on other 
minds ina like manner; and it is obviously one of the duties of a popular 
magazine on a special science at all times and on all occasions to set right its 
humbler votaries whenever any of them are doubtful or take a wrong view. 
Geologists well versed in the science would perceive at a glance some erroneous 
notions mixed up with our correspondent’s not in-acute remarks on geological 
logic, but these points might not be so palpable to general readers. 

There is no reason why Geology should not become ultimately one of the 
most logical of all the sciences, of which indeed it is a grand and wonderful 
combimation, and consequently inherently partakes of all their mathematical 
and logical properties. But while geology is in so thoroughly progressive a 
state, inpletely logical deductions should not be expected to be produced from 
admittedly defective data. Upon imsecure foundations no one can properly 
build up logical conclusions. We admit, however, that much that seems 
illogical mm the writings of some modern geologists, might have presented a very 
different aspect by a little care on the part of those authors, and we have already 
referred to this carelessness of diction which tends to stamp our science with a 
want of logic. This is, however, only apparent and notreal. The great doctrines 
of Geology based on a good ground-work of established facts are undoubtedly 
most logically deduced; and there is certamly nothing to prevent every minor 
detail, so aided as geology must ever be by chemistry, mathematics, natural 
physics, and other exact and deductive sciences, being as exact anddefinite. It 
is only just, therefore, to conclude that geology, a science compounded of exact 
and eas sciences, should be, if properly compounded, an exact and logical 
whole. 

Now our correspondent, in his own example of reasoning, has gone wrong 
altogether in his facts chosen as a basis of attack upon geologists for want of 
logic. He has first thoroughly mistaken, or is altogether ignorant of the true 
nature and origin of granite. This rock is only a crystalline condition of rock, 
and in its crystallized condition may he of any age from older than the Cambrian, 
or lowermost sedimentary rocks, to the newest of the Tertiaries. He is not 
secure again in his statement that no rocks dip into it, if we understand his 
meaning to be that it is totally distinct from any connection with other and 
sedimentary formations; for certainly sometimes such sedimentary strata, if 
they do not plunge into it as a plank into a heap of mud, which from the nature 
of things is not to be expected, at least they sometimes lose their distinctive 
stratified characters as they approach a granitic boss, and gradually merge into 
its crystalline and peculiar mineral characters. 

Again, with respect to the vast periods of time required for the formation of 
rock-strata, our correspondent is more illogical himself than any of the geo- 
logists he attacks, for they do carefully take as data those physical phenomena 
which are goig on around them, and they do moreover in their application 
of those data to past conditions take great care to notice and to observe 


AGS THE GEOLOGIST. 


whether the appearances presented in the mineral conditions and physical 
aspects of the rock-strata, to which they thus apply them, are such as to indicate 
their having been formed under like or under dis-similar conditions ; while our 
correspondent contents himself with a broad and unsubstantiated denial of all 
fact and fiction, and tells us it is quite as easy to suppose one thing as another, 
a conclusion it requires no great amount of logic to arriveat. Neither is there 
any logic whatever in his association of the length of the days of creation, as 
written in the Mosaic account, with the periods of time required by geologists 
for the development of the earth to its present conditions. The length of 
time the great rock-masses have taken in their formation, the length of time 
the earth has existed are the logical deductions from very exact and scrupu- 
lously examined data—data and deductions which have passed through the 
most violent and persecuting opposition, unrivalled only by the memorable at- 
tack upon the scientific truth developed by that foremost of astronomers, 
Galileo. Geology presents us in its statements on this topic with aceurately 
logical deductions, but linguists and theologists have not presented us with the 
like exact and logical interpretations of Holy Writ. Geologists are labouring 
incessantly in the acquirement of new information, and have so far laboured in- 
comparably more earnestly and incessantly to effect a reconciliation of these 
passages referred to than theologists themselves; and whenever the thorough 
harmony is effected, probability certamly points to the side of geologists as the 
accomplishers. 

Our correspondent is again at fault as to the extent of territory examined by 
geologists. He ignores the great geological surveys which England, America, 
Holland, and other countries have established. He forgets how Englishmen, 
Frenchmen, Americans, and the citizens of every great and civilized country 
roam and travel over far-off lands, and bring back to us volumes of information 
long before the rolling tide of civilization reaches the shores of the remote lands 
they have explored. If every inch of ground is not probed to the quick, at least 
the general ostensible features of very vast extents of territory are as fully 
known as to satisfy the keen scientific observer that no great modification of 
his general deductions are required. very new region penetrated by the ad- 
venturous explorer adds to the consolidation of the previous deductions, and 
confirms instead of shaking into doubtfulness. 

In taking up his third poimt, our correspondent is far away indeed from a 
right comprehension of geological teaching. No one must thmk by the mere 
reading of one or two geological treatises that he can, as geology stands at 
this present time as a progressive science, arrive at a proper estimation or 
knowledge of that vast and stupendous science. It is perhaps only by the 
labour of a life-time, and under the divine blessing of a powerful intellect, tha 
any man can become a thorough geologist. More intricate and labyrinthine 
even than astronomy is the science with which he has to deal. Time, the great 
feature of the one, is as boundless as space, the great feature of the other ; and 
the knowledge of the phenomena of the depths below the surface of our globe 
is as difficult of aequirement as the penetration of the vision into the realms of 
the outer worlds around us. Astronomy must be limited by the capabilities of 
the telescope and the vibrations of the pendulum; but Geology is the physical 
history of our mother-earth from the first-days of its birth unto the end of time 
—it is a great volume which no man’s life will suffice for the reading. 

Tt is the difficulty often, so numerous are the ramifications of the data forming 
the groundwork upon which geological statements are made, of stating such 
ground-work concisely and explicitly that gives in many cases the appearance 
of illogical writing; and without gomg through the details of our corres- 
pondent’s third and concluding portions of his communication, it will be easy 
for our readers to perceive how the condensation, in time, of the geological 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 4.09 


phenomena there referred to, as presented by him, gives at once an air of in- 
coherence and improbability which renders palpable the falseness of the at- 
tempted logic applied. The moment we apply the medium time, we have no 
more such iconsistencies as rapidly precipitated rocks containmg countless 
myriads of organic remains, but which were made up in fact not seldom of the 
ground-down and well-worn particles of beings that naturally lived and naturally 
died. With time brought in as an element, the volcano, intermittent in action 
and terrific m energy, seems to pour forth its volumes of molten lava over the 
surfaces of former lands, and ever and anon the subterranean force heaves up 
the ground, and combats with the destruction of the ever-wasting sea. 

There is nothing in the grand conclusions of Geology to excite merriment ; it 
is a plous and a holy study, and if not undertaken im sucha spirit had better be 
left alone. If anywhere it be unpopular, it must be where ignorance or silly 
timidity prevails, and not where truthfulness and investigation find earnest 
votaries; if its knowledge is not more widely spread it is only because the 
state of education is not sufficiently advanced for its beauties and sublimities to 
be properly understood, or because men want time for its proper pursuit. No 
one with a mind duly capable of reflection and of elevated thought can feel 
indifferent to the history ofthe earth on which he dwells, and over which his 
race reigns predominant. 

We have printed our correspondent’s communication, however, in its entirety, 
considering his general remark of a seeming want of logical inference to be n 
many cases just, as far as the mere appearance goes, and as being a valuable 
hint to obscure writers to improve their styles of composition for the benefit 
of those who peruse their works, as well as for the general advantage and pro- 
gress of knowledge. 

CHALK-SPONGES OF YORKSHIRE.—DeEaAR S1r,—Noticing in No. 138 of your 
Magazine the request for a paper on the Sponges from the Yorkshire Chalk, I 
beg to state that steps are about to be taken by me to ensure faithful drawings 
of all the species of those curious fossils, of which I have been collecting 
specimens for the past twenty years. 

I am now making a selection which I intend to have drawn, and to publish 
with a short account of the localities where they were found, so as to enable 
visitors and amateur-geologists to obtain such fossils themselves. 

I believe that there is not any work which contains figures of one tenth-part 
of the species met with, and nny of the forms are not, as yet, placed in the 
museum-collections at York, Hull, or Scarborough. 

I shall have much pleasure in showing my collection to geologists visiting 
this town.—Yours, &c., Epw. Tinpatt, Bridlington. 

First British Fosstz Beaver.—As all notices of mammalian remains ap- 
pear to be of value at this period of most interesting investigations, I have sent 
you an abstract of one by Mr. I. Okes, from the “Transactions of the Cambridge 
Philosophical Society” for 1822, of the first fossil beaver found in England. 

From all that has been recorded by naturalists of the abode and habits of the 
beaver, as also from its anatomical peculiarities, it is generally concluded that the 
fossil beaver of this country is not only of the same, or a nearly allied species 
as the existing kind, but that it has once been indigenous to Great Britain. 

The fossil remains referred to m Mr. Okes paper consist of the left halves 
of two lower jaw-bones and other portions of four skulls, dug up in 1818 by a 
workman about three miles south of Chatteris, in Cambridgeshire, in a bed of 
the old West. Water, formerly a considerable branch of communication between 
the Ouse and the river Nen, but which, according to the fen-people, has been 
choked up for more than two centuries. 

The accuracy of this tradition is proved by the following order of Council, 
printed in Dugdale’s “ History of the Fens.” 


410 THE GEOLOGIST, 


«Anno 1617, 9 Maii, 15 Jac.—That the rivers of Wisbeche and all the 
branches of the Nene and West Water be cleansed and made in bredth and 
depth as much as by antient record they have been.” 

The bones above referred to were taken from a peat-soil of a dark brown 
colour. 

In the same paper is anotice of a part of an elephant’s skull with two grinders, 
and fragments, two feet in length, of the horns of a large species of deer, sup- 
posed to be those of megaceros by the author. These last mentioned fossils, 
the author observes, have no connection with the remains of beaver, but were 
found in a stratum of clay half a mile eastward of Chatteris, of the antiquity of 
which he can form no idea, whereas those of the beaver belong to a stratum 
which he thinks may be referred to a period not very distant even in the history 
of our country. 

The titles of the plates describe the specimens as then being in the possession 
of Prof. EK. D. Clarke, of Cambridge.—I. A. B. 

Tue Tuirp AND Firtu Days or tHE Mosaic Narrative.—When examin- 
ing the Silurian rocks in the south of Scotland, a fact has often struck me 
which I am at a loss to understand. The whole of the organic remains found 
in these rocks, with the exception of marine alge, were, according to the 
Mosaic narrative, creations of the fifth day; the terrestrial vegetation, 
according to the same authority, was created on the third day. Notwith- 
standing, we find no trace of the third day’s creation in any of the Silurian 
formations, and very few in the Devonian, and not until we enter on the Car- 
boniferous system (formed thousands of centuries after the Silurian) do the 
“orass and herbs yielding seed and the fruit-trees yielding fruit” appear. 
Any of the readers of Ti Grotoeist, harmonizmg the two teachings, would 
confer a favour on Arncus.—Land-plants have left their remains in the upper 
Silurian, and, for what we know, in the Lower Silurian too, at least we have as 
low down as the horizon of the Lingula-flags veins of anthracite and bituminous 
exudations, although we can not yet positively state the sources from which 
those substances have been derived. Land-plants are plentiful m some Devonian 
beds both in the British Islands, Europe, and in North America. 

Live Lizarp IMBEDDED IN A SEAM or Coat.—In the month of August, 
1818, when the workmen were sinking a pit at Mr. Fenton’s colliery near 
Wakefield, and had passed through measures of stone, grey “‘ buist,” blue stone, 
and some thin beds of coal, to the depth of one hundred and fifty yards, they 
came to the seam of coal, about four feet thick, which they proposed to work. 
After excavating about three inches of it, one of the miners struck his pick 
into a crevice, and, having shattered the coal around into small pieces, he dis- 
covered a lizard about five inches long. It continued very brisk and lively for 
about ten minutes, and then drooped and died.See “ Philosophical Magazine,” 
WOlls Littles Ws Bi6 (Ce dis) 

_ Cotrectine Fosstts rrom Workmren.—Derar Srr,—Could you inform me 
in your next number what is a fair price to pay workmen in Chalk-pits for such 
fossils as Cidaris, Cyphosoma, Spondylus, sharks’ teeth, fish, &e.? Iwas in- 
formed that a penny each was the regular charge, but I can only obtain the 
commonest fossils, as Micraster, Galerites, Pecten, or Terebratula, at this price. 
—Yours truly, C. Evans, Hampstead.—We have frequently bought common 
and refuse fossils of quarrymen in obscure localities at the prices named, but in 
pits where the workmen are sought after for the fossils they obtain im their 
daily labours, the prices, from the very fact of there beiag a ready market for 
those articles, naturally rise. Neither do we think it fair to the workmen, if 
they take pains to obtain good specimens, to attempt to buy their better and 
rarer fossils for less than a fair price. Many specimens bought for a few 
pence are prized by their purchasers when placed m their cabinets at as many 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 411 


shillmgs or even pounds. We have, however, often spoken out as to the 
money-value of fossils. They have no real money-value, and to collect, through 
the medium of workmen, good fossils, there is only one way of succeeding, and 
that is to encourage the most intelligent of them in any special locality, and to 
recompense them liberally for submitting all they obtam at first-hand and intact 
to your notice. 

Cuass-LEcTURES ON GEOLOGY.—SIR,—Can you kindly inform me of any 
class for the acquisition of the science of Geology, as I wish to devote my 
leisure to it. I wouldnot have troubled you, but I find the evening classes at 
King’s College do not comprehend this science within their course of study ; 
that at the Working Man’s College also it is not taught. Where else to apply 
I know not, and as, from the popular character of your periodical, I judge you 
may possibly be better acquamted with such classes than most men, I have 
ventured to trouble you. A reply on the cover of next month’s GEOLOGIST 
will much oblige, E. H., Hackney.—Class-lectures for geology and paleontology 
were commenced during their last session at the rooms of the Gedloetsiy Asso- 
ciation, 5, Cavendish-square, and will be contmued during the ensuing and 
future seasons. We regret HE. H. did not think fit to entrust us im confidence 
with his name, as we could then have communicated every particular to him 
by post. It is not our practice to answer queries on the wrapper of our 
Journal; and although we did so last month im answer to HE. H., we shall not 
break through our rule in any future instances; nor shall we feel ourselves at 
all bound to notice purely anonymous communications. We suppress the names 
of our correspondents on all occasions when required to do so, but the absence 
of the private communication to ourselves, as in this case, frequently causes 
needless trouble and expence, especially when the queries reach us late in 
the month. 

WEATHERED Rocks, NEAR KeswickK.—A_ very interesting communication 
from Mr. T. Rupert Jones m No. 20 of Tue Geoxoeisr relating to the 
“weathering” of granite-rocks, has reminded me of what I observed on a late 
visit to Keswick mm the surrounding scenery. I remarked that the masses, 
great and small, of the prevailing rocks, Silurian and igneous, strewed around 
on the sides of the mountains and in the valleys and ravines exhibited an 
amount of rownding-off of their angles, equalling that of the boulders of primitive 
and secondary rocks met with in the drift of the eastern counties ; and as these 
masses cannot have experienced the attrition or friction consequent on transpor- 
tation, their bouldered-state must be the result of weathering. 

During the same ramble I remarked to a companion how much the summits 
of some of the mountains resemble craters in volcanic districts, except that 
they were too small for the result of volcanic action. If I recollect rightly, I 
particularly observed one near Buttermere, on my way to Keswick, through 
Newlands, as lookmg towards the Mere. Probably these hollows have resulted 
similarly to those mentioned by Sir Henry de la Beche in a note on the “ Re- 
port on Cornwall, Devon, and West Somerset,” and their cause explained by 
Mr. Ormerod in his table of Tors and Rock-basins.* As it is probable that 
many of your readers have not heard of the “ Bowder-Stone’” in Borrowdale, 
I will give an account of its magnitude as recorded in a hand-bill sold on the 
spot. ‘The dimensions are as follows, viz., length 62 feet, perpendicular height 
36 feet, circumference 89 feet. It contams 28,090 solid feet, and weighs 
1971 tons 13 ewt. 

Bowder-stone, as above written, is of course a corruption of Boulder-stone, 
or Bowlder-stone, as Webster has it m his dictionary. I send these few words 
for the use of juvenile geologists, that they may not interpret the above de- 


* THE GxEoLoaist for August, pp. 309—310. 


412 THE GEOLOGIST, 
tached and seattered masses of rock as they should the boulder-masses in the 
drift.—Yours, &c., GREAT YARMOUTH. wie: 

Fosstns FRoM Girvan, Ayrsuire.—sSir,—T shall be obliged if you can give 
me any information about the deposits in the immediate neighbourhood of Gir- 
van, Ayrshire. Some fossils from a hmestone-quarry there were sent me by a 
friend. ‘They appear to be a species of Euomphalus; but from the manner in 
which they have been extracted from the quarry, only one side can be examined, 
the other Lone embedded in the limestone. 1 should be much obliged if you 
could inform me whether the limestone-deposits of Girvan belong to the moun- 
tain-limestone or to the Silurian period.—Yours, &c., W. M. B. A.—In 1850 
Sir Roderick Murchison and Professor James Nicol devoted some time to the 
examination of the Girvan neighbourhood, and the result was a memoir, 
illustrated by a map, sections, and plates of fossils, in the Geological Society’s 
Journal (No. 27, vol. vii.) From this memou we learn that the limestones at 
Craighead, Assel Burn, Aldeans, Craigneil, and Bogang are of Lower Silurian 
age; and that the limestones south-east of Mullock Hill, and at Lemmy-lane 
are Carboniferous. shige 4 

The Euomphalus-looking fossil may possibly be a Maclurea, which is 
characteristically a Lower Silurian fossil, and is found near Girvan. 

ArtirictaL Nopunes: VeNnus’-Harr Stone.—Sir,—I trust you will ex- 
cuse my again troubling with a few small specimens, which I shall be ex- 
tremely obliged if you will name. 

The shells were taken out of a kind of smooth, round nodule, composed of a 
soft, sandy material of which I enclose a portion. It was brought to me lately, 
having been purchased at Dover; its appearance was extremely artificial, being 
perfectly covered with small ammonites, shells, etc., embedded on the surface of 
this sandy nodule. 

The small brooch of what is commonly called Venus’-hair I enclose, because 
T am anxious to know its composition. I have another larger specimen of 
which the coloured streaks, running transversely through one side of the 
crystal, are of a darkish brown colour, the crystal itself bemg perfectly clear, 
like the purest glass—Yours &c., W. M. B. A., Mid-Lothian.—The nodules 
referred to are artificially made by mixing the dark green sand of the Upper 
Greensand of Hastwear Bay, near Folkestone, with gum or glue. Immersion 
in hot water will at once detect this fraud, for which one or two persons at 
Dover are notorious. The fossils stuck on the outside are the commoncst 
Gault fossils obtained from Copt Point and Hastwear Bay, such as Ammonites 
lautus, A. splendens, A. tuberculatus, A. varicosus, Hanites attenuatus, Nucula 
pectinata, N. ovata, Inoceramus sulcatus, I. concentricus, Dentalium decussatum, 
D. ellipticum, &e. 

The fine long threads in brooch-stones, known as ‘ Venus’-hair” are usually 
fibres of Asbestos or long acicular crystals of Titantum embedded m pure 
crystalline quartz. The “ Venus’-hair” sometimes also consists of Actinolite 
or Tremolite, but that im the brooch-stone forwarded to us we believe to be 
Rutile (Titanium). Professor Tennant has im his collection a magnificent mass 
of pure quartz containing wire-like crystals of Titanium more than two inches 
in length. 

TeRTIARY STRATA West oF WootwicH, at Peckuam, &c.—After read- 
ing in the July number of Tue Geoxoeist the description of that teresting 
section of the Tertiary strata exposed at Woolwich, many doubtless like myself 
visited that locality and returned gratified. On thinking that it might be pos- 
sible to trace that series inland or westwards, I concluded to try, and what little 
success I have met with may perhaps not be uninteresting to some of your 
readers. After leaving Woolwich in that direction, the first traces of the shell- 
bed which I found were in the cuttings of the London, Brighton, and South- 


SSS Ll —sSS~C‘CS 


NOTES AND QUERIES. A413 


Coast Railway, near Brockley Lane, where earth has been thrown up, and in it 
are portions of shell-marl, containing Cerithium, Cyrena, with a few Paludina, 
and oysters. It is difficult tosobtain good specimens there, most being crushed, 
owing to exposure to the weather.* Proceeding now in a north-westerly 
direction over Telegraph Hill to within about a hundred and fifty yards south 
of St. Mary’s-church, Peckham, there is a small stream cutting through a shell- 
bed, met with there zz situ, five feet six inches below the surface. Overlying is 
-a band of pebbles about three inches in thickness, and above this a mass of 
gravel and clay contaimg septaria and angular-flints. The marl here is so 
destroyed by the action of running water as to render it almost impossible to 
distinguish the species of the shells it contains ; but in an adjoining field, where 
excavations have been made for different purposes, the marl has been thrown 
up, so that with a little care and patience some tolerable specimens of Cerithium, 
Cyrena, and Paludina can be obtamed from the pieces scattered about. In 
passing down the road towards the church we find on the left a pathway across 
the fields, and after following it for a quarter of a mile, we come to a field on 
the west side of the “ Braid” and there find crushed shells of Ostrea, Cyrena, 
&¢c., scattered on the surface. Passing on to Cow-lane we discover near a 
stream running for some distance by the side of the road a capital section, 
showing distinctly the positions of the different strata :—1st—a layer of oyster- 
shells of about two inches; 2nd—hard, compact shell-marl composed, of Cyrena, 
and Cerithium, one foot three inches; 3rd—blue clay containing casts of Palu- 
dina, many of which when broken present a very beautiful appearance, closely 
resembling the crystallization sometimes occurring in the cavities of flints, one 
foot ; 4th—gravel with rounded pebbles, one foot six inches ; 5th—a mass of clay 
four feet in thickness, containing septaria and a few flints. 

Now the oyster-bed (1) is evidently a continuation of that which occurs at 
Woolwich, though considerably thinned out. The shell-marl (2) also seems 
identical with that numbered 7 in the Rev. Mr. Bonney’s description; but 
the next (3) is decidedly a new bed not seen at Woolwich, although it is found 
at the church- and railway-cuttings, a few inches m thickness. The pebble-bed 
(4) seems contemporaneous with No. 4m the Woolwich section, but appears 
destitute of fossils. 

It is interesting to mark the gradual diminution of the salt and brackish 
mollusea, and the introduction of fresh-water shells. The shell-marl (2) which 
is about fourteen feet thick at Woolwich here only reaches one foot three inches, 
thinning out in its westward course ; while the overlymg stratum, here twelve 
inches, gradually diminishes eastwardly, until at Woolwich we find no traces of 
it, although the pebble-bed there (6) may be of the same period, as I have found 
in it some small Paludinz, which probably were washed down and killed by the 
salt-water. 

We may conclude that the ocean once covered the site of the present oyster- 
bed at the mouth of a large river which seemingly followed nearly the same 
course as the Thames at the present time. 

The salt-water gradually recedmg or becoming brackish from the increase 
of fresh-water deposited the overlying stratum, which naturally diminished in 
thickness on the land-side, from the predominance inland of the river-water. 
Still continuing to increase in volume, the next deposit of blue mud or clay 
was formed containmg the paludine, so characteristic of its fresh-water 
conditions. This bed thins out, as we should have expected, in an opposite di- 
rection. The old river still continumg to brmg down mud and clay from the 
country which it drained again formed the deposits immediately above. During 

® 


* At Erith and some other places the shells, as found iz sifu in the marl, are much crushed 
and broken.—Hp. Gurou. 


\Ohbg 20a NN 


414 THE GEOLOGIST. 
the same period at Woolwich a much more varied series of deposits was going 
on: advances and recessions of the sea causing the pebble-beds (containing 
shells, mosily waterworn, having been washed from inland) and bands of dif- 
ferent coloured sands with shells, some of which having their valves closed 
show these sands to have been their former habitat. In the pebble-bed (4) I 
have found many shells of Cyrena, perforated by boring-mollusks—such as the 
Bueccinum and Purpura; and after searching for some time I was rewarded by 
finding a few Buccina, not at all waterworn, in fact very perfect, proving that» 
they also had died where they are now found, their remains lying buried beside 
those of their victims. These shells also show the preponderance of salt-water 
during the formation of this deposit. 

Land about Peckham now being in request for buildig-purposes, we shall 
not long have an opportunity of examiming the strata m that locality— 
Epmunp Jones, Islmgton. 

MINERAL MaNURE IN THE GREENSAND.—S1R,—Having now, for the first 
time, come in possession of THE GEoxoeist, and finding it to he a first-rate 
journal for intelligence both for the tyro and the professor of this noble science, 
I beg leave to ask the following query. I have lately either heard or seen in 
print that the Rey. P. B. Brodie, F.G.S., of Rowington, near Warwick, had dis- 
covered a manure in the green-sand formation which -underlies the chalk, 
that, if I recollect correctly the statement, had fertilizing properties equal to 
coprolites. If this be in any way true, I should feel extremely obliged if this 
intelligent reverend gentleman would communicate to THE Gxoxocisr the way 
in which it was detected, and the means whereby it may be procured with 
pecuniary advantage to agriculture ?—Yours faithfully, Roperr Mortimer, 
Fimber.—There exists, both in the Lower Greensand and the Upper Green- 
sand, very generally throughout both England and France, considerable beds of 
nodules of phosphate of lime, perfectly fit for the manufacture of super- 
phosphate, &c., for agricultural purposes. These beds have been well known 
to geologists for many years, and have been frequently pomted out in the 
vicinity of Boulogne, of Havre, of Folkestone, of Farnham, in various parts of 
Sussex, in the Isle of Wight, and Dorsetshire, &c., by Mr. J. C. Nesbit, Pro- 
fessor Morris, the late Dr. Buckland, and myself. Dr. Fitton also noted their 
occurrence at Folkestone as far back as 1836. In Cambridgeshire those of 
the Upper Greensand have long been profitably and extensively worked for agri- 
cultural purposes. Wherever the Lower Chalk, Gault, and Greensand exist, 
these beds have only to be looked for to be found in greater or less force. 

Beds of phosphatic nodules also occur in the Kimmeridge-clay, as well as in 
other deposits. 

We are not aware of the particular instance poimted out by Mr. Brodie, but 
doubtless that gentleman, an early and respected correspondent of our journal, 
will respond to Mr. Mortimer’s question in our pages. 

The nodules from the Gault, as also those from the Lower Greensand at 
Folkestone contain from 40 to 45 per cent. of phosphate. Those of the Upper 
Greensand of that place are very excellent in quality, but small in size; the 
vein also is very thin, and consequently not profitable for working. The stratum 
of nodules at the junction of the Gault and Lower Greensand is there from 
eight inches to twenty inches thick, but rather sandy —Ep. GEou. 

THE PatzontoGRaPHicaL Socrety—Derar Srr,—Has the Paleonto- 
graphical Society broken up? 1 see no mention of them in “ Kent’s Literary Year- 
Book.” Who publishes or has published their monographs ; and what is the 
cost of them?—Yours truly, G. FowLer, Derby.—The Palzontographical Society 
is, we are happy to say, not defunct, but if rumour may be trusted, its tem- 
porary obscurity is caused by the politeness of Dr. Bowerbank in waiting for 
Professor Owen. It would however, we think, be far better both for the 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 415 


interests of the Society and the satisfaction of its members if the Society’s 
publications were punctually delivered, whether thick or thin, at their appointed 
times; to publish, in fact, what was ready, instead of waiting indefinitely for 
that which ovght to be so. We have had many inquiries of the like nature, 
which, from a desire of non-interference with any society’s individual manage- 
ment and conduct, we have not hitherto noticed. ‘The monographs are delivered 
to the subscribers only, and are not published. The subscription is one guinea 
~per annum; and subscribers can substitute any of the printed monographs for 
that due for the current year of their subscription, or they can subscribe for 
any or the whole of the past years. 

Loxpon Cray Fossits.—Derar Sir,—Can you inform me of the best 
locality for obtaining London Clay fossils, having been disappomted in my ex- 
cursions to Highgate and Hornsey? [ also find it difficult to purchase them. 
—Yours truly, Epmunp Jones.—Fossils are, we know, difficult to be got by 
the uninitiated at Highgate and Hornsey. ‘They occur chiefly low down in the 
beds; and the few accessible localities require to be pomted out by some one 
conversant with the pits. At Highgate they should be sought for at the base 
of the bank near the Archway. We should be obliged to any of our readers 
and correspondents to send us notes, at all times, of any excavations or pit- 
paling, which may come under their notice, where London Clay fossils may 

e got. 

Sal eetionenerry or Rocx-Formations.—S1ir,—Are the formative pro- 
cesses of the several geological systems which flank the primary upheavals in 
different parts of the world considered to be simultaneous? For instance, 
when the carboniferous deposits were gomg on in the British isles, was the 
same system of deposits in operation im other regions of the globe, where we 
find it developed ?—I am, Sir, yours truly, Joun Curry, Boltsham, near 
Darlington.— With certain reservations our answer would be generally in the 
affirmative. It has, however, been observed that the present Australian life is 
like that of the ancient Jurassic, that is, geologically the equivalent of the 
oolitic age, although contemporaneous with the actual phase of the Tertiary 
period in which we exist. In like manner there appears to have been a certain 
variation and relation of organic forms between the ancient Triassic and 
Jurassic formations all over the world—local oscillations, so to express it, of 
the geographical distribution of at least resembling forms between the ‘Triassic 
of the one age and the Jurassic of another, but both at particular periods ex- 
isting contemporaneously in different parts of the globe. 

Non-Prorrusion or Sotip GraniteE.—S1r,—I wish to ask for some informa- 
tion on the following subject. Some time ago I heard a lecturer on geology, 
whose name I will not mention, but who is well known as a gentleman of great 
reputation in the scientific world, assert “that m no instance had granite ever 
been protruded right through superincumbent strata, although it may have 
heaved and dislocated them to a considerable degree.’ Some surprise being 
shown by certain of the audience at this assertion, he accounted for the sub- 
sequent exposure of the granite by the disintegration of the incumbent strata 
by atmospheric and other abrading influences ; in other words, he stated that 
all the numerous granitic peaks, which we now see rising far above the natural 
surface of the earth, had cooled at enormous depths beneath it. 

Now, Sir, I wish to ask if any instances have been found of granite in large 
masses—for we must not confound them with veims of the same rock—overlying 
sedimentary deposits, giving the appearance of their having overflowed at the 
time of upheaval? If such occur, I would again ask how you could reconcile 
such facts with the supposition above-mentioned, viz., that granite has never 
protruded through strata, and consequently could never have overflowed? If 
no instances of granite lymg upon aqueous rocks have been observed, 1 do not 


A416 THE GEOLOGIST. 


see why the theory of the “non-protusion” (if I may so call it) of granite 
should not be regarded as very plausible; but if, on the other hand, instances 
have been discovered, then I should think the idea must fall to the ground, 
unless the facts ean be accounted for in any other reasonable manner. 

Iam but a young geologist, and therefore not thoroughly versed in all the 
details and intricacies of this most interestmg science; but this is a subject 
upon which I should be very glad to obtain some information-—Yours, &c., 
Epuunp Sr, AuByN.—Granite has always been regarded by modern geologists 
as a crystalline rock formed under great pressure in the depths of the earth. 
Mr. Sorby has written some excellent papers on the evidence of the presence 
of heated water in the changes effecting the transmutation into granite; and in 
the elementary works of Sir Charles Lyell and others, diagrams are given illus- 
trative of the manner of the metamorphosing action, which display also how 
ihe lowermost or deepest granite must be the most recently formed. 

No evidence whatever, so far as we know, exists of the over-run or out-flow 
of granite like a lava-stream. Such effluxes of volcanic matter are found in the 
form of bedded trap-rock, basalt, &c., all of which have been ejected from an 
orifice or chimney of eruption. Not so granite, which is boss-like and, probably 
even, only ordinary sedimentary rock changed or altered by the uprise of the 
range of the isothermal lmes of the internal heat consequent on the stopping 
out, by the deposition im the ancient ocean-basins of thick masses of sediment, 
of the conductive action of the ocean-water on the principle pointed out in the 
article on ‘‘Common Fossils,” at page 154 of the present volume of this 
Magazine. 

The action of heated water combined with pressure is accounted for in the 
consequent heating, under such circumstances, of the mfiltered water always 
met with at great depths. The primeipal evidence brought forward by Mr. 
Sorby on this point is the presence in granite-rock of small cavities partly filled 
with water, the explanation of which is, that being originally bubbles of hot 
water or steam, as the cooling of the granite took place, these contracted in 
dimensions, leaving the cavities only partly filled with globules of the con- 
densed fluid. 

The continued heating and expansion of the lowermost rock-masses or other 
causes and actions may have caused a protrusion of the upper and solidified 
portion of a granite-mass, in some rare or doubtful cases, but such a fact would 
in no way militate agaist the general doctrme of the graduality and pyro- 
fundity of the granitizing operations. 

Formation OF MINERAL VEINS BY SIMPLE SEDIMENTARY DEposiT.—Sir, 
—The excellent paper on the deposition of strata in your April number, show- 
ig how wmecessary it is to refer to any other cause than the natural shoal 
formations, the different complicated appearances of horizontal and perpen- 
dicular strata leads me to ask if mineral-veins have not had the same origin ? 
I mean, have they not been laid down in fine seams perhaps on sloping shoals ere 
they or the beds containmg them were fused and crystallized by volcanic agency ? 
From whatever source the minerals themselves were derived—and we know 
that silver, copper, &e., are finely diffused in the sea—there is nothing impro- 
bable m the idea that they may have been strewed over a muddy or sandy 
shore, as the case may be; and no one can walk along a rock interstratified with 
quartz, &e., without coming to the conclusion that 7¢ in this way came into its 
present position. The ores and various metals they contain appear to me to 
have been alike deposited in thin layers at intervals amongst the other débris. 

May T also trouble you to tell me what you consider the best authority to 
consult upon Infusoria? Also on the formation of fossils, as I believe the cir- 
cumstances under which the latter were produced must have been extremely 
rare: for instance, had the shoal of Sand-launces mentioned by Dr. Dawson 


REVIEW. 417 


died in coral-mud impregnated with silicic acid, would they have been pre- 
served ?—Yours, A., Land’s End.—Mineral-veins cannot, in the sense the 
question is put by our correspondent, be said to be due to sedimentary deposits. 
In some cases they present the appearance of stratification, as in those 
instances of filled-up cavernous hollows noticed and described in the papers by 
Dr. Watson, in vols. i. and u. of this magazine. Mr. Salmon’s articles on ore- 
veins, commenced in our last number, will also give our correspondents much 
information on this topic. 

Certain bands of ironstone-nodules are interstratified in the sedimentary beds 
of the Inferior Oolite and of the Lias. The Lower Greensand of the Cretaceous 
group, and the “ basement-bed” of the London Clay amongst the Tertiary rocks 
offer instances of sedimentary strata being so highly impregnated with mineral 
matter as to be sometimes equivalent in metallic nchness to the mineral-veins. 
The ironstone-nodules and strata of the Wealds of Kent and Sussex were in 
Roman and medieval times largely worked as ores, but mineral-vems proper 
cannot be regarded as contemporaneous formations with the strata in which 
they occur. 

Khrenberg is the great authority on Infusoria. A very nice condensed 
account of this class was published some years since by Mr. Pritchard, the 
optician and microscopist, and a new edition has been more lately produced. 
Dr. Mantell has given an account of some British species in a very interesting 
little volume. ‘The “ Micrographical Dictionary” gives a vast amount of in- 
formation about Infusoria; and there is a good article on the subject in the 
* Cyclopedia of Anatomy and Physiology.” 

It is not in every case, as rightly suggested, that organic objects are pre- 
served; the circumstances attendant on their fossilization must of course be 
exceptional. 

Fossits oF THE Rep CuHatKx.—I am able to add one species to the Verte- 
brata in the list of fossils given by Mr. Wiltshire in his interesting paper on 
the “Red Chalk.” I found a tooth of a species of Notidanus in the Red 
Chalk of Speeton, when I visited that place in 1$54.—Reyv. T. G. Boyyey, 
M.A., Westminster. 


REVIEW. 


Exquisse Géologique et Paléontologique des Couches Crétacées du Limbourg et plus 
specialement de la Craie Tuffeau. By Jonxur, J. T. B. van den Bryx- 
Horst. Part. Svo., pp. 268. Five Plates and a Geological Map. 1859. 
Maestricht. 


Limburg, a south-easterly province of the Netherlands, bounded by Prussia 
and the provinces of Liege and North and South Brabant, has been rendered 
accessible by the iron-roads of France and Germany to thousands of travellers 
and tourists. Many of these, occupied with their business or their pleasures, 
care but little perhaps for Limburg and its geological conditions: they might 
notice as they passed rapidly along that the country was for the most part 
level and sometimes marshy, and they mght probably comment on its general 
productiveness or the luxuriance of its pasturage, but they might never care to 
mquire if it had any iron-mines or coal-mines, nor take the trouble to ask any 
questions about its stone-quarries. 


418 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Perhaps the last, however, might be foreed upon their notice when they 
arrived at the capital of the province, for /es grandes carrieres de Maastricht ave 
too vast aud too famous to escape the attention of sight-seers. 

The fortress on St. Peter’s Mount towers high above the smuous walls and 
forts of the strong bulwarks which defend the ancient town, while in the hill 
below it are cavernous passages of such Intricate and dark extent that the 
wanderer into them needs the guiding thread of Ariadne to insure his return 
to the light of day. 

To the geologist this mountain and its quarries have a higher interest than 
the wonderment they excite as mere gigantic excavations: the strata of 
which they are composed are the last formed of a great geological age before 
another vast geological period began—they are the termmation of the 
secondary epoch, the Woyex-age, so to call it, of geological history. They are 
the last-formed patches of the old cretaceous sea before the dawn of recent 
forms of life commenced with the earliest Tertiary beds. 

The soil of the Duchy of Limburg covers rocks of older and of younger age, 
from the carboniferous to the quaternary ; but the chief purpose of the work 
under notice is to minutely detail those upper cretaceous beds—the chalk of 
Maestricht—where the chief geological interest centres, and which have for many 
years attracted general attention, but which only a resident could work out 
in their minutiz, and so give to science the exact limitations of the members of 
its remarkable fauna to the special zones or beds to which they are restricted, 
or which they serve to characterize, or to limk with other cretaceous deposits 
in other parts of the globe. Already a catalogue of eight hundred species of 
fossils has been noted down, and the superposition of the deposits tolerably 
well made out. 

To the scientific importance of these quarries but few could refrain from 
adding some words upon their historical associations and their antiquity. M. 
Faujas St. Fond, in his history of this mountain, prefaced his geolcgical mvesti- 
gations with such an account, and Herr Binkhorst has made a like digression. 

Associated with the changing fortunes and vicissitudes of the successive 
generations that have resided on its soil from Roman days—perhaps days even 
more remote—unto our own, what wonder that to an mmhabitant the legends of 
these gloomy caves should have an irresistible attraction. When were they 
first wrought out? Who were thei first excavators? Man cannot answer, 
and history is silent. 

When persecutions with pagan fury were carried on against christianity and 
civilization, religion, violently banished from the light of day, found an asylum 
in these catacombs of the north, and the mimisters of God, protected by the 
secrecy and devotion of the Limbourgese, celebrated their divine services sur- 
rounded by their enemies. 

We pass by too the brigandages in the 16th and 17th centuries, when Bohe- 
mian banditti revelled massailable in these subterranean recesses ; and we leave 
untold scenes and incidents which have happened in these caverns “vast and 
gloomy” during the many seiges Maestricht has had to sustain; we forbear to 
tell the kind or sinister offices of gnomes or fairies with which superstition and 
fancy have peopled these obseure places; we tell not the stories of all the 
gaunt skeletons of man, woman, or child who, lost in their wanderings, have 
perished there of want; nor do we detail the oft-told torch-light combat of the 
Austrians and French in these darksome passages during the siege of 1794. 

All these anecdotes and more our author repeats; and in his introductory 
episode, as well as throughout the work, he appears to have gleaned materials 
from every available source. In this respect, in the geological portion of this 
part of his book, our author has shown extreme industry ; and had the arrange- 
ment of the matter thus collected been more methodical, the reader would have 


REVIEW. 419 


derived still more advantage from this valuable accumulation of selections, which 
is saved from approaching the character of a mere compilation by the amount 
of local Eeatnledie with which it has been intercommingled. 

The authorities for the information thus amalgamated with the original matter 
are for the most part duly acknowledged andreferred to in the text or in foot-notes. 
We should, however, have liked to have seen the labours of the Commission 
for the Geological Survey of the Netherlands more prominently brought for- 
ward by the author, especially in respect to the geology and paleontology of 
the Limburg region. M. Bosquet’s elaborate memoirs on the cretaceous Crus- 
tacea and Brachiopoda of Limburg appear to have escaped recognition in this 
way, although the results of M. Bosquet’s labours are embodied in the work. 
The following are the deposits described in this first part :— 

A—Quaternary: the Loess or Lehm, with its remaims of Hlephas primige- 
nius, Rhinoceros, &c., and the flint weapons of primeval men (p. 2); 2, gravels 
and erratic boulders (p. 7). B—Tertiary: 1, Bolderian-beds (p. 12); 2, 
Rupelian-beds (p. 15); 3, Tongrian-beds (p. 17). C—Under the head “Cre- 
taeeous” we have accounts of the 1, Craie Tuffeau (p. 25), illustrated by the 
details of a section taken near Fauquemont; 2, Craie de Schaasberg (p. 52) ; 
3, Marne de Kunraad; 4, Marnes de Simpelveld and Vetchau (p. 64); 5, 
Craie siliceuse de Kunraad, Benzenraad, et Simpelveld (p. 71); 6, the strata 
near Jauche in Belgium (p. 79); 7, those at Jondrain (p. 83); 8, those at 
Ciply (p. 85); 9, Sand-pipes and channels (98); 10, Résumé, (p. 108); 11, 
Craie blanche a silex noirs et marnes sans silex (p. 186); 12, Sables vert a 
Belemnitella quadrata (p. 161); 138, Couche de cailloux roulés et sable d’Aix- 
la-Chapelle (p. 181). D—The Coal-formation (p. 185). 

As we have said before, the author’s industry has accumulated a mass of 
valuable facts relating to the deposits above enumerated, while his knowledge 
of the localities and his method of carefully collecting the fossils have given ad- 
ditional value to his remarks. Some of his catalogues of fossils appear to be 
enriched by the local lists of Bosquet and others ; and we must judge of them 
in accordance with his own modest statement of his paleontological acquire- 
ments. In the résumé at page 108, in the general considerations at page 220, 
in the preface, and in the notes at pages 231-267, the reader will find many in- 
ieeesting observations and extracts illustrating various topics discussed in the 

ook. 

In Plate III. of the illustrations, and at p. 29 of the work, the section of 
the Cretaceous rocks surmounted by Tertiary deposits at Heunsberg, near Fau- 
quemont, is given, presenting to view the strata in the following succession :— 


Metres. 

Ee LCRA uae a eet acer te chi raan aly ved nc ons Soa wiooiauss <cntdiuorns 1-00 
EI Se ere PP Oda diel cS Wiee oc vijoinvn ar oivinnrie sie 1-00 
pee H CURED DOS ae rete sane Bib ye Siere o Gacy siienjunie tours ghcelnes 3°00 
4. Quartzose ochreous sand, of a yellow colour, with streaks 

‘SU SURO. TREC Ponce aah ae neater me ees eee en 10:00 
UML LY COU ce scars So AS alas eer a/Soisipe!fa)felie'asrstis> c iopselsio baie ose vse 0 1:50 
6. A stratum very rich in fossils, chiefly Hemiaster prunella, 

Ehyneolithus Buchit, Rh. Debeyt......c.ccceccccecincncevvesss 0°60 
(, CREME WO OLIE sc sbare asco beet Ore RRO R en ree 1:00 


This bed is stated to attain a thickness of twelve metres at Geul- 
hem, half a league from Fauquemont, where the fossils are com- 
monly presented in the form of casts, and Herr Binkhorst notices 
in it an Ammonite which resembles 4. pedernalis, Roem., but which 
he considers a new species, and as probably being the last of those 
cephalopods. 


420 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Metres. 
eh, Bye Ose Bia (0VA0 na cnqnooo nnn cooonnovonnobusesconacK0 300000 0:20 to 0:80 
9. Hardened rock, encrusted by serpule, bryozoa, and 
Gy SUSE. pebordabosd Rosen dope arosarposescudsnosv0G009be° 0:60 to 0.70 
10. Grate tuffeau, formerly worked at Bemelen and Geulhem 
as a buildimge-stomec. ..c val sscs noes: nares cee once eee eee 6-00 


11. Extremely hard and compact rock, contaiming numerous 
organic remains, amongst which are Belemuitella mucro- 
natu, Dentalinm Mose, Arca, Spondylus, Se. ... 0°30 to 0.40 
12) ‘Second bed ‘of Bryoz0a 7.2... )42he.- ee ca eee eee eens 1:00 
13. Stratum of very hard rock, inclosmg a great number of 
lenticular concretions covered with’ cellepores, bryozoa, 


And serpulee is. 2200s he ahs sae ante eee 0:50 to 1:00 
14. Craie tuffeau, with fossils Hemipneustes radiatus, Mesostylus 

Faupastts G0 ck ie ccna de ce Soe awk eae at oe 12-00 
15. Stratum containing a second bank of oysters, nearly 

entirely composed of Gryphaa vesicularts ........0.00. ce 0-50 


Herr Binkhorst notices as found in this bed teeth and other re- 
mains of Mosasaurus Camperi, and of species of Corar, Otodus, 
Enchodus, Lamna, Spherodus, and Pycnodus, with portions of the 
carapace of the great marine turtle, Chelone Hoffmanni. 
16. Stratum of hard rock, containmg but few fossils ............ 0°30 
7 Crave tupead, fossils Tare 55.0. asdaee coer ee eee ee EeereRe 0-04: 
18. Stratum containing many peculiar Bryozoa and other 
fossils, with remains of Mosasaurus and of Chelone Hoff- 
MUMIU oor uv Svcs ah 28 Ke se ase Cw oc oe ee ee Ee eR 0°22 
19. Crate tuffeau containing nodules of flint ................00.0s 1-00 
20. Stratum of very hard and compact rock contaiming nu- 
merous Gasteropods; and often very perfect imprints ; 
casts of a small Turritella (7. socialis) are extremely 
abundant, with those of Nucula ovata (Nilson) and 
Deni aiun "SCL COTUNGUUTIO we ee ce eee eee 0°30 


Remains of cretaceous plants and trees are also met with in 
this bed. 


21. Craie tuffeau with beds of flint-nodules. 


It is not within our present limits to follow Herr Binkhorst minutely through 
the details of the strata of his province, nor to notice those other portions of 
this part of his book which treat of the Coal-measures and Tertiary deposits 
of his duchy, although these too are highly interesting, the one having been 
illustrated by the admirable labours of Professor de Koninck, the other by the 
equally valuable productions of M. Nyst and Sir Charles Lyell. With these 
and other topics we may deal when the author presents us with a second 
portion, considering it sufficient at present to draw attention to a work which, 
if not so complete as we could wish, must still prove, through the full ac- 
count it furnishes of those smgular cretaceous deposits so rich im fossil organic 
remains, of very considerable service to all geologists visiting the interesting 
district of Maestricht. . 


THE GEOLOGIST. 


NOVEMBER, 1859. 


THE COMMON FOSSILS OF THE BRITISH ROCKS. 
By S. J. Macxis, F.G.S., F.S.A. 
(Continued from page 388.) 


Cuarv. 6.—First Traces of the Succession of Infe-—The Lower Silurian 
Rocks. 


AS ONE carried beyond his depth for the first time into the waters 
of ocean, and struggling shorewards, touches but now and then the 
yellow sands, with every heaving wave again to be set afloat, feels a 
delight when he plants his foot solidly on the sands, and wades 
through shallower water to the shore, so do we after our almost 
footless path through the wide waste of water of the first age, hail 
with delight our firmer footing on the spreading shores of this next 
great geological period. 

The first argument of the antiquity of the globe is drawn from the 
successive accumulations of strata inclosing different creations of or- 
ganic beings, which form the stratified portion of the earth’s crust. 

The next argument of length of time is taken from the evidence 
which the remains of those ancient organic beings afford of the 
long periods of their existence on the face of our earth. It is not 
the strange obscure forms of three-lobed legless crustaceans, revealed 
to us by such distorted and crumpled fragments that the eye is 
strained in the effort to make out the details of their shapes, that 
astonishes us so much as the familiar look of the little shell-fish we 
meet in these old Silurian rocks. 

VOL. I. 0 0 


429, THE GEOLOGIST. 


From the humblest cottage to the stateliest mansion the beautiful 
shells of ocean depths are treasured ornaments; and, unless it be 
flowers, few things, if any, as a class are more beautiful. Pearly in 
structure, exquisitely marked and colour-painted, often elegant in 
form, they are worthy natural ornaments to be prized and treasured ; 
whether some son, brother, father has brought them after long 
voyages from distant parts, or some child had picked them off the 
neighbouring strand. 

So common and so homely are our associations with shells that 
the first trace of them in the stony strata of our earth strikes us with 
more than usual interest. Somehow, one seems to regard them as 
old acquaintances, as something familiar and not strange, as some- 
thing that brings back our childish feelings to our scathed and 
hardened hearts, and makes us for the moment gentler than in the 
stern fight of life we are wont to be. 


Lign. 6.—Line@uLa Davisit (nat. 
size). From the figure in the 
6¢ Synopsis of British Palseozoic 
Fossils,’ by Sedgwick and 


McCoy. Plate i., L, fig. 7. 
From @ specimen from slates 
south of Penmorfa, 


Yet in those first fossil shells we recognize the mollusc-type. 
Shells very like them, very like indeed, still exist, but deep down in 
the sea and afar off. One very rarely sees any, and then only in the 
cabinets of the curious, for they are small simple dark horny shells 
and not attractive, and the antique fossils, crumpled and distorted as 
they mostly are, in their glistening blackness outvie their modern 
dusky representatives. Wonderful indeed are the varieties of mark- 
ings and forms of the two simple valves inclosing the symmetrical 
mollusca. A pair of shells held together and pressed open at one 
and the same time by a tenaceous, elastic ligament, would scarcely, 
one would have imagined, have afforded much room for diversity of 
structure or shape ; but thousands of distinct and living species have 
been examined, and recorded by naturalists. Every ship returning 
from new and distant parts is daily adding to the extensive cata- 
logue, while the fossil species are not inferior in number to the recent. 
But it is not in mere outline or shape alone their characters are 


MACKIE—FIRST TRACES OF THE SUCCESSION OF LIFE. 423 


varied: chiselled, ribbed, striated, and cancellated with every kind 
and description of line, groove, and ridge, their markings are only 
exceeded in their diversity by the infinity of the vivid hues and 
curious designs of their beautiful paintings. 

The pearly lustre and nacreous prismatic tints may have vanished 
from the remains of those soft-bodied inhabitants of the fossil shells, 
but the beauty of their forms and the delicacy of their markings are 
truly preserved by Nature’s unerring hand in the crystalline marble 
into which their shells in the lapse of ages have been turned. Sunk 
into pits, or attached to protuberances, smooth, or interlocking, even 
that most primitive of all attachments, the liigamental hinge, is never 
alike in two species, is never repeated, as though infinite change was 
part of the great scheme of creation, an attribute of the Deity, to 
be manifested alike in pleasure or pain, in the world or the universe, 
and in the grandest, or most trivial and simple of things. 

The Lingule of North Wales were first discovered by Mr. Davis, 
in 1845, near Tremadoc, and in the same Lower Silurian beds are 


Lign. 7.—Oxtznvus Micrvurvs 
(nat. size). From the figure 
in the ‘‘ Decades of the 
Geological Survey,”’ No. ii., 


plate ix. From a specimen 
from Trawsfynydd, Meri- 
onethshire, 


ig 


associated the remains of several species of trilobites, namely, Olenus 
micrurus, Agnostus pisiformis, and a Paradoxides, supposed by 


paradoxus var. pisiformis. 
Linneus Iter. Scan., p. 122. 
Syst. Nat., ed. xvi., vol. iii., 
p. 160. ] 


Lign. 8.—AGNOSTUS PISIFORMIS, 
From Angelin’s ‘* Palzeonto- 
logia Suecica,”’ pt. i., 1852, tab. 
vi., fig. 7. [Syn.: Entomolithus 


424. THE GEOLOGIST. 


Mr. Salter to be identical with the Paradowides Forchhammeri of 
Angelin from the alum-shales of Andrarum, in Scania. 


of the specimen in the Mu- 
seum of Economic Geo- 
logy, Jermyn-street, 


Lign, 9. — PARADOXIDES 
FORCHHAMMERI (? Angelin) 
from the figure in ‘‘Siluria’’ 


Although but little known in the English strata, these little Ag- 
nosti are, according to Brongniart, so abundant in the beds near 
Heltris, in Sweden, as to give an oolitic character to the rock. 

Remains of a phyllopod or stomapod crustacean, Hymenocaris ver- 
micauda, occur plentifully in the beds with Lingula Davisti at Dol- 
gelly and Tremadoc, where so-called tracks of annelides, sometimes 
of considerable size, are also stated to be met with. 


Salter in °‘Siluria.’”? 
From specimens from 
Dolgelly. 


Lign. 10.—HYMENOCARIS 
VERMICAUDA. From the 
restored figure by Mr. 


Some caution may be necessary in speaking of such fossils as 
worm-tracks ; for although no remains of Olenidse have as yet been 
found in these “ track-mark” beds, yet as those trilobites are found 
in strata of equivalent age, it is quite possible that they existed on 
these shores when these Silurian sediments were formed. And as 
Mr. A. Hancock has shown in his valuable paper on Vermiform- 
fossils, in the “ Annals of Natural History’ for 1858 (8rd series, vol. 
i, p. 443), that some of the so-called annelide-tracks have been 
formed by small burrowing crustaceans, it is quite possible that we 


MACKIE—FIRST TRACES OF THE SUCCESSION OF LIFE. 425 


Lign, 11—ParaDoxIDES FoRCHHAMMERI (nat. size) from the figure in Angelin’s “ Paleontologia 
Suecica’’ pl, ii, fig, 1.* 


* “Paradoxides Forchhammeri (Angelin) n. sp., P. fronte sulcis 4; anterioribus 2 
medio obliteratis; abdomine spathulato, mutico. Loc. Nat.—.In stratis calcareis 
regionis (B.), Scanie ad Andrarum.”—Palzontologia Suecica, pars. i., fase. i., 1852.” 


426 THE GEOLOGIST. 


have in these ancient markings the traces of the burrowed channels 
of Olenidee, or other small crustaceans. 

Tracks similar to those made by shrimps are found on some of 
these Lingula-slabs, and have been ascribed by Mr. Salter to the 


Hymenocaris. 
In beds of the same age, near Bangor, two species of fucoids, 


Chondrites acutangulus and Oruziana semiplicata are recorded ; while 
in the black schists on the western flanks of the Malvern Hills three 
other species of Olenus, O. bisulcatus (Phillips), O. hwmilis (Phillips), 


O. scarabeeoides (? of Wahlenberg) are met with. 


Lign, 12.—OLENUS BISULCATUS. Lign. 13.—O. HUMILIS. Lign. 14.—O. SCARABROIDES, 


= nae 
From the figures in “ Siluria,” from fragments of specimens from Malvern. 


Se 


Lign, 14.—OLENUS SCARA- 
BHomES (of Wahlenberg). 
Nat. size, From the figure in 


Angelin’s ‘‘ Palxontologia 
Suecica.’’* 


* Olenus (Peltura) scarabssoides, Wahl. nat. size. Angelin, p. 45. 

“Toc. Nat.—In stratis regionis A, Vestrogothie ex. gr. ad Kaflas, Klefra, Carls- 
fors; Nericie ad Latorp; @landie ad Algutsrum; Scaniw ad Andrarum. In 
Norvegia ad Opslo. 

“Corpus angustum, ovato-oblongum distincte longitudinaliter trilobum ; crusta 
leevis vel aciculata. 

“ Caput breve, subreniforme, valde convexum, undique marginatum sulcoque 
intramarginali preeditum; anguli exteriores rotundati, mutici. 

“Oculi minuti, papilleformes—distincte reticulati loboque orbitali parvo 
instructi, valde approximati, apicales. Sutura facialis portice ab oculis ad margi- 
nem baseos anticeque ad marginem apicalem ducta. 

“ Frons distincta, lata, ovata, valde convexa, obsolete lobata, marginem apicalem 
subattingens. Costa facialis utrinque, obsoleta, brevissima, inter apicem frontis 
lobumque orbitatem ducta. 

“Thora segmentis 12 longitudinaliter sulcatis, apice acutis ; rachis distincta, 
convexa, pleuris latior. 

“ Abdomen parvum, immarginatum, margine dentatum, costis lateralibus ob- 
soletis ; rachisbrevis, crassa, conica, marginem hand attingens.”—Angelin, pars. i., 
fase. ii., 1849.” 


SALMON—ON THE FORMATION OF ORE-VEINS. 427 


With these Oleni there also occurs the Agnostus pisiformis, a fossil 
which we have already noticed in the Welsh beds, and as character- 
izing the oldest Silurian schists and alum-slates of Sweden. 

We have also at Whitesand Bay, in South Wales, the eon 
strata, overlaid by beds of flagstone containing the characteristic 
Tnngula Davisii; and we ought not to omit to mention that the white 
crystalline and fissured rock at Grantham, near Pontesford, in Shrop- 
shire, is penetrated by a vein of anthracite, small flakes of which are 
also disseminated through the mass. 

It is difficult at present to account for the occurrence of this sub- 
stance so commonly regarded in more recent deposits as of terrestrial 
vegetable origin. This ancient anthracite may, however, have been 
derived from sea-weeds, or indeed from land-plants, although no re- 
mains of such have as yet been found in these lower rocks; or, on 
the other hand, its origm may have been due to accumulations of 
animal matter. 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE FORMATION 
OF ORE-VEINS. 


(Translated from the German of PRoFEssoR BernuarD Cotta, of 
Freiberg, with an Introductory Notice on the Study of Mineral 
Vems and Metalliferous Deposits, by H. C. Saumon, Esq., Plymouth.) 


(Continued from page 396). 


VIII. Texture of Ore-Veims—The varying texture of ore-veins 
referred to towards the end of Prof. Cotta’s memoir may not be 
intelligible without a short explanation. We find that the two ex- 
treme textures of veins may be classed as (1) a compact texture, and 
(2) a banded or layer-like texture, both of these of course having many 
varieties, and passing into each other. The first is often characterized 
by a breccia-texture, that is by containing fragments—often very 
numerous—of the neighbouring rock. The figure below shows an ex- 


428 THE GEOLOGIST. 


treme case of this breccia-vein ; and also the peculiar manner in which 
these fragments are usually surrounded by some crystallized mineral, 
marked by the axes of the crystals all radiating as if from a centre. 


WE 

The next figure shows the banded or layer-like form, which is 
characterized by the mineral-layers being regularly separated from 
each other, but without any break, and symmetrically disposed in a 


stratified form, so that the same layers repeat themselves on both 
sides from the walls to the middle. 


\\ 


It is characteristic of these two forms that when drusy cavities, or 
“vughs,” occur in the former, they are distributed irregularly 
through the vein; while in the banded form they are always con- 
tained in the middle. These distinctions are shown in the figures. 

IX. Cotta’s Hypothesis—If we now examine Prof. Cotta’s hypo- 
thesis we find that he holds: 

1.—That the metals originate from below, out of the eruptive rocks 
which, accepting the theory of gradual refrigeration, are assumed 
to form portions of the original fluid nucleus. ‘In objection to this 
hypothesis it has hitherto been urged that such an assumption was 
inconsistent with the observed facts, inasmuch as although the 


SALMON—ON THE FORMATION OF ORE-VEINS. 499 


metallic ores are generally found in connection with eruptive rocks, 
particularly near their junction, yet they comparatively rarely occur 
abundantly in them, and even when they do, it is found that, al- 
though productive near the surface, the ore inevitably fails as we 
penetrate deeper into the crystalline rock. This fact is unquestion- 
able, and the argument from it seemed to be unanswerable. The 
Cornish miners have asked, “If the metals come from below, out of 
the granite, how is it that this same granite is invariably poor for ores 
when we penetrate far into it, where, according to the logical result 
of your theory, it ought to be richer ?” 

Prof. Cotta meets this difficulty. He points out that it is only 
where a rapid cooling of the eruptive mass has occurred that we 
ought to expect metallic ores; where the mass has cooled slowly the 
greater specific gravity of the metals has,carried them away to 
great depths. This rapid cooling would be expected to occur in 
veln-masses, as porphyries or “elvans,”’ and in small “ stock-masses,” 
or on the contact-edges and surfaces of the larger masses ; and it is 
just in these positions that we do find ore-deposits most abundantly 
developed. 

2. The relation between the varying contents of veins and their varying 
direction is also explained by the distinctive veins being in fact 
“nothing else than the products of unequal stadu of cocling of one 
and the same vein-forming process.” Even from the little we know 
of the dynamics of geology we can at least understand that the up- 
heaving force to which fissures are due must have acted so as to 
produce nearly parallel groups in the same locality at the same time. 
These would become filled by such minerals as were passing in so- 
lution from the eruptive rock through the veins, and were capable of 
being precipitated at the then state of the temperature and pressure. 
If we suppose a subsequent change in the direction of the elevating 
force, we would then have a new set of parallel fissures, but with a 
different direction. These would in their turn become similarly 
filled with such minerals as were then in circulation through the 
vein-region, and were capable of bemg deposited at the temperature 
and pressure then existing. If we suppose some considerable in- 
terval to have occurred between the formation of these two fissure- 
groups, it would follow that a great change of temperature might 

VOL. 0. PP 


430 THE GEOLOGIST. 


also have occurred, entirely altering the dissolving and precipitating 
power of the circulating fluid, and consequently giving us, in the 
newer fissures, a set of minerals, which although they eaisted in 
circulation in the older fissures, could not be precipitated in con- 
sequence of the higher temperature then existing keeping them in 
solution ; while, similarly, the newer fissures could not contain many 
of the minerals found in the older ones, inasmuch as the temperature 
had now so fallen as to render the circulating fluid incapable of 
holding them in solution. 

3. The analogies found to exist between the relative age and general 
characteristics of veins in countries widely apart, which gave rise to 
the theory of “ formations,” are accounted for by assuming them to 
be the “everywhere tolerably analogous consequences of local 
eruption, which may have been very far separated from each other 
by time.” The supposed synchronous “ formations” merely “re- 
presenting the same stadium of local activity,” each stadium 
being assumed to produce results tolerably analogous, however 
widely removed in time and distance each isolated process may 
have occurred. 

4. Cotta also finds in the the structure of the Freiberg veins a proof 
of the general truth of his hypothesis. The older veins he finds to 
be generally massive, while the newer have a banded, or layer-like 
form; these structures, in both cases, bemg such as might a priori 
have been expected. 

5. With regard to the mfiltratwe origin of vems, it is admitted to 
be possible, although not probable, for all ore-veins ; as to the newer 
and banded veins such an origin seems to be accepted. Tin-ore is 
considered as not being found in purely infiltrative veins, although 
circumstances are referred to which seem to indicate that there are 
cases where that ore cannot have otherwise originated. 

X. General remarks —Although this hypothesis affords a general 
solution of many obscurities, it is not pretended that it is itself with- 
out difficulties: the whole question of metalliferous deposits is far 
too involved with various complicated geological phenomena to be so 
lightly dealt with. The hypothesis is at best a suggestion for con- 
sideration ; but it has this advantage, that it embodies in a definite 
form a set of facts, with which it harmonizes admirably. The 


SALMON—ON THE FORMATION OF ORE-VEINS. A3t 


greatest objection to this hypothesis is probably that it involves the 
theory of a cooling globe, and thus places itself in antagonism to the 
Lyellian doctrines, now rising to popularity. But it seems to me 
that this antagonism is more apparent than real; and that the hypo- 
thesis might be made to harmonise with the Lyellian philosophy ac- 
cepted in the moderated form in which it is most popular. 

The investigations of Sorby and others now lead us to believe that 
many of the crystalline rocks are hydato-pyrogene rather than purely 
pyrogene—that is, were formed at a high temperature, but in con- 
nection with water. This discovery is of the very highest im- 
portance in the theory of ore-veins, for in them we constantly find 
occurrences which can be only accounted for by the action of water, 
which in fact seems to have been the carrier from the metallic source, 
where it took up the ore in solution, conveying it to, and subse- 
quently precipitating it in, the vein. 

I have already referred to metalliferous deposits originating by 
metamorphism, or by replacement and change of constituents, without 
any original fissure. Jam not going to refer to these again here; 
but I wish to point out that almost every vein-deposit, no matter 
how found, must have been subject to some such similar meta- 
morphic action, from the very hour of its original filling, tending to 
modify its contents in a greater or less degree. Never-ceasing 
change is as much the law in the interior of the earth as at the 
surface ; the changes may be slow, but in Nature nothing is absolutely 
stationary. Hence it does not follow that the minerals we now find 
im any vein are in the same state, either as to form, or combination, 
in which they were originally placed there. Many instances occur 
where it is most important to bear this in mind. 

In following out inquiries into the origin of metalliferous deposits, 
we must never fail to bear in mind the caution of Prof. Cotta that 
they are not to be regarded as “an isolated phenomenon.” ‘This 
caution may be un-necessary for geologists; but unfortunately it is 
not so for “ practical’ men. No one can usefully approach this 
subject, with the object of generally investigating it, without a 
thorough knowledge of the principles of Geology, an intimate know- 
ledge of rocks, and an accurate acquaintance with mineralogy. 


ASI, THE GROLOGIST. 


GEOLOGICAL TOPICS. 
THE FIRST TRACES OF MAN ON THE HARTH. 


«There are stranger things” wrote old Aubrey, “than a man sees In a ae 
ney between Staines and Windsor.” Doubtless there are, and not the least 
strange in modern times is the discovery of the works of men’s hands in asso- 
elation with the bones of mammoths and other extinct terrestrial beasts, 
which have always hitherto been supposed to have passed away before the 
“lord of all he surveys” made his appearance. For years it has been the 
practice of geologists to ignore any asserted evidence of human remains in the 
same strata with those of the great extinct mammalia, and certainly, generally 
speaking, the evidence offered was carelessiy got, or only very imperfectly sub- 
stantiated, so that, im its general weakness and unreliableness there is some 
justification of the practice. An energetic French antiquary, however, has 
brought the matter so prominently forward, and substantiated his assertions by 
discoveries and proofs at once so novel and so convineing, that geologists and 
antiquaries were both alike compelled to investigate the matter, and neither 
have hesitated to accept the proofs afforded. 

We cannot, therefore, do better than first brmg before the reader the 
labours and opinions of this gentleman before we enter imto the consideration 
of the knowledge acquired since thew publication, or review the mass of mm- 
perfect materials which had previously been accumulated. 

Twelve years have now elapsed since M. Boucher de Perthes, the well- 
known antiquary of Abbeville, published the first volume of his memoir, 
“ Antiquités Celtiques et Antédiluviennes.” on the primitive works of human 
art, and gave expression to his idea that some of those he had discovered 
belonged to a geological age. The reception that first portion his book met 
with at the hands of scientific men, as well as by the public at large, is well ex- 
pressed in the preface of the part given to the world in 1857. Without doubt 
the work m question really was, as we are there told, the fruit of long re- 
searches and conscientious study, and that all applauded without reserve every- 
thing he had shown concerning the Celtic people, not only their arms and 
their stone-tools, but their household utensils, their struments of agriculture, 
&c., of which before him no one had any idea. If these curious discoveries ex- 
tended the limits of our history, they did not increase the antiquity of man. 
To these remarks no one raised a single objection. But it was not thus with 
the antediluvian antiquities ; this title alone, which put in doubt the whole 
system of the recentness of origi of our race to which we cling so tightly, 
aroused many prejudices and wounded even more than one susceptibility. 
This part of the book was condemned before it was read. In vain did the 
author offer proof of flints bearing the traces of human handling, discovered by 
himself im the diluvium. Tn vain his book gave pictures of them, and in vain 
was the vast gallery which the author had built to his house for their exhibi- 
tion opened to those who wished to see the objects themselves. The great 
majority of French geologists and antiquaries spoke not the less against the 
work; and except some of his personal friends no one would verify the facts, 
giving as the reason that they were impossible. 

M. de Perthes, however, did what other great men have done before him, 
and what others will do again and again after him. He set to work to accu- 


GEOLOGICAL TOPICS. 433 


mulate fresh material, to acquire more facts to still more clearly prove his case. 
From days far older than Galileo to those of our own the teachers of new ideas 
have had to combat with the world for the reception and propagation of truths, 
and the plaint of the editor of the present volume will be yet again repeated 
in other words, but similar sense, by many others. 

“Unfortunately im the sciences,” says M. de Perthes, with veritable truth, 
“‘when they have adopted an opinion, good or bad, they do not like to change 
it. They could not put im doubt the good faith of the author, but they said 
that he had believed he had seen, and that he had deceived himself as to the 
nature of the strata; that the banks and ossiferous deposits which he had ex- 
plored could not be tertiary, nor diluvial; and that the flits were not worked.” 

These last were grave objections, but the assertion of works of human art in 
beds of later Tertiary age was such an innovation upon all previous conceptions 
of the antiquity of the race of man, that it might be well received with caution, 
if not with disbelief. The objections, however, vanished ; the one on an in- 
spection of the places—no one, with the least acquamtance with geology, 
doubting, after seemg them, their belongig to those erratic and superficial de- 
posits known formerly as diluvium, but now more generally denominated 
“drift”; the other, the worked character of the discovered stones, was equally 
confirmed by inspection. At the first glance one saw “ hatchets, knives, tools 
of divers forms, but all proper to their work; signs and figures that could not 
be the effects of accident, or of a simple chance-blow.” 

“Then it was pretended that these flints came from the surface, and that they 
had been fashioned by the workmen, and afterwards introduced into the beds.” 

This objection fell too at the aspect of the beds, of which the horizontal 
position allowed the perception of all infiltration, or vertical introduction. 
Moreover, these worked-stones resembled those of the beds themselves in 
having their colour; the diversity of shades, more or less yellow, brown, or 
ferruginous indicated exactly from which bed each came; and this coloration 
was not merely superficial, but had penetrated the substance of the worked- 
flints, and formed part of it. 

“ All this,” contimues the writer, “ was palpable to those who would open 
their eyes, but these were a very small number; the majority continued to 
deny that the fact was possible, and were satisfied not to assure themselves of 
it.” One by one, geologists and antiquaries have been induced to visit M. de 
Perthes’ collection at Abbeville, and one by one, astonished at the sight, have 
solicited to imspect the beds, and have been convinced. Prestwich, Austen, 
Mylne, members of the Council of the London Geological Society, have visited 
the French antiquary’s museum at Abbeville, have mspected the strata, and 
have returned home brmging with them flmt-objects which they, with their 
own hands, extracted from the banks of gravel contaming mammoth and other 
mammalan remains, around that town, and from near Amiens. Mr. Flower, 
one of the party who accompanied those gentlemen, dug out a large and fine 
flimt-instrument from a depth of eighteen inches from the vertical face of the 
pit, in gravel undisturbed by the workmen’s picks. M. Didron, the learned 
archeologist, and other French swvaus have tardily followed each other in the 
acknowledgement of this important fact, and M. de Perthes may well exultingly 
Se “la présence d’ouvrages d’ hommes dans le diluvium est aujourd’hui un 

alt avére” 

The association of the primitive works of man with the bones and skeletons 
of mammoth, hippopotami, hyenas, and others of the great extinct mammalia of 
the Post-Pleistocene era does seem to be an established fact. 

So far so good for M. Boucher de Perthes, but something more requires to 
be known. Tor years past geologists of this and other countries, possessed of 
preconceived notions, have invariably snubbed all statements of the comceidence 


ABA THE GEOLOGIST. 


of works of human art, or of human remains in the various cavern- and other 
ossiferous deposits. And yet such statements have neither been few nor 
limited; but, generally, certainly they have been wanting in precision and ex- 
actness—they have been without pomt. In hardly any, if indeed in any, 
hitherto recorded cases can we feel sure that the observations have been pro- 
perly made, or the facts properly recorded. No one has displayed more ex- 
actitude than M. de Perthes himself, but he is an antiquary and not a geologist, 
and it is the geological aspect of the question that we regard; and without dis- 
puting the premises that man existed among the mammoths, we still ask how 
long then has man been upon the earth, and how far back in geological history 
does his creation date? If it be as facts seem, even yet, although we pre-date 
his first appearance by some thousands, if not even millions of years, to indicate 
that man is still the most recent of the divine constructions, we do not ma- 
terially alter the conditions of previous belief, but only modify it; and no 
theological considerations can impede our conversion to the new doctrine, as I 
think it would be hard to find any true biblical grounds for its obstruction. 

We are bound, moreover, to look facts full im the face, and to meet all new 
opinions with careful investigation and scrutiny. 

Let us then proceed in our review of M. de Perthes’ book; and in gathering 
our first facts from him, and in making ourselves acquaimted with his opimions, 
we shall be rendering honour where honour is due, and be basing our super- 
structure on its proper foundations. 


BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING. 
(Continued from page 404). 


On tHE OssiFEROUS FissuRES aT ORESTON, NEAR PiymMoutH. By W. 
Prnceity, F.G.8. (Read before the Geological Section of the British Asso- 
ciution, on Friday, September 16th, 1859.) 


Durie the last meeting of the Association I had the pleasure of calling the 
attention of this Section to some of the results of the exploration, then in 
progress, of an ossiferous cavern, which, early in the year 1858, had been dis- 
covered at Brixham, in Devonshire; and though, perhaps, none of the facts 
then communicated were new to science, yet, whenit is remembered that they 
were obtained from a virgin cavern, which, instead of being ransacked as too 
many have been, was systematically explored; that the explorations were care- 
fully conducted and sedulously watched; that it was not allowed to regard any- 
thing as a trifle, or as unimportant; that the situation of every object was ac- 
curately determined by exact measurements, and that everything note-worthy 
was immediately registered, it will be seen that they have a peculiar value as 
being perfectly reliable and unquestionably good in evidence. They furnish us 
moreover with a test, or measure, of the credibility of, at least, some of the 
facts on record in connection with other caverns, and thus enable us finally to 
accept or reject them as portions of knowledge. 

I regret that the case to which I have now chiefly to call attention 
possesses no such claims; the facts, such as they are, have come ito my pos- 
session almost by accident, and mainly from the quarrymen; the cavern, or 
fissure has been destroyed in the course of the ordinary quarrying operations ; 
there has been no attempt to control or direct the excavation; nevertheless, I 
am not without a hope that the particulars may be found to possess some de- 
gree of interest. 


BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING. 435 


The little village of Oreston is situated on the left bank, and very near the 
mouth of the tidal estuary of the Plym, which, under the name of Catwater, is 
one of the harbours that nature has so liberally grouped together at Plymouth. 
It is essentially a limestone village, being based on, built of, and surrounded 
by limestone ; its chief prospect consists of the limestone-hills and quarries of 
Catdown, from which Catwater divides it; behind it are the quarries whence 
the stone for the celebrated Plymouth breakwater was hewn, and its only trade 
is the exportation of limestone. 

It appears from a paper in the Philosophical Transactions for 1817 that 
“when Mr. Whidbey engaged to superintend that most arduous undertaking 
the Plymouth breakwater Sir Joseph Banks requested him to examine nar- 
rowly any caverns he might meet with in the rock, and have the bones, or any 
other fossil-remains that were met with carefully preserved.”* This limestone 
is regarded by geologists as the Devonshire equivalent of the Old Red sand- 
stone. Like the limestones of South Devon generally, it is much fissured and 
broken; hence the expectation that caverns would be found in it was most 
reasonable. 

The result of the request made by Sir Joseph has been the discovery 
that the volume of limestone at Oreston is a geological classic of great 
interest. From time to time, portions of it have been translated by the great 
paleontological scholars, Sir Everard Home, Dr. Buckland, Mr. Clift, and 
Professor Owen, and given to the world in various forms and_ publications. 
Three papers on the subject will be found in the “ Philosophical Transac- 
tions.”” Oreston also figures largely in Dr. Buckland’s “ Relique Diluviane,”’ 
and in Professor Owen’s “ British Fossil Mammalia and Birds.” 

The Oreston quarries were opened to furnish the materials for the Break- 
water on the 7th August, 1812. In November, 1816, Mr. Whidbey sent up 
to Sir Joseph Banks his first consignment of bones, with a statement that 
«They had been found in a cavern in the solid limestone-rock, fifteen feet wide, 
forty-five feet long, taking the direction into the cliff, and twelve feet deep. 

This cavern was filled with solid clay, in which the bones were imbedded at 
about three feet above its base. 

When Mr. Whidbey began to work this quarry, the rock was seventy- 
four feet perpendicular above high-water; the bones were found seventy feet 
below the surface of the rock, and about four feet above high-water 
mark. He quarried sixty feet horizontally into the cliff before he came to the 
cavern. 

Before Mr Whidbey began to quarry here one hundred feet had been 
quarried into the cliff, so that one hundred and sixty feet was the distance 
between the cavern and the original edge of.the cliff; im all other directions 
the quarries consist of compact limestone to a great extent. The workmen 
came to this cavern by blasting through the solid rock, and at the depth in the 
rock at which it was met with the surrounding limestone was everywhere 
equally strong and requiring the same labour to quarry it. Mr. Whidbey saw 
no possibility of the cavern having had any external communication through 
the rock in which it was inclosed. 

“‘ Many such caverns,’ Mr. Whidbey says, “have been met with in these 
quarries, and, in some instances, the rock on the inside was crusted with 
stalactite; but nothing of that kind was met with in the cavern in which the 
bones were found, so that there is no proof that any opening in the rock from 
above had heen closed by infiltration.” 

The above-mentioned fossils were described by Sir Everard Home in a paper 


* Philosophical Transactions, 1817, p. 176. 
¢ Ibid, 1821, pp, 133-4, 


436 THE GEOLOGIST. 


embodying Mr. Whidhey’s statement, read before the Royal Society, February 
27,1817, and printed in the “ Philosophical Transactions” for that year. 

In November, 1820, Mr. Whidbey discovered a second ossiferous cavern, 
and sent up the bones found in it to Sir Everard Home, stating that they 
“were lately found in a cavern one foot high, eighteen feet wide, and twenty 
feet long, lymg on a thin bed of dry clay at the bottom; the cavern was sur- 
rounded by compact limestone, about eight feet above high-water mark, fifty- 
five feet below the surface of the rock, one hundred and seventy-four yards 
from the original face of the quarry, and about one hundred and twenty yards, 
in that direction, from the spot where the former bones were found in 1816.”* 

He then goes on to repeat, almost verbatim, ‘his reasons for believing that 
the cavern never could have had any connection with the surface. 

The bones in this second consignment were, like their predecessors, described 
by Sir Everard Home before the Royal Society, February 8, 1821, and his 
paper was printed in the “ Philosophical Transactions” for that year. 

In 1822 a third bone-cave was found at Oreston, and the fossils sent to 
London ; on this occasion Mr. Whidbey forwarded them to Mr. John Barrow, 
with a plan and statement descriptive of their situation. 


Surface 


fe) 


f Country. 


Ground at the 


High-water at Spring-tide. 


Seale of 40 feet. 


Lign. 1.—Longitudinal Section of the Caverns discovered at the Breakwater Quarries, at 
Oreston, in 1822, by Joseph Whidbey, Esq., F.R.S. Reduced from pl. vi., *‘ Philosophical 
Transactions,’’ 1823. 


[The dark tint in the section marks the places were the bones were found. ] 


. 5 . . : 

“The height,” he says, “of the rock, or quarry, is about minety-three feet 
above the top of high-water of spring-tides, which is shown in the sketch, to- 
gether with a section of the caves where the bones were found. The part 
where they lay is tinged with red in the caves marked w and 6. The cave a 


* Philosophical Transactions, 1817, pp. 176-7. 


BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING. A437 


is encrusted with thin stalactite: the cave 4 mostly consists of limestone, with 
bones adhering to the sides; the top is closed up with stone rubble. The teeth 
and bones found in the cave a were mostly covered with dirt; part of them 
were lying on the dirt, and in crevices about the caves a and 4. From the 
cave marked a, a passage has been discovered into what I call a gallery, 
marked c, which gallery opens into the face of the quarry at d. Ate some 
teeth and bones were found. The farther end of the gallery is not closed, but 
it is not sufficiently wide for a man to creep into it. The sides of the gallery 
consist mostly of limestone, some clay, and stalactite. At / the gallery was 
covered with masses, or lumps of limestone, with much clay intermixed, and in 
general so compact that it requires gunpowder to blast it asunder—and con- 
a so to the surface of the country, a height of fifteen feet as shown in the 
sketch. 

The general state of this quarry has been found to consist of more caves, 
filled with clay, than any other; and nearly under the entrance of the cave, 
where the bones were found, I have dug down through clay of so stiff and hard 
a nature as to render it difficult to dig to it, and it continued so until I got 
to six feet below high water, when rock again appeared, but not compact. . In 
this digging, many lumps of iron-ore were found in the hard clay. 

The distance from the cave a to the commencement of the quarry, or har- 
bour, is two hundred and one yards; and to the cave where the first bones 
were found in November, 1816, one hundred and eighty yards in a western di- 
rection.”* 

The bones found on the occasion just mentioned, together with a smaller 
number sent up in November, 1822, were described by Mr. Clift, m an 
elaborate paper, read before the Royal Society, February 6, 1823, and published 
in that year’s “ Philosophical Transactions.” 

On the authority of Professor Owen, the ossiferous caverns and fissures of 
Devonshire have yielded remains of the following species of mammals, namely : 


EXTINCT SPECIES. 


Ursus priscus Ke O 
Ursus speleus Great cave-bear Ke Oki GM D 
Hyena spelaa Cave-hyena Ke Oki GM D 
Felis spelea Great cave-lion Ke Ong M 
Machairodus latidens Ke 
Lagomys spelea Cave-pika Ke 
Elephas primigenius Mammoth Ke Ki M 
Rhinoceros tichorinus Tichorme (two-horned) Ke O ki 
rhinoceros 
Equus fossilis Fossil horse Ke OkiGM 
Equus plicidens O 
Asinus fossilis Fossil ass, or zebra O 
Hippotamus major Large fossil hippopo- Ke Ki D 
tamus 
Megaceros Hibernicus Gigantic Irish deer Ke 
Strongyloceros speleus Gea round-antlered Ke 
eer 
Cervus Bucklandi Buckland’s deer Devon ki 
Bison minor O 
Bos longifrons Long-fronted ox O Ki 


* Philosophical Transactions, 1823, p. 78. 
VOL. At. Q Q 


438 THE GEOLOGIST. 


RECENT SPECIES. 


Rhinolophus ferrum- Great horse-shoe bat Ke 


equinum 5 
Sorex vulgaris Shrew Ke 
Meles taxus Badger Kem 
Putorius vulgaris Polecat ee: 
Putorius ermineus Stoat Ke B O? Ki 
Canis lupus Wolf Ke O Ki G@ 
Vulpes vulgaris Fox Ke O 
Felis Catus Wild cat Ke 
Arvicola amphibia Water-vole Ke B O? Ki 
Arvicola agrestis Field-vole Ke Ki 
Arvicola pratensis Bank-vole Ke ’ 
Lepus variabilis Norway hare Ke Ki 
Lepus cuniculus Rabbit Ke B ki 
Cervus elephus Red deer Ke Ki 
Cervus tarandus Rein-deer B 
Cervus capreolus Roe deer Devon G 


In the above list, initials are appended to the names for the purpose of 
showing in what caverns the fossils are recorded to have been found, thus: Ke, 
Kent’s Hole, Torquay; B, Berry Head, Ash Hole; O, Oreston; Ki, Kirk- 
dale; G, Gower; M, The Mendip caves; and D, the caves on Durdham 
Down, near Bristol. 

In all there are thirty-three species, of which seventeen are peculiar to the 
Devonshire-caves. Of these thirty-three, seventeen are extinct, and sixteen 
still exist, a few of the latter being locally extinct. Three additional species 
have been found in other British caves, but no traces of them seem, hitherto, 
to have been met with in Devonshire, namely, the common mouse, Mus mus- 
culus, found in the Kirkdale-cavern; the wild hog, Sws scrofa, found in the 
caves of the Mendip-hills ; and the fallow deer, Cervus dama, found, according 
to some authorities, in the caves at Kirkdale and Paviland. 

Of the Devonshire caverns, Kent’?s Hole has yielded by far the greatest 
number and variety of specimens, no fewer than twenty-five, perhaps twenty- 
seven species have been disinterred from that celebrated mausoleum. Next to it 
stand the Oreston caves, or fissures, where have been exhumed fourteen, or 
perhaps sixteen species. I find two species, Cervus Bucklandi and Cervus 
capreolus, assigned to Devonshire, without the cavern in which they were found 
being named. Hence nineteen or seventeen, as the case may be, of the Devon- 
shire list are unrepresented in the Oreston series. Two of these, the shrew - 
and the polecat, have been found in a raised beach at Plymouth, about a mile 
from Oreston. 

Some little doubt exists respecting two of the species which some authors 
assign to Oreston, namely the stoat, or weazel, and the water-vole, as will-ap- 
pear from the followmg passage in Professor Owen’s “ British Fossil Mam- 
mala.” _‘ Further evidence of the antiquity of the weasel is adduced by Dr. 
Buckland, on the authority of Mr. Clift, from marks of nibbling by the incisor- 
and canine-teeth of a small quadruped of the size of a weasel on the ulna of a 
wolf and the tibia of a horse found fossil in one of the caves at Oreston; and 
the author of the “ Reliquee Diluviane” observes, with his usual acumen, that 
the weasel’s teeth must have made their impressions on the bones of the wolf 


BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING, 439 


and horse before they were buried in diluvial mud.” The account which Mr. 
Bell has given in his “ History of the Existing Quadrupeds of Britain,” of the 
food and habits of the weasel, is, however, scarcely reconcileable with the idea 
of its applying its slender acuminate teeth to the act of gnawime bones; and 
we aiall he justified, therefore, in requiring further evidence before admitting 
the Putorius vulgaris ito the catalogue of British Fossils, as the associate of 
the extinct mammalia of the Oreston caves.”* That author returns to the sub- 
ject in the following passage in the same work where he is describing certain 
fossil remains of the water-vole, Arvicola amphibia. ‘‘Some of the bones from 
the cavernous fissures at Oreston show marks of mbbling, which may be 
referred more probably to the incisors of a small rodent, than to the canines 
ae a easel 

The subject is chiefly interesting in its connection with Oreston, as bones of 
both weasel and water-vole have been found in Kent’s Hole, Torquay, and 
in the Ash-Hole, near Berry Head. 

So far as can be gathered from the authors whom I have been able to con- 
sult, the following species are, according to the present state of our knowledge, 
peculiar to Oreston, as they do not appear to have been found elsewhere: 
namely, the fossil ass, or zebra, Asinus fossilis, Bison minor, and the long- 
fronted ox, Bos longifrons—all extinct forms. 

In his letter to Mr. Barrow, dated Plymouth, November 9th, 1822, Mr. 
Whidbey says, “ These I think will be the last bones I shall send you from 
these caves, as they are now nearly worked out. The cave B terminated near 
where it was first seen; the head of it was closed over with a body of limestone. 

The jomts of the rock were not so close but that water might drop down 
into the cave; and about those joints some stalactites were found in small 
pieces. I have not seen anything to encourage the idea that the cavern had a 
communication with the surface since the flood; the present state of the 
quarries shows nothing like it.” t 

And so far as he was concerned, Mr. Whidbey was right; they were the last 
bones he sent up; but after the lapse of thirty-six years the quarrymen have 
found other caverns and fissures rich in bones. I now propose to give such 
information as I possess respecting this recent discovery. 

My attraction was first called to the subject towards the close of last year 
(1858) by a letter from Dr. Percy, of the School of Mines, Jermyn-street, 
London, m which he incidentally mentioned that a gentleman had just brought 
to town some large bones then recently found at Oreston, and he suggested 
that some attention should be given to the matter. I was at that time closely 
occupied with the “ Windmill-hill-cavern,” at Brixham, and could not go down. 
About the middle of January last, a dealer in geological specimens, at Ply- 
mouth, wrote to inform me that a day or two before he had got possession of 
some fossils which he believed to be of great value, but he gave no other im- 
formation whatever about them. I took the earliest opportunity of visiting him, 
and found his fossils to be mammalian remains, just exhumed from anew cavern 
at Oreston. They consisted of a considerable number of teeth, most of them of 
herbivores, including the elephant ; with a few of carnivorous animals, amongst 
others the cave-lion and cavern-bear. The owner had not then decided on the 
price for which he would sell the specimens; but he engaged not to part with 
them without lettmg me hear from him. 

Circumstances prevented my goimg to the quarry on that occasion, but early 
in February I went again to Plymouth, purchased all the bones in the posses- 


* British Fossil Mammalia and Birds, p, 118. 
+ Ibid, p. 204. 
t Philosophical Transactions, 1823, p. 88, 


4AQ THE GEOLOGIST. 


sion of the dealer, visited the quarry, bought up all the bones the quarry-men 
had, and engaged to take from them all they could find, with the distinct 
understanding that no other person should be allowed to have any. I may 
state here that this stipulation did not arise from any monopolizing acquisitive- 
ness on my part, but from a regret, which I have long felt, that entire series of 
specimens of this interesting character—illustrative of great geological facts, of 
bygone geographical and climatal conditions, and of extinct forms of life— 
should be so frequently separated and scattered, no one knew whither; hence 
I decided on domg my best to prevent such dispersal by purchasing all the 
specimens, in order to hand them over to the national collection in the British 
Museum, should they prove worthy of a place there. Since my first visit L 
have frequently gone to the quarry, and have purchased considerable numbers 
of bones; all of these, with the exception of my last purchase, are now the 
property of the nation, and are under the care of the distinguished head of the 
Natural History department of the British Museum, by whom, I have no 
doubt, an account of them will be, sooner or later, given to the world, should 
he find in them any new revelations, or any confirmations or corrections of old 
and doubtful readings. 

My endeavours to preserve the integrity of the series have only been par- 
tially successful. One lot has found its way to the Museum at Leeds ; another 
valuable collection has been purchased for the University Museum, at Oxford, 
by a lady, who on a former oceasion manifested her imterest in eavern- 
researches ; a considerable number are in the possession of Mr. Hodge, of 
Plymouth, who has very frequently visited the eavern, and in whom I have found 
a formidable but at the same time a most courteous rival. So far, however, as 
these cases are concerned no harm has been done—the specimens thus disposed 
of would doubtless be readily available for scientific purposes; but it unfortu- 
nately happened that a glowmg and marvellously embellished account of the 
discovery appeared in the local papers, thereby awakening a general curiosity 
in the neighbourhood. Crowds of persons visited the quarries, and eagerly 
secured—sometimes at heavy prices—what very many of them regarded as 
astonishing relics, and as incontestible proofs of the oeeurrence and universality 
of the Noachian deluge. Such specimens—and I have reason to believe they 
are very numerous—are probably irrecoverably lost. 

I was so fortunate as to find an old man at work in the quarries who had 
been connected with them all his lifetime. He had seen the foundation-stone 
of the Breakwater torn from the parent rock and shipped to be transported to 
its new bed at the bottom of Plymouth Sound. He pointed out to me the line 
of direction of Mr. Whidbey’s caverns, whence it appeared that the new one 
was in the same line, as if the various caverns had been so many enlarged por- 
tions of one and the same original line of fracture. 

The Oreston limestone consists of a series of beds varying from one foot to 
ten feet in thickness, and dipping in a direction south fifteen degrees west, at 
an angle of about thirty-two degrees. The artificial cliff produced by the 
quarrying operations of half a century is, at present, about sixty feet high ; its 
base 1s one thousand and ninety feet from the quay, or river-margin, and fifteen 
feet above the level of high-water at spring-tides ; hence the new cavern was 
about four hundred and eighty-seven feet from Mr. Whidbey’s third cavern, five 
hundred and sixty-eight feet from the second, and nine hundred and thirty feet 
from the first—that is, the first cavern, or fissure, was one hundred and sixty 
feet from the river- or original face of the cliff; the second occurred three 
hundred and sixty-two feet beyond this, in the mass of the hill; eighty-one feet, 
further, in the same direction, disclosed the third; and a further advance of 
four hundred and eighty-seven feet brought the workmen to the fourth, 7.c., 
the cavern discovered last winter. 


BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEBTING. AA 


This cavern was ninety feet long, and extended in a direction from north- 
north-east to south-south-west, or very nearly that of the dip of the limestone- 
beds. It commenced about eight feet below the top of the cliff, and continued 
to its base, so that it is about fifty-two feet high; indeed its height exceeds 
this, as the bottom has not been reached. At the top it 1s about two feet 


—Y\\7/ 7 
S - -_- a Lf y : 


4. 2 
ON ee 


a a ze FF 


=e i 


Lign. 2.—Vertical transverse section, on the scale of 1-20 inch to ne oot of a Cavern dis- 
covered at Oreston, near Plymouth, in the winter of 18 


» Roof of Cavern, composed of large angular masses of limesto 


a, e, d, b 
cue fd “Gravel” of the w orkmen, 7. e., angular limestone, with a Peoermaricely, small 
amount of sand, Ge whole uncemente 
Cy gos f, Angular limestone, sand, Hed tough dark clay with bon 
f, h, k.’ “Callis” of the w orkmen, i. €., a nearly vertical vee of Heinenia, with masses of 
limestone- Pec the ole Romine bone 
g,l,m,k Tough dark clay without traces of bones. 


wide, gradually increasing downwards, and reaching a width of ten feet at its 
bottom. The first or upper eight feet were occupied with what the workmen 
called “ gravel,” which consisted of angular portions of the adjacent limestone, 

mixed with a comparatively small amount of sand, The limestone debris 
varied in dimensions from fragments of the size of hazel-nuts to pieces ten 
pounds in weight. This accumulation was entirely free from stalagmite, and 
was in no part cemented. No traces of fossils were found init. The next 
thirty-two feet in depth were occupied with similar materials to those just men- 

tioned (the sand being somewhat more abundant), with the addition of a 
considerable quantity of tough, dark, unctuous clay. : 


442, THE GEOLOGIST. 


Between this mass of heterogenous materials and the western- or what may 
be called the river-wall of the cavern there occurred a nearly vertical brecciated 
plate, or dyke, which the workmen denominated “ callis,” extremely tough, and 
quite as difficult to work as the compact limestone itself. The only means of 
severing it was by blasting; and being considerably less compact than the 
limestone, the expansion of the ignited powder told on it with much less 
effect. It may be described as an approximately vertical plate of stalactitic car- 
bonate of lime, containing, at by no means very wide intervals, masses of 
breccia made up of the materials just named as composing the accumulation 
in contact with and on its eastern or hill-side, and cemented together by car- 
bonate of lime. Some of these masses measured fully a yard cube, but the 
general thickness of the “callis” was about two feet. This was the bone- 
bed, that is to say, the bones were found alike in the “ callis,’ and in the 
mass of heterogenous materials beside it, in the cemented and uncemented 
portions of the bed. They were found alike at all heights or levels, in the 
lane of breccia, in the pure stalagmite between them, and in the looser and 
less coherent portion of the accumulation, thereby suggesting that the cavern 
was slowly and gradually filled with limestone-debris detached from the rock 
in which the cavern occurs, with sand transported at least from some distance, 
and with mud, not each in definitely successive periods but together, with 
occasional pauses, or periods of cessation; the proof of such pauses being the 
frequent presence of the portions of pure stalagmite separating series of 
brecciated masses made up of angular limestone, clay, and sand, lying one 
above another in the same nearly vertical plane. The rapidity of the mfilling, 
and hence the time required for the process, seem of necessity to be measured 
by the rate of deposition of the stalagmite, whatever that may have been. It 
appears, too, that throughout the entire period—he it long or short—required 
for and represented by the accumulation of the materials now under considera- 
tion—alike during the periods of active, and of tardy accimulation—bones of 
various animals were introduced and inhumed, and that there was no marked 
cessation in this part of the work, since the bones were found as frequently in the 
pure stalagmite as elsewhere. In that portion of the series which is destmed for 
the University Museum, at Oxford, a mass of this stalagmite will be found 
containing a fine jaw with teeth, beautifully white and entirely free from any 
trace of soil. The bones are frequently in a very fragmentary condition, many 
of them bemg mere splinters, as if broken by fragments of rock fallig on them ; 
this, however, may be partly due to the rough handling of the workmen in ex- 
tracting them. 

“T always know,” said the old quarryman before alluded to, “ when we are 
coming to bones where there’s clay, for the clay is always fat-like. I suppose 
tis the fat of the beasts that the bones belonged to.”? Evidently he was not 
enough of a philosopher to explain phenomena by calling to his aid the 
“plastic,” or the “sportive powers of Nature ;”? and probably he was so be- 
nighted as never to have heard of the discovery of “ prochronism.” 

A somewhat considerable number of clay-balls, generally ellipsoidal, and 
varying from an inch and a-half to two and a-half inches in greatest diameter, 
were found in the clay throughout the bone-bed, but not above nor below it. 

Beneath the mass of materials just described, occurs a bed of dark, very 
tough, unctuous clay; known to be twelve feet thick, but perhaps more, as 
its base has not been reached. It seems to be of the same character as that 
mentioned by Mr. Whidbey in his description of the third cavern, already quoted. 
Occasionally it contains a few very small angular stones, but with this excep- 
tion it is perfectly homogenous. No traces of fossils have been found in it. 
__it now remains to consider how the contents of the cavern were introduced. 
The workmen most positively assert that it never was an open fissure; that the 


BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING. 443 


roof, eight feet in thickness, was of sound unbroken limestone, and that the 
stones and other materials could not have fallen in from above ; but then, unfor- 
tunately, they, with equal positivity, affirm that there was no external opening 
whatever—vertical, terminal, or lateral; and, in their endeavours to account for 
the presence of the bones and rock-debris in what they believe to have been 
merely a blind cavity in the rock, they incline to the opinion that the rock has 
grown round the accumulation which it contaims—just as some persons ask us 
to believe that rocks have grown around live toads and frogs. 

Tt will be remembered that in Mr, Whidbey’s description of the two first 
eaves he most decidedly gives it as his opinion that there never were any indi- 
cations of a communication with the surface; mdeed, in his first letter ‘he 
saw no possibility of the cavern having had any external communication 
through the rock mm which it was inclosed;” and although in his letter to Mr. 
Barrow, descriptive of the third cave, he admits that “‘ there were joints not so 
close but that water might have dripped ito the cavern,” he adds “I have 
not seen anything to encourage the idea that the cavern had a communication 
with the surface since the flood.” 

In his “ Reliquie Diluviane,’ Dr. Buckland, who had visited Oreston, says, 
‘In speaking of the bones at Oreston in my former paper on Kirkdale, I had 
expressed a decided opimion that the caverns im which they occur must have 
had some communication with the surface, through which the bones may have 
been introdueed ; and Mr. Whidbey has since found reason to adopt the same 
opinion.” * 

The late Sir Henry de la Beche, in his “Report on the Geology of Corn- 
wall, Devon, and West Somerset,” says ‘In one of our visits to the Oreston 
quarries we obtained two teeth of a rhinoceros at the bottom of a narrow 
fissure, amid a dark clay, apparently impregnated with animal-matter, in an old 
unnoticed part of an excavation. Considerable angular masses and smaller 
fragments of limestone often occur in the ossiferous and other fissures, and it 
can be readily understood that before these cracks became filled by fragments 
detached from the sides, and by the loam and sand, multitudes of animals 
ranging the ground above could have fallen into them, more particularly when 
chased by beasts of prey, often themselves the victims of the own eagerness 
and voracity either durmg the chase, or when the dead animals were visible 
in the fissures.’”’> 

As the workmen entered the cavern at the top, in the ordinary course of 
working vertically downwards the greater part of the roof was destroyed before 
I visited Oreston ; nevertheless a portion, and, I think, a sufficient portion for 
the purpose, remained. It was evidently a mass of limestone-breccia, made up 
of large angular fragments cemented by carbonate of lime, and easily enough 
mistaken, without a careful inspection, for ordinary limestone somewhat rich 
in coarse veims. I called the attention of the workmen to it, and explained my 
opinion respecting its origin; to this they offered no objection further than 
that it was solid, and required blastmg quite as much as the limestone else- 
where. ‘This appears to have been Mr. Whidbey’s test; for, in his first letter 
to Sir Joseph Banks; he says, “In the contract of quarrying there are two 
prices, one for rock, another for clay, earth, and rubbish; and two officers at- 
tend, one for the Crown, and the other on the part of the contractors, who 
measure the contents of all caverns that contain clay, or other soft materials : 
it is only necessary to mention that these officers state that the rock surround- 
ing the cavern was equally hard with the other parts, requiring the same force 
to blast, and that the quarrying was paid for accordingly.’ 


* Reliquee Diluvianee, page 80. 
+ De la Beche’s *‘ Report on Cornwall,”’ &c., p. 113, 
£ Philosophical Transactions, 1817, p. 177. 


44.6 THE GEOLOGIST. 


limestone, divided by thin layers of sandstone and “plates,” and one bed of 
coal, which is not continuous. The upper limestone—under the names of 
Camfell-, Main-, Parkhead-, and Twelve-fathom-limestone—is one of the most 
constant in the district. The greatest thickness of this group is . 200 feet. 

(b) A group of flagstones, called the “ Hawes-flagstones,” from their great 
development at the head of Wensleydale; it contains one strong band of 
limestone, and a great thickness of gritstones and “plates,” very varied in their 
character. ‘The thickness of these flagstones is. . . . . 500 to 600 feet. 

(c) The “Black-limestone” group containmg two well marked beds of 
limestones, the lower one of which produces the grey encrinital marble of 
Dent, with “plates” and grits. Itsthicknessis . . . . 200 to 300 feet. 

3rd. Below this is the lower ‘‘ Scar-limestone,” of a much more homo- 
genous character, the thickness of which, as it forms the bottom-rock of 
most of the valleys, has not been accurately measured. It cannot, however, 
be sless’ than =>. oo LS Se ee ee OOMCE LE 

The general dip of this series is south-east, and in following the beds in that 
direction to their disappearance under the magnesian limestone and New Red 
sandstone, the thickness of groups a, 4, and c becomes gradually less by the 
obliteration of the two lower series first; and finally by the thinning out and 
complete disappearance of the upper one, until in Wharfedale and Nidderdale 
the Millstone-grit reposes directly upon the lower ‘“ Scar-limestone,” which 
has increased in thickness until, from being the bottom-rock of Wensleydale, 
it almost reaches the top of Great Whernside, and forms the sides of the deep 
valley of the Wharfe. 

But another cause has been at work to alter the face of the country besides 
the gradual change in the thickness of the beds. On a curve, drawn from 
Settle to Harrogate, at the foot of the dales that fall to the south from the 
chain of hills skirting the southern side of Wensleydale, the lower “ Scar- 
limestone” appears to abut against, instead of underlying, the Millstone-grit. 
This is caused by a downthrow of the latter, on the line called the “Craven- 
fault,” which beginning near Kirkby Londsdale, where the limestone and the 
Cambrian slates have their relations much altered, may be followed towards 
the east, in which direction it breaks up the limestone itself, as in the district 
of Craven, and still further east disturbs the position of the limestone and the 
Millstone-grit, until at Greenhow-hill the last traces of it are exposed before it 
disappears under the Magnesian-limestone, which being a later formation has 
covered up all tokens of the disturbance. 

Whenever the streams run through the upper “ Scar-limestones” their 

general course is eastwardly, witha slight tendency to curve to the south; but 
as soon as these beds disappear, and the lower “ Scar-limestone”’ comes upper- 
most, we find that the valleys turn southward until they reach the line of the 
Craven-fault, when they follow again the natural dip of the beds. This fault 
thus becomes the cause of much of the variety in the character of the 
scenery of these Yorkshire dales. 
_ Our road lay out of Wensleydale, up one of its lateral valleys called Bishop- 
dale, and over Kidstone’s Pass, a route practicable for carriages, which can be 
said neither of the pass to the right out of Raydale, over Stake Fell, nor 
of that to the left out of Coverdale, over Buckden Pike, although both are 
sometimes attempted. 

All the valleys out of Wensleydale are either destitute of roads leading 
southward, or the passes are excessively steep on their southern faces. This 
fact is connected with another in the physical geography of the district ; viz., 
that Wensleydale is bounded to the north by an unbroken chain of hills, while 
on the south five large valleys run into it. Swaledale and Teesdale are 
equally destitute of direct lateral valleys from either the south or north. 


) 
| 
) 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 4AG 


The reason of this appears to be that south of Wensleydale the upper “ Scar- 
limestones” thin out ; while the lower, which form the bed of the Kure, thicken 
in proportion, thus creating a basin on which the upper group reposes, while 
the passes to the south lie on the edge of this great basm, which may be traced 
round by the line of the “ Penme-fault.’ The grits of the upper group, 
especially where the beds become obliterated, are friable and easily broken ; 
hence the streams flow on the more compact lower strata, and find their way 
from their springs on the edge of the basin into the hollow where the main 
river runs, creating the lateral valleys which, from the enormous thickness of 
the beds, and the greater strength of the limestone-bands, is impossible on the 
northern face of the main valley; and the descent into the valleys south of 
Wensleydale being from the edge of the basin through the steps of the great 
homogenous lower “ Scar-limestone,” which has few alternatmg grits and 
“plates” to wear level, the roads, where there are any, are more impracticable. 

At Cray, the first hamlet in our descent from the pass, we found crossing 
the road, a little above the imu, several highly fossiliferous beds, where the 
Productus Scoticus is crowded together in the thin stratum which produces 
the large slabs containmg that fossil so common in our: museums. It is as- 
sociated with Lithostrotion irregulare in very large lumps. A little above 
this are beds in which Turbinolia fungites is very common; while higher, where 
the waters form a series of cascades, the beds are full of Productus ygiganteus. 

The descent from above Cray into Wharfedale is very steep; and passing a 
valley to the left, a view opens into the heart of Great Whernside, its rounded 
top forming a prominent object; we soon came in sight of one of the marvels 
of the dale—Kilnsey Crag, a magnificent scar, one hundred and sixty-five feet 
perpendicular, and iterall; overhanging the road for half a mile. It is in the 
the lower “ scar-limestone,” and one of the spurs of Hard-flask, a range of hills 
stretching as far as Pen-y-geant ; and, lying in the northern le of the “Craven- 
fault,” probably owes its perpendicular character to the disturbances that pro- 
duced the precipices of Malham Cove and the scars at Giggleswick. From 
beneath it, as at Malham Cove, issues a clear stream of cold water, whence 
Whittaker deduces the name of the crag itself, “‘ Kinsey” (written chilisie), that 
is, “chill water,” a derivation almost too poetical to be correct. 

In the drive from Kilnsey the valley yields a succession of views of the most 
romantic and ever-increasing beauty, until they culminate in the rich woods and 
savage moors by which Bolton Abbey is shutin. On the left, at the base of Whern- 
side, the step-like character of the ‘lower scar-limestone” is well exhibited. 

We did not follow the road further than to a village called Linton, where 
we turned off into a bye-road that led us into a little solitary basi among the 
hills, where lies the hamlet of Thorpe, called in the old charters “'Thorpe sub- 
tus Montem,” and truly it deserves the name. It lies m a hollow of the lime- 
stone, where the beds are broken up at the junction with the millstone-grit, 
which frowns in castle-like “scars” from Burnsall and Barden Falls. The lime- 
stone itself, after its disruption, has been worn into conical hills and lake-like 
cavities, not dissimilar to the way in which it has been denuded near Clitheroe ; 
while the beautiful green herbage on the sugar-loaf hills presents a striking con- 
trast to the brown rocks forming the edges of the millstone-grit above them. 

This limestone is most fossiliferous ; and contains very fine examples of many 
species of Productus, Terebratula, Rhynchonella, and other brachiopods, and 
fewer, but equally well preserved specimens of Trilobites, Goniatites, Pectens, and 
beautiful corals. We brought away with us, after a long day’s work, a noble 
series of fossils, many of which would grace the cabinets of the most fastidious, 

A day at Thorpe would well repay the collector of fossils; and Messrs, 
Pindar, who were most obliging to us, would I am sure be most happy to 


render any facilities. 


448 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Missing Malham Cave, we followed the line of the “ Craven-fault” to Settle, 
where its grandest features are displayed in the deep valley of Austwick, and 
on the upheaved masses of Feizer, and the magnificent scars of Giggleswick, 
above Austwick. High up, nearly on the upper platform of the lmestone- 
cliffs, our friend Mr. Burrow, whose collection of Craven-fossils is almost 
unique, pointed out to us a cove in the scars, the bottom of which was covered 
by great blocks of Silurian slates, many of them standing upon the edges of the 
‘weathered limestone like logging-stones and cromlechs, the stone upon which 
they were placed having worn away much faster than they had themselves. 
The locality and the position of these stones seemed at first to mark the site of 
an ancient glacier. ‘There was, however, no evidence of glacial markings ; and 
the slate-rocks were too high above their place az situ to allow of such a 
supposition. They appear more likely to have been the jetsam of stranded 
icebergs that had floated off from a glacier debouching upon a half-frozen 
lake; but the place is worth a visit, and it cannot be missed by anyone who 
inquires at Austwick for “the moor where the black stones are.” 

“Further eastward, under Moughton Sears, magnificent sections of the Silurian 
slate-rocks underlying the limestone are exposed, especially in the quarries at 
Horton, in Ribblesdale. The rocks most disturbed im the lne of the fault 
yield localities very rich in fossils. 

I will not dwell on our journey from Skipton to Bolton Abbey, nor from 
thence by Greenhow Hill to Paleley Bridge, except to remark that Greenhow 
Hill deserves a better description than I can give of it. At Nursa Knot, part 
of Greenhow Hill there is an anticlinal axis, where the “lower scar-limestone” is 
thrust up through the Millstone-grit. Want of time, idleness, and illness pre- 
vented a close examination of it, which it would well repay, and more especially 
if an exploration of the lead-mmes at Craven Cross could be attained at the 
same time. 

Nidderdale is one of the pleasantest little valleys in England; its meadows 
are luxurious as asummer Alp; its streams flow full and sparkling, in beds of 
limestone through deep fringes of richly foliaged timber-trees. Thick planta- 
tions line its sides, and either run up to and over the summits of the hulls, or 
only just permit the brown crags of the Millstone-grit to peep over the tops of 
the firs. Towards the head of the dale these woods disappear from the hills, 
and only hold their place in the deep ravines ploughed out by the mountain- 
torrents. In one of these the infant Nid disappears into a yawning cavern, 
called “ Goreden Pot-hole.”’ 

In following the valley downwards, the ravine seems to be blocked up by a 
gigantic precipice of limestone, under which is a deep tunnel, and into this the 
stream rushes and disappears amongst the huge rocks that are heaped one on 
another in this gigantic portal. The blue mist comes eddying out into the hot 
air, and if you enter within, the cave is as chill as an ice-house. The white pre- 
cipice is frmged with ash and alder, and the thick woods that fill the ravine make 
it dark even at a summer’s noon. The bizarre shapes of the rocks, the yawning 
entrance, and the swallowed-up river would, among a people more romantic 
than Yorkshiremen, have given rise to many a legend of fantastic superstition. 
There it is so little thought of, that a few miles off the natives scarce know of 
its existence. In rainy weather especially it is worth a day’s journey to visit it. 

Two miles below this “swallow-hole” the river issues out of the hill-side 
from. beneath two natural rock-arches in a full clear stream, called “ Nid-head ;” 
but if not particularly inquired for in the district, the place will not be pointed 
out by the villagers. Both these localities are within easy distance of Harro- 
gate, which lies in the throat of the valley, and through which runs the only 
good road into Nidderdale, all the other roads out of it on each side being ex~ 
cessively steep and awkward. Yor a pedestrian, however, nothing can be finer. 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 449 


On leaving the Nid, the tourist may visit Brimham Rocks, which lie among 
the moors on its northern boundary. We crossed over them to Hackfall and 
Masham ; and our last glance at the purple swells of the heathery moors was 
one of regret—almost of pain—at leavig the fresh breezes and the wide 
horizon for the close hot dales and still closer, hotter, smoky towns of York- 
shire—Epwarp Woop, F.G.S., Richmond, Yorkshire. 

PuLaTEs OF BoURGUETICRINUS.—DEAR StrR,—You will find on the accom- 
panying woodeut figures of extremely rare forms of Apriocrinites, or stem- 
plates of the crmoid, now more commonly called by D’Orbigny’s new generic 
name of Bourgueticrinus, instead of the former term given to these fossils by 


Miller. 


[Specimens of stem-plates of Bourgueticrinus from the Upper Chalk of Kent. | 


Fig. c is represented on account of its unusual size. It is from Kent. 
This is not in my collection, having been lent to me many years since. All the 
specimens figured on the block, as also others with remarkable articulations in 
my collection not yet been figured, are from the Upper Chalk of Gravesend. 

In Dixon’s Geology of Sussex, table xx., figs. 37, 38, are two stems allied to 
mine. On reference to Morris’s catalogue, page 73, I find other forms besides 
the B. ellipticus have been published by D’Orbigny and McCoy.—Very truly 
yours, N. T. WretTHERELL, Highgate. 

OBSERVATIONS UPON CERTAIN GEOLOGICAL INFERENCES.—SiR,—I have 
carefully considered the strictures which you have thought proper to append to 
my communication, for the acceptance of which I thank you; and I am sure 
that you will allow me some opportunity of extricating myself from the ap- 
parently unfortunate position in which your remarks have placed me; which I 
shall consider in order. 

To say that granite is only a crystalline condition of rock, is just the same as 
saying that ice is only water minus a certain portion of its latent heat. It is 
rock in this condition which constitutes granite; and imasmuch as we could 
not decide whether any given uncrystallised rock would become granite upon 
igneous agency, because we have never experienced the operation, it is useless 
to talk of any rock which, if subjected to igneous agency, would become granite, 
not knowing whether such constitutes any portion of the earth’s crust. I do 
not understand your meaning when you say that granite may be coeval with the 
newest of the Tertiary formations. You cannot mean to say that its formation 
is synchronal with the London clay, for example? As regards rocks dipping 


450 THE GEOLOGIST. 
into it, I am aware that gneiss and other metamorphic rocks unite a crystalline 
structure with stratification, and thus somewhat resemble those of purely 
igneous agency ; but my language applied to rocks of a purely aqueous origi, 
so that we agree on this point. It 1s not well im making a few general observa- 
tions upon any science to encumber oneself with minor considerations, neverthe- 
less the metamorphic rock could hardly be urged as an objection to what I have 
said, inasmuch as the gradual amalgamation you have spoken of could not be 
fairly construed into dipping. In speaking of gramte I must include the 
various species of this substance. If I am supposed to err in calling it the 
oldest rock, I shall be obliged if any person will offer some reason for rejecting 
this opinion ; when, both as regards this and every sentiment I have offered, | 
shall, if convinced of the falsity of them, be the first to own it. 

You inform me that my remarks on the time requisite for the formation of 
strata, prior to historical times, are more illogical than the deductions of the 
geologists I refer to; but I think I can show that this is not the case. It I 
supposed that my argument had no better foundation than you appear to dis- 
cover about it I should indeed have kept it to myself. I absolutely deny that 
I have simply denied the truth of the notion contested : there is a substantial 
reason for supposing that the earth was formed in a short space of time, apart 
from geological considerations ; and until geologists prove that the peculiar 
appearances connected with strata formed prior to historical times cannot be 
explained without the supposition of the formation having extended over a vast 
yeriod of time, I cannot assent to the truth of their hypothesis. You perceive 
{ have assumed that these rocks present features which are not found in those 
of a later date which have been formed gradually ; nevertheless, I confess that 
I have never been enabled to discover in what the peculiarities consist, and 
should, therefore, be glad to learn what they are, if any exist. If these ancient 
rocks present a different character to those more recently and far more slowly 
eal for once adopting an hypothesis as true, it only proves that their mode 
of formation must have been very different, and that it must have been very 
rapid, because that of later rocks has been slow. Consequently, if any such 
peculiarities exist, they only prove the opposite of what geologists at present 
profess to draw from them. If many geologists have not considered this, I 
wonder at it. If the peculiarities of character alluded to really exist, they 
certainly must prove that the formation of the rocks cannot have been similar ; 
and, as we know that recent rocks, using this term in its poneeiee sense, have 
been slowly deposited, they prove that the earlier ones must have been very 
rapidly formed. It may be thought that they would prove that these rocks 
were deposited far slower than the others, or that this supposition is as likely 
as the other; but many considerations show that this hypothesis lacks consis- 
tency. I doubt, however, that such peculiarities exist, or any, if any can be 
found, which cannot be explaied by the age of the strata they characterize. 

My reference to the Mosaic record, so far from beimg illogical or unphiloso- 
phical, appears to me to constitute a sound proceeding. From that account I 
gather some reason, if I was sure that I understood it as it is intended to be 
understood, I should say irresistible reason for supposing that the earth was 
created m a short space of time. Geologists inform us that this was not the 
case, and surely I am not illogical in demanding a satisfactory reason for their. 
opinion, before acquiescing in it. It is often said that the two records, nature 
and revelation, should not be confused together ; but, while agreeing with this, 
as regards scientific investigation in general, I maintain that the obvious mean- 
ing of Scripture should not be considered figurative, be‘ore science has fully 
proved that truth renders this necessary. In my third question, which you 
very indefimtely condemn, I have given a supposition made use of by Dr. 
Lardner, which appears to me highly probable. From your remarks about the 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 451 


perusal of geological writings as a principal mode of obtainmg a knowledge of 
this science, | apprehend that you consider my observations somewhat 
“bookish,” to use a term sanctioned by Locke. As to the supposed difficult 
how rapidly precipitated rocks should contain myriads of organic remnisctl 
never asserted that this need be supposed. ‘The stratified rocks may have been 
very rapidly formed, after which the earth may have undergone such revolutions 
as to account for the various periods supposed, consequent upon the presence 
of certain fossils and remains, and the individual appearance of these in various 
strata. ‘This would embrace the first five verses of the Mosaic narrative, and, 
geologically, the so termed pre-adamite periods. There is no occasion to 
inagine the first five and followmg verses of the Mosaic narrative as describing 
events immediately consecutive, as other writers have observed; and it is 
probable that the harmony of the two records renders this necessary, in- 
asmuch as the conjecturable events of the Deluge cannot be supposed to 
account for the fact of certain fossils and remains being exclusively found in 
certain strata. 

I think that you will now consider my former observations less unfavourably 
than before. They certainly did want some explanation, which I have now en- 
deavoured to furnish. There is certainly nothing, even in the humblest truths 
of geology, to excite merriment; nevertheless, absurd conclusions with regard 
to this or any science deserve no more.—I. A. Davies.—We print Mr. Davies 
remarks in full, but without comment, having laid down a rigid rule, from 
which in no case shall we depart, namely, of not entermg into any controversial 
communications. We abide by our former remarks. 

THe Pre-Apamite AcEs.—Srr,—I believe that geologists have not yet 
decided how many distinct revolutions of animal existence the earth had seen 
prior to the era of man. Now, imasmuch as we cannot say how many and 
what species of strata were simultaneously uppermost, I do not see how this 
question can be decided. The various fossils found in the three great series of 
rocks cannot, in my opmion, decide the point, masmuch as the various strata 
uppermost at various times remain unknown. And as aninquiry analogous to, 
and perhaps somewhat connected with this, the supposed knowledge of rocks 
beyond the range of our experience should be noticed. We cannot, from the 
nature of the case, say positively how rocks unseen by human eye are situated 
with respect to one another, for which reason I cannot make much of the 
various theoretical sections of the earth’s crust which geologists sometimes 
frame, and with which they, in my opinion, more mystify than enlighten their 
readers. It is true that we may make probable conjectures concerning these 
matters, but absolute certainty 1s out of the question, until direct evidence has 
been obtaimed ; which of course can never be the case. Yet we may be more 
certain with regard to other phenomena of unseen rocks. Granite, or the 
granites, for example, may, from their obvious quantity, perhaps according to 
appearance exceeding that of any other rock, and their possessing certain 
chemical and, especially as regards durability, mechanical principles, be regarded 
as the oldest and lowest rocks, forming the imner side of the earth’s crust; 
and being, consequently, in direct connection with the matter of voleanos.— 
J. A. Davirs.—There is no reason to suppose that there have been any given 
number of distinct revolutions of animal existence; the changes have been 
gradual and successive, without any general and total break. The arbitrary 
divisions for scientific grouping must not be mistaken for real gaps m the order 
of nature. 

Orietn oF THE Metamorpnic Rocxs.—Srr,—I thik that the difficulty 
respecting the origin of these rocks is considerably reduced upon the adoption 
of an hypothesis, made use of by Dr. Lardner, respecting their gradual precipi- 
tation upon those of an igneous nature. By this it stands to reason that they 


450 THE GEOLOGIST. 


into it, T am aware that gneiss and other metamorphic rocks unite a crystalline 
structure with stratification, and thus somewhat resemble those of purely 
igneous agency ; but my language applied to rocks of a purely aqueous origin, 
so that we agree on this pot. It is not well in making a few general observa- 
tions upon any science to encumber oneself with minor considerations, neverthe- 
less the metamorphic rock could hardly be urged as an objection to what I have 
said, inasmuch as the gradual amalgamation you have spoken of could not be 
fairly construed mto dipping. In speaking of granite I must include the 
various species of this substance. If I aim supposed to err in calling it the 
oldest rock, I shall be obliged if any person will offer some reason for rejecting 
this opinion; when, both as regards this and every sentiment I have offered, I 
shall, if convineed of the falsity of them, be the first to own it. 

You inform me that my remarks on the time requisite for the formation of 
strata, prior to historical times, are more illogical than the deductions of the 
geologists I refer to; but I think I can show that this is not the case. If I 
supposed that my argument had no better foundation than you appear to dis- 
cover about it I should indeed have kept it to myself. I absolutely deny that 
I have simply denied the truth of the notion contested: there is a substantial 
reason for supposing that the earth was formed in a short space of time, apart 
from geological considerations ; and until geologists prove that the peculiar 
appearances connected with strata formed prior to historical times cannot be 
explained without the supposition of the formation having extended over a vast 
period of time, I cannot assent to the truth of their hypothesis. You perceive 
i have assumed that these rocks present features which are not found m those 
of a later date which have been formed gradually ; nevertheless, I confess that 
T have never been enabled to discover in what the peculiarities consist, and 
should, therefore, be glad to learn what they are, if any exist. If these ancient 
rocks present a different character to those more recently and far more slowly 
red for once adopting an hypothesis as true, it only proves that their mode 
~ of formation must have been very different, and that it must have been very 
rapid, because that of later rocks has been slow. Consequently, if any such 
peculiarities exist, they only prove the opposite of what geologists at present 
profess to draw from them. If many geologists have not considered this, I 
wonder at it. If the peculiarities of character alluded to really exist, they 
certainly must prove that the formation of the rocks cannot have been similar ; 
and, as we know that recent rocks, using this term in its geological sense, have 
been slowly deposited, they prove that the earlier ones must ‘have been very 
rapidly formed. It may be thought that they would prove that these rocks 
were deposited far slower than the others, or that this supposition is as likely 
as the other; but many considerations show that this hypothesis lacks consis- 
tency. I doubt, however, that such peculiarities exist, or any, if any can be 
found, which cannot be explained by the age of the strata they characterize. 

My reference to the Mosaic record, so far from being illogical or unphiloso- 
phical, appears to me to constitute a sound procecdiue: From that account I 
gather some reason, if I was sure that I understood it as it is intended to be 
understood, I should say irresistible reason for supposing that the earth was 
created in a short space of time. Geologists inform us that this was not the 
case, and surely I am not illogical in demanding a satisfactory reason for their 
opinion, before acquiescing in it. It is often said that the two records, nature 
and revelation, should not be confused together ; but, while agreeing with this, 
as regards scientific investigation in general, | maintam that the obvious mean. 
ing of Scripture should not be considered figurative, before science has fully 
proved that truth renders this necessary. In my third question, which you 
very indefinitely condemn, I have given a supposition made use of by Dr. 
Lardner, which appears to me highly probable. From your remarks about the 


| 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 451 


perusal of geological writings as a principal mode of obtainmg a knowledge of 
this science, I apprehend that you consider my observations somewhat 
“bookish,” to use a term sanctioned by Locke. As to the supposed difficulty 
how rapidly precipitated rocks should contam myriads of organic remains, 
never asserted that this need be supposed. ‘The stratified rocks may have been 
very rapidly formed, after which the earth may have undergone such revolutions 
as to account for the various periods supposed, consequent upon the presence 
of certain fossils and remains, and the individual appearance of these in various 
strata. This would embrace the first five verses of the Mosaic narrative, and, 
geologically, the so termed pre-adamite periods. There is no occasion to 
imagine the first five and following verses of the Mosaic narrative as describing 
events immediately consecutive, as other writers have observed; and it is 
probable that the harmony of the two records renders this necessary, in- 
asmuch as the conjecturable events of the Deluge cannot be supposed to 
account for the fact of certain fossils and remains being exclusively found in 
certain strata. 

I think that you will now consider my former observations less unfavourably 
than before. ‘They certainly did want some explanation, which I have now en- 
deavoured to furnish. There is certainly nothmg, even in the humblest truths 
of geology, to excite merriment; nevertheless, absurd conclusions with regard 
to this or any science deserve no more.—I. A. Davizs.—We print Mr. Davies 
remarks im full, but without comment, having laid down a rigid rule, from 
which in no case shall we depart, namely, of not entering mto any controversial 
communications. We abide by our former remarks. 

THe Pre-Apamite AGxEs.—Sir,—I believe that geologists have not yet 
decided how many distinct revolutions of animal existence the earth had seen 
prior to the era of man. Now, inasmuch as we cannot say how many and 
what species of strata were simultaneously uppermost, I do not see how this 
question can be decided. ‘The various fossils found in the three great series of 
rocks cannot, in my opinion, decide the point, inasmuch as the various strata 
uppermost at various times remain unknown. And as aninquiry analogous to, 
and perhaps somewhat connected with this, the supposed knowledge of rocks 
beyond the range of our experience should be noticed. We cannot, from the 
nature of the case, say positively how rocks unseen by human eye are situated 
with respect to one another, for which reason I cannot make much of the 
various theoretical sections of the earth’s crust which geologists sometimes 
frame, and with which they, in my opinion, more mystify than enlighten their 
readers. It is true that we may make probable conjectures concerning these 
matters, but absolute certainty 1s out of the question, until direct evidence has 
been obtamed ; which of course can never be the case. Yet we may be more 
certain with regard to other phenomena of unseen rocks. Granite, or the 
granites, for example, may, from their obvious quantity, perhaps according to 
appearance exceeding that of any other rock, and their possessing certain 
chemical and, especially as regards durability, mechanical principles, be regarded 
as the oldest and lowest rocks, forming the imner side of the earth’s crust; 
and being, consequently, in direct connection with the matter of volcanos.— 
I. A. Davies.—There is no reason to suppose that there have been any given 
number of distmct revolutions of animal existence; the changes have been 
gradual and successive, without any general and total break. The arbitrary 
divisions for scientific grouping must not be mistaken for real gaps in the order 
of nature. 

Oricin oF THE Mutamorenic Rocxs.—Sir,—I think that the difficulty 
respecting the origin of these rocks is considerably reduced upon the adoption 
of an hypothesis, made use of by Dr. Lardner, respecting their gradual precipi- 
tation upon those of an igneous nature. By this it stands to reason that they 


4.52 THE GEOLOGIST, 


would acquire a crystalline nature. Thus some of the ingredients found as 
components of granite and other igneous rocks would be developed. This 
may be supposed to be the effect of heat, which would affect what would 
otherwise be ordinarily stratified rocks. I consider that this hypothesis is 
much strengthened by the fact (assuming, as from the nature of granite I think 
I may, that this geological doctrine is a fact) that these rocks underlie those 
properly stratified and fossiliferous. The metamorphic rocks appear to be 
ordinary stratified rocks subjected to the influence of heat. The hypothesis 
alluded to, if accepted as true, or even probable, explams their position. The 
heat of the igneous rocks would not reach those purely sedimentary, but only 
alter rocks with which they were directly connected. If it be said, as it has 
been, that some metamorphic rocks do not exhibit the influence of heat, I ad- 
vise that the objectors consider the effect of age upon any deposit; and also 
the way, the possible way, in which this phenomenon can be accounted for, if 
they can discover any, and reject this explanation. J do not see what other 
explanatory hypothesis can be found.—I. A. Davizs.—How sedimentary mat- 
ter or any precipitate could be derived from highly heated basement-rock, as 
Lardner’s hypothesis requires, it is difficult to conceive. As altered sedi- 
mentary matter (sand, clay, and limestone) the materials of the metamorphic 
rocks might plainly have come from the waste of the first uprismmg lands. 

The position of the metamorphic rocks in relation both with the igneous rocks 
and unaltered sedimentary rocks affords incontrovertible evidence of their 
having been usual sediments altered and distorted by heat. 

SUGGESTION RESPECTING Rock-Bastns.—Sir,—Whilst readmg im your 
periodical for August the interesting article by Mr. Rupert Jones on the 
weathering of granite, a conjecture presented itself to me as to the pro- 
bable cause of the primary basins on some of the surfaces of the granite. It is 
this—whether the bait if they correspond with distinct masses of rock, may 
not be produced by the shrinking of compressed cooling masses. I might add 
in illustration, I conceived that a like process might occasion the concave and 
convex joints in the basaltic pillars at the Giant’s Causeway. ‘This is merely 
a suggestion, which may or may not be tenable; if it be, you are quite at 
liberty to publish it should you think fit— Yours respectfully, GzoreE RENNING, 
Sheffield—Our correspondent will see in Mr. Rupert Jones’ paper, at pages 
307 and 308, that the effects of contraction in cooling have not escaped observa- 
tion; and he will further see, at page 311, that Mr. Ormerod recognizes the 
horizontal planes of fracture or fissurage as probably limiting the depth of at 
least some of the basins. We may take this occasion, in reference to the re- 
marks of our correspondent, Mr. Drake, in our September number, on the artificial 
origin of rock-basins, to express our regret that Mr. Rupert Jones did not refer 
to that interesting aspect of the subject; probably he wished that readers 
should refer on this point to Mr. Omerod’s valuable memoir from which he 
largely quoted, and in which will be found some observations on the circular 
cavities in boulder-blocks in stream-courses, to which class of basins Mr. Drake 
refers in the latter part of his communication. 

Locatitres FoR Mammatian Remarns.—Bones of elephant, rhimoceros, 
and ox from the gravel, at Brockhall, Lawford, were presented to the Geological 
Society, in 1833, by the Rev. Wm. Thornton. Shells, and bones of mammalia, 
from Stutton, Suffolk, were also presented by Mr. Edw. Charlesworth m 1835. 
—F.G.S., London. 


REVIEWS. 453 


REVIEWS. 


Natural History of the European Seas—By the late Professor Edward 
Forbes and R. A. Godwin-Austen, Hsq., F.R.S. 


If anything could give us pleasure, and at the same time pain, it would be to 
review a posthumous book of Edward Forbes—we write not the prefix ‘ Pro- 
fessor,” for the two simple words are their own glory, the reality of which no 
addition could increase. Amongst the very earliest of our encouragers in the 
pursuit of natural history we remember, as many, many others in their own 
cases must do the like, the amiable courtesy and gentleness with which that 
great man would at all times assist our inquiries by the ready explanations 
which his vast-extended knowledge enabled him instantly to give. 

One half the book before us was penned by Edward Forbes, the remainder 
has been completed by his friend—indeed a treasurable title—and literary ex- 
ecutor, Mr. Godwin-Austen. Well-known and appreciated for his scientific 
acquirements, mm no better hands than his could such a task have been placed ; 
but all the world knows how charmingly, and yet how philosophically the 
professor wrote ; and in few tasks, therefore, could it be more difficult to ac- 
quire a successful result than in the completion of an unfinished work, however 
simple might be its character, of a man esteemed alike as an individual, an 
author, and a philosopher. 

The history of the present volume, one of Mr. Van Voorst’s projected 
series of “Outlines of the Natural History of Europe,” is briefly told m the 
preface. ‘Three books under the above title were proposed some years since to 
be issued; Professor Henfrey undertook the subject of the “ Vegetation of 
Kurope,” Professor Forbes “The Natural History of the European Seas,” and 
the latter suggested to Mr. Austen to do “The Geological History of the 
European Area.” Professor Henfrey’s book appeared in 1852, and that by 
Professor Forbes was announced for 1853. With the work and engagements 
then pressing heavily upon him, no one was surprized at its not appearing, and 
indeed it is probable his own additional studies and the further researches 
desirable might have made him wish for a little delay before he committed 
himself to any general views on the marine fauna of the Huropean seas. In 
1855, the life and labours of one of the most eminent naturalists our native land 
has ever produced were suddenly cut off, and the little book, half-finished, half- 
printed, of which a few more months of his sojourn amongst us would have 
sufficed for the perfecting, has passed over to his friend for completion. 

Professor Henfrey, the author of the first of the series of “Outlines of the 
Natural History of Europe,” too, has passed away from amongst us. 

No one element of recent investigation has a greater bearing, or is likely to 
throw more light upon the ancient geographical and physical conditions and 
distribution of the ancient extinct creations of our planet than the results of 
those accurate dredgings of the sea-bottom, to which Edward Forbes himself 

ave so strong an impetus, and those notations of organic forms occurring with- 
m special zones of depth, and the limitations of special groups within certain 
geographical areas. ‘The bearings of these results upon fossil organic remains 
is of the highest value, and this book places all that is known before us in a 
quiet, unostentatious, but powerful manner. It is in fact a book of reference, 
but with these exceptions to the almost universal character of books of that 
class, that it is small, condensed, and not voluminous, and that it is pleasantly 

VOL. II. 8 § 


4.54. THE GEOLOGIST. 


readable. It begins with an introductory chapter in Forbes’ own easy polished 
style, in which the general distribution of organic life into distinct botanical 
and zoological provinces of greater or less extent, according to their degree ot 
limitation by physical or climatal conditions, is sucemetly pomted out. ‘These 
provinces are not so entirely distinct, each from its neighbour, but that some com- 
mingling of the characteristic life-forms take place m the boundary regions 
which infringe upon each other. These provinces, as understood in this work, 
are areas “within which there is evidence of the special manifestation of the 
Creative Power; that is to say, withm which there have been called into bemg 
the originals, or protoplasts, of animals or plants.” 

The aborigines of these areas In the lapse of time, or through the altered 
geographical and physical conditions of our planet, may become mixed up with 
emigrants from other provinces, and even exceeded by them in numbers. The 
distinguishing, therefore, of the original types and the determination of the 
causes which have produced and directed the invasion, are among the problems 
which the investigator of the distribution of animated creatures has to endeayour 
to solve. In the investigation of the fauna or flora of a province “ the diffusion 
of the individuals of the characteristic species is found to indicate that the 
manifestation of the creative energy has not been equal in all parts of the area, 
but that in some portion of it, that usually more or less central, the genesis of 
new beings has been more intensely exerted than elsewhere. Hence, to re- 
present a province diagrammatically, we might colour a nebulous space, in 
which the intensity of the hue would be exhibited towards the centre, and be- 
come fainter and fainter towards the circumference.” This feature of zoological 
and botanical provinces gives rise to the term “centres of creation,’ which 
Forbes and others have applied to them. Nowhere do we find a province re- 
peated, or, in other words, “no species has been called forth originally im more 
areas than one. Similar species, to which the term representative is mutually 
applied, appear in areas distant from each other, but under the influence of 
similar physical conditions.” The term specific centre has been employed to ex- 
press the pomt upon which each species had its orig, and whence its indivi- 
duals have spread and radiated. Im the course of its diffusion, or during 
the lapse of time, a species may become extinguished in its original centre, 
and groups of individuals may thus become isolated at spots far distant from 
each other. Indeed, the true specific centre in some cases may be rightly 

laced in the rock-strata of the earth, mvolving the necessity of tracmg the 
faery of the species backward in time, and of investigating its connection 
with geological changes. 

Provinces also, like species, must be traced back to their history and origi in 
past time ; for paleeontological research exhibits the phenomenon of provinces in 
time, as well as provinces inspace. Species, moreover, have a centering m geo- 
logical time as well as in geographical space, and zo species are repeated in time, 
that is, there has been no recreation of any same specific form ; while “ the distri- 
bution of the individuals of fossil species also indicates their diffusion from 
some unique point of origin, and consequently goes to support the notion of the 
connection of these individuals through the relationship of descent, and the 
derivation of them all from an original protoplast.” : 

The sea-board of Europe extends through four degrees of latitude and six of 
longitude, from withm the Arctic Circle to the Pillars of Hercules, with a last 
and isolated portion constituting the north-west border of the Caspian Sea. 
Along such a range of shore, extending through various climates, from the 
warm and sunny confines of Africa to the ice-bound cliffs of Nova Zembla and 
Spitzbergen, there are many and diversified assemblages of animated creatures. 
Those which “ delight in the chilly waters of the Arctic Ocean must be very 
different from those which revel in the genial seas of the south; whilst the 


REVIEWS. 455 


temperate tides that lave our own favoured shores cherish a submarine popula 
tion intermediate in character between both.” Thus, chiefly by the labours of 
Forbes, the European sea-area has been divided into six zoological provinces, 
within which he considered there were to be reckoned as many distinct centres 
of creation. The first and northernmost being the Arctic, “extending through- 
out that portion of the European seas within the Arctic Circle. The second, 
the Boreal “includmg the seas which wash the shores of Norway, Iceland, the 
Faroe, and the Zetland Isles. The third, the Celtic, “in which rank the British 
seas, the Baltic, and the shores of the contment from Bohuslan to the Bay of 
Biseay.” The fourth, the Lusitanian, includes the Atlantic coasts of the Pen- 
insula. The fifth, the Mediterranean, includes also the Black-sea; and lastly, 
the Caspian, a region now completely isolated from all the others. All these 
provinces are succinctly but perfectly, as far as existing knowledge goes, con- 
sidered in their geographical, physical, and geological relations, and the 
characteristic life-forms of each carefully made out. Of these it was suggested, 
however, by Forbes that the Mediterranean and its dependencies may possibly 
be a chain of offsets from the Lusitanian area; while Mr. Austen seems to con- 
sider the Boreal fauna as a modification of the Arctic. In the chapter on the 
geographical distribution of shells in Mr. Woodward’s “ Manual of Mollusca,” 
the lists of shells occurring in the several marine regions are tabulated, and these 
lists will be found to be useful companions to this “ History of the European 
Seas.” In the ninth chapter “On the Distribution of Marine Animals,” 
amongst other interesting topics, that of those “outliers,” or remarkable 
assemblages at spots, often far distant from the present boundaries of a pro- 
vince, of animals of its characteristic species, is treated very forcibly in 
its geological aspect. Such assemblages, for example, often occur within 
our own Celtic province, and are so peculiar and so isolated that they can not 
be accounted for by any facts connected with the present disposition of cur- 
rents, or other transporting influences. They are “usually located in a hole 
or valley of considerable depth, from eighty to beyond one hundred fathoms, 
and consist of species of molluscs of a more northern character than those of 
the zone or province in which they occur.” 

“The explanation which Edward Forbes gives of these ‘outliers’ is as 
follows :—When the bed of the sea of that period, when in our latitudes the 
fauna was more northern than it is now, was upheaved, the whole was not 
raised into dry land, but tracts of greater depth, and which consequently were 
tenanted by peculiar forms, still remained under water, though under different 
depths. In these changes a portion of a fauna would be destroyed, but such 
species as could endure alterations in vertical range would live on.” 

Of such outlhers, or isolated groups of fossil remains, Mr. Austen quotes the 
remarkable instance, noticed by M. Barrande, of a patch in one of the lower 
divisions of the great Paleozoic series of Bohemia, of as many as sixty species 
of forms not agreeing with those characterizing the horizon in which they occur. 
These forms are surmounted by beds containmg the characteristic species of 
the same lower division, but the sixty species thus isolated appear again as a 
component part of the fauna of the “upper division” of the same palozoic 
series. Such isolated assemblages are regarded by Mr. Austen as true outliers, 
and “ will serve to suggest curious and interesting geological inferences in the 
earlier history (both natural and physical) of the Huropean area.” 

Of the antiquity of the fauna of the European seas, Mr. Austen writes: 
“The fauna of the Huropean seas dates back its origin or first appearance to 
times which, on the scale of the geologist, follow next after the Nummulitic 
period (Hocene). So far as European seas are concerned, they do not contain 
a single species In common with tie forms of the nummulitic group. The 
earliest reeords of the occupation of the Atlantic by any existing forms are 


4.56 THE GEOLOGIST. 


certain old sea-beds which are scattered at intervals over some of the western 
departments of France, extending inland along the valley of the Loire, as far 
eastward as beyond Blois, to be met with in some of its branches northwards 
—an old arm of the Atlantic, with dimensions nearly equal to those of our 
English Channel, long since laid dry. These old sea-beds are the ‘ Faluns of 
Touraine.’ ” 

Lower down to the south, from the Island of Oléron across to the Adour, 
was another great indent of the Atlantic—an eastern extension of the Bay of 
Biscay. Over this once depressed area there are sea-beds which contain an 
assemblage like that of the Touraine deposits, the Faluns Jaunes of Grateloup.” 

He further regards the fauna of the Atlantic as primarily composed of a 
northern and a southern element, and “It is to be remarked,” he says, “ that 
the northern constituents of our present Atlantic fauna are not met with in the 
older fauna of the Faluns, nor in the equivalent assemblages further south. 
Northern forms had not, at that time, extended into that part of the Atlantic 
which hes west and south of the British Islands. Their great migration south- 
wards took place subsequently to those great physical changes which converted 
into dry land those portions of western France abovereferred to, and which changes 
were triflmg m amount when compared with those of the same date im other 
parts of the Atlantic, and within the Mediterranean area.. The physical change 
which liberated the northern fauna has been indicated on independent consi- 
derations. It has been shown that there is good evidence of the former conti- 
nuity of a coast-line from the north of Greenland to the north of Lapland, and 
that, consequently, the Atlantic did not then communicate with the Arctic 
basin; it was only when this barrier was removed that a free passage south 
was opened out to Arctic forms.” 

With the exception of a limitation at its northern extremity, “the Atlantic 
is an old area of depression. There was an Atlantic Ocean for the nummulitic, 
cretaceous, and paleozoic periods, during each of which it had its distinct, 
zones of distribution in latitude, as well as its corresponding provinces of 
representative forms on its opposite sides.” 

With other equally interesting topics and reflections, the remaining chapters 
conclude a book which, from its intrinsic value and moderate price, will doubt- 
less meet with an extensive sale, and prove a useful foundation as well as an 
encouragement to further imvestigations by naturalists of the mteresting sub- 
ject to which it is devoted. 


Dura Den: A Monograph of the Yellow Sandstone, and its remarkable Fossit 
Remans. By Joun Anperson, D.D., F.G.S., F.P.S., &c. Edinburgh : 
Thomas Constable and Co. London: Hamilton, Adams and Co., 1859. 


Fifeshire, the general contour of which, in its gentle and undulating outlines, 
partakes more of the aspect of the English downs than of the bolder and more 
rugged features of the Scottish mountain-tracts, forms the eastern portion of 
the great central coal-district of Scotland. The Ochils, a chain of trap-hills 
varying m the extent of their range from four hundred feet in height to nearly 
three thousand in Bencleugh and Dalmyatt, traverse its northern boundary, 
and with the short but elevated table-land of the Lomonds ruming through 
the central portion, separate the county into three well-defined subordinate 
regions corresponding to three equally-marked geological distinctions. From 
the Lomond-heights the view is spoken of as charming. “ Overlooking the 
whole county, and the two noble rivers by which it is encompassed, with the 
German Ocean to the Hast, the town of Stirling and the ‘lofty Ben Lomond’ 
to the west, the rugged serrated outline of the Grampians to the north, and 


; 
. 


ia 


REVIEWS. 457 


the extensive plains of the Lothians, begirt by the Pentlands and Lammer- 
muirs, the Bass and Berwick-Law to the south; the prospect from either sum- 
mit may vie with any in the kingdom, presenting at once to the eye whatever 
is necessary in water, forest, and mountain to form the beautiful, the pic- 
turesque, or the grand.” The palace of Falkland les at the base of the Kast 
Lomond, and in the midst of the deep blue waters of Loch-leven stand the 
ruins of the keep in which the unfortunate Mary Stuart was imprisoned by her 
subjects. Towards the southern boundary of this county, near a tributary of 
the river Nden, between the well-known towns of Cupar and St. Andrews, is 
Dura Den, famous in geological circles for its “yellow sandstone,” the beautiful 
fossil fish entombed in which have given celebrity to this locality in every quar- 
ter of the world. Most of the species peculiar to this ‘yellow sandstone” are 
figured in Agassiz’ grand work the “Poissons Fossiles,’”’ and in that author’s 
separate memoir on the fishes of the Old Red Sandstone (Monographie des Poissons 
fossiles du Vieux Gres Rouge). The present monograph in a scientific point of 
view derives one of its chief values from the descriptions of the new piscine 
forms Phaneropleuron Andersoni,* and Glyptolemus Kinnairdi, by Professor 
Huxley. 

Of in Anderson’s own labours we may say that he has usefully compiled 
the observations of other geologists on the zoological and physical character of 
the Old Red sandstone, and that he has done full justice to the opinions of 
Murchison, Austen, and Page on the origi of that formation, brmgimg promi- 
nently forward Mr. Austen’s ingenious speculations on its possible lacustrine 
origin. The inference of its marie character derives its strongest support 
from the enormous thickness of the conglomerates in Scotland and Hereford, 
for the fishes may well be freshwater, and their admixture or concurrence with 
marine forms in the Russian equivalent of this deposit may be due to a possible 
habit of their visiting the sea, like the sturgeon, at certam periods, or to their 
having lived so near the sea as to be swept down by floods. 

But while wishing to favour and encourage this, as we always desire to do 
every monographic work, we can not help regrettmg that many errors of state- 
See as well as typal mcorrectnesses, have been allowed to pass forth to the 
world. 

Nothing is more essential to scientific books than absolute correctness, and 
in such a monagraph as this of Dura Den, we ought not to find Pterygotus spelt 
with an improper o (p. 23) for the proper y, Encrinites spoken of and described 
(p. 93) as corals (!). Nor should, an mverted illustration as that of the 
characteristic heterocercal tail (p. 39), be allowed to escape notice. Truths are 
easily distinguished by the learned from casual errors, but it is different 
with the not skilfully versed: to detect one error is suggestive to them of ano- 
ther, and they naturally argue if an author blunders im small things, he is not 
reliable for the more important; thus many a valuable treatise has been cast 
aside, and every author who does not heed such minor matters will ever be 
subject to the like neglect. 

Associated as Dr. Anderson’s name is with the early history, and the compli- 
mentary nomenclature of the fossil fish of Dura Den, to no one could we have 
looked more appropriately for an account of that highly interesting and beautiful 
locality ; and appearing as this work did at the period of a great gathering of 
learned gentlemen (the British Association Meeting), patronized by applaud- 
ing royalty, it must have proved a tempting ddjou for the many visitors that 
the Den, from its proximity to the scene of scientific action; would have had on- 
the late occasion, and whom we are sure received a thorough Scottish welcome 


* The term Glypticus was applied by Agassiz to some fragments of this fish : that author 
concurs in Professor Huxley’s more descriptive generic name. 


4.58 THE GEOLOGIST. 


and entertainment from its kind-hearted and hospitable author. The book also 
receives an additional charm in the pretty drawings of the typical, as well as 
handsome, Holoptychius Andersoni, by Lady Kinnaird—a name also interestingly 
associated with the fossil trophies of Dura Den. 


Remarks on the Geology of Cornwall and Devon. By Capt. Cuartes Tuomas, 
of Doleoath Mine, Camborne. 


In acountry like England, where great wealth and political position is due in 
no small extent to the development of its mineral and industrial resources, it is 
always a matter of importance to observe how far science can be brought to aid 
in the furthering of these great material objects. Of course we all know the 
opinion of the “practical” man of the old school on this subject. Science, ac- 
cording to his views, was a sneaking kind of thing, well enough for a French- 
man or a German, but somethmg quite beneath the ‘ practical common sense” 
of a true born John Bull. In the army or navy, the farm or the mine, it was 
everywhere the same. The last twenty years, however, has a good deal changed 
this; science is now popular enough—ideed almost too popular, for while every 
one wants to know it, there are many who won’t take the trouble of learning it, 
but, on the strength of a week’s “cram,” pretend or imagine they know all 
about it. Whatever may be its other virtues, a retiring diffidence 1s certainly 
not a characteristic of the nineteenth century. 

But in the midst of all this progress—real and sound, as well as hasty, shal- 
low, and superficial—there is one corner of our isle to which we can turn and 
see the good old reign of “ practical common sense” unshaken and immoveable. 
In the royal county of Cornwall scientific innovation—if proposed to be applied 
to the working of its great metallic resourees—would meet-with pretty much 
the same feelings as M. Mazzini’s doctrines—if proposed to be applied to the 
government of the state—might be expected to excite in the bosoms of the 
ruling powers of Naples. Here at least—alone we believe among all our in- 
dustrial communities—not only will they not exert themselves to procure some 
scientific education, but when, by the munificence of afew gentlemen, it is 
brought home to their door, they literally won’t have it. A true bred Cornish 
miner would as much abhor soiling his mind with scientific “theories,” as a 
high cast Brahmin would of polluting his lips with the flesh of cow-beef. But 
it is only an act of justice to admit that while this is generally the case among 
the Cornish miners, there ave yet some exceptions; there are some who really 
desire knowledge, although, from the circumstances that surround them there 
are only few who succeed in attaining it, and those few generally disconnect 
themselves socially from their class, which has become distasteful to them, and 
pass into another sphere. Of those who do seek earnestly after scientific know- 
ledge, and yet wholly fail in attaining it, the author of the pamphlet, whose 
title we have put at the head of this notice, is an excellent type. 

Captam Charles Thomas, of Doleoath mine, is deservedly one of the most 
trusted and respected mining agents in Cornwall—A man of solid sense and 
respectability, he is above the petty and mean vanity of many of his class 
which induces them to assumes a pseudo-scientific knowledge for the purpose 
of attaming notoriety. As he honestly says himself, “I aim rather at being 
understood by miners than bemg scientific.” Of aman like this, while we shall 
speak plamly of his erroneous notions, we need not say we entertain a hearty 
personal respect. 

Betore we go further, we shall say a few words on the subject of observation, 
and the impossibility of placing any reliance upon the alledged “facts” put 
forth by non-scientific persons. The following excellent observations in a recent 


REVIEWS. 459 


number of the “Saturday Review” are so much to the purpose, that we cannot 
better express our own opinion than by quoting them. 

“Liebig justly notices the excessive difficulty of really good observation. It 
is an art only acquired by long practice and culture. People speak of facts 
with a confidence which, to the philosopher, is quite amusing. He is as ready 
as they can be, even more so, to admit the validity of facts; but he is not so 
ready to admit that the observations they christen by that name are true facts. 
‘The man,’ says Liebig, ‘who only sees with his eyes an object before him has 
no claim to the title of an observer, which is reserved for him who takes notice 
of the different parts of the object, and sees the connection between the parts 
and the whole.’ There are ‘facts’ to support every absurdity. No speculation 
was ever so baseless as not to have some ‘facts’ on which to rest. But ‘many 
individuals overlook the half of an event through carelessness ; another adds to 
what he observes the creation of his own imagination ; whilst a third, who sees 
sufficiently distinctly the different parts of the whole, confounds together things 
which ought to be kept separate.’ ” 

Returning now to Captam Thomas’s pamphlet. On the whole we are ex- 
tremely disappointed with it; and that at the end of fifty years’ experience a 
naturally intelligent man has so little to communicate is the severest commen- 
tary on the whole system of which he is a representative. He of course tilts 
against the doctrine of the igneous origin of granite, elvan, and trap. Speaking 
of the former, to which he also refers as “ primitive,” “immoved,” he says: 
“The ideas suggested by its structure, as well as by the lofty hills and unbroken 
plaims formed out of it, are those of substantiality, firmness, immovability, just 
such as we might expect it to be coming fresh from the hands of its Creator ; 
exhibiting in the mass no signs of disturbance by the elements, no rending, or 
upheavals by earthquakes, &c.” And this, our readers must remember, of the 
Cornish granite, which is newer in age than the Carboniferous system, that is 
broken through by it. 

But leaving aside mere general geology, let us see what Captain Thomas has 
to say on the subject of metalliferous veins. One of his best points—indeed, 
the only one worthy of much notice—is the distinction which he very foreibly 
draws between the different structural characteristics of the Cornish granite, 
and their bearing on the productiveness of the lodes. He classes this rock as 
primitive and secondary, which he thus defines, with their effects on metalliferous 
production. We quote at some length, because the point is an important one, 
and cannot be too clearly understood. 

“Hitherto no profitable mine has been found for tin, lead, or copper in what 
I beg leave to distinguish by the term primitive granite. It is hard and com- 
pact, and may generally be cleaved in straight lines as we see it used for build- 
ing-purposes. It is found in most of our high hills with projecting tops. It 
is commonly found, too, in the central parts of granite districts: even where 
there are no projecting tops, at no great depth below the surface. 

“‘ At the sides and flat bases of such hills, as well as in the hollows between 
high hills and the margins of granite districts, another kind of granite is com- 
monly found, which I distinguish as secondary granite. Although varied in its 
structure and composition in different localities, the following are some charac- 
teristic features: fracture rough and irregular; very jointy; frequently 
containing hornblende and chlorite; is traversed by regularly formed elvan- 
courses, whilst portions of it, like ribs, project from the main body into the sur- 
rounding slate. Its localities are some of the outskirts of primitive granite 
districts ; the hollows between high hills; the dase of lofty peaks rising from 
the interior of such districts, and sometimes rising in such situations into small 
hills itself. . . . A narrow margin only of some granite districts is of this 
kind, although a thin layer of it sometimes overspreads pretty large portions 


460 THE GEOLOGIST. 


of primitive granite. . . . A considerable portion of our profitable mining- 
operations is carried on either in, or contiguous to, this secondary cans 
(never extending into what I denominate primitive). As the productive 
granite commonly occupies the Jase of lofty hills, and the margin of some ex- 
tensive granite districts, so the bold prominences and unbroken central portions 
may be safely assumed to be essentially of a primitive character.” 

“No fin mine, yielding a profit, has hitherto been found except in secondary 
eranite, or in very quartzose or micaceous clay-slate, connected or uneonnected 
with elvan. . . . Copper ores are much more extensively diffused, and good 
mines of this metal have been found in secondary granite, compact clay-slate of 
various colours when granular and contaiming a large portion of felspar, and in 
greenstone. Lodes in dark coloured Killas are most productive when above, 
passing through, or a little below elvan-courses. At much depth below 
the elvan they are seldom rich, unless another elvan-course, or granite be — 
situated below it still. 

*“ After many years’ experience, and careful observations, made in all the 
mining-districts of Cornwall and Devon, I have come to the conclusion that the 
two kinds of granite which I have designated as primitive and secondary, differ 
as much, in many respects, as granite and elvan; that primitive granite con- 
tains no metallic ores of value; that tm ores are found nearest to it; and cop- 
per ores of value never in it, nor very near to it.” 

Merely taking exception to the words primitive and secondary, we otherwise 
fully recognize the truth and importance of Captain Thomas’s classification, 
which is a highly important one, and most creditable to his powers of observa- 
tion. The “secondary” granite is that decomposed and altered portion con- 
stituting the “contact edges” and “upper surfaces” of the main, compact, or 
“primitive” mass, which latter according to Prof. Cotta’s hypothesis would be 
deprived of all metallic contents by its more slow cooling; while the former, or 
“secondary” portion, which may vary in width according to circumstances, is, 
with the sedimentary rocks im its neighbourhood, and their associated “ por- 
phyries,” or “elvans,” exactly where, according to the same hypothesis, we 
should expect to find the metals most abundant, and where, according to the 
testimony of Capt. Thomas, they are in fact found in the rich mines of Cornwall. 

As our limits are exhausted, we shall only refer to one pomt more. Captain 
Thomas strongly objects to the hypothesis that metals are probably derived from 
beneath. The reason he gives for this objection is that the deepest granite is 
the most unproductive of metalliferous ores. ‘The Cornish and Devon mines 
of all kinds,” he says, ‘are found in strata of different sorts, including patches 
of a certain kind of granite, lying upon the everlasting rock, the primitive, the 
unmoved granite—never in it.” Leaving out of the question the mistaken 
notion which Captam Thomas seems still to hold of all granite bemg “ primi- 
tive,” whereas the Cornish granite is comparatively recent, the objection 1s not 
an unnatural one. But it is completely met by Prof. Cotta’s hypothesis, as 
pointed out by Mr. Salmon im his article in our present number, to which we 
refer our readers. { 

We have spoken freely on the important subject of the complete want of 
scientific education among Cornish miners. It is a lamentable thing to see so 
much natural good sense, such great practical experience, and such unparal- 
leled opportunities of observation, lying comparatively barren and unproductive 
to the progress of science; or, still worse, being often absolutely a bar to its 
advance, by lending itself to contemptible charlatanism. 


THE GEOLOGIST. 


DECEMBER, 1859. 


THE CARBONIFEROUS SYSTEM IN SCOTLAND CHARAC- 
TERIZED BY ITS BRACHIOPODA. 


By Tuomas Davipson, Esq., F.R.S., F.G.S., Hon. Member of the 
Geological Society of Glasgow, etc., etc. 


Muc# has been written on the geology of Scotland, and perhaps no 
country has given birth to a larger proportion of eminent inquirers. 
The names of Hutton, Playfair, Murchison, and Lyell will ever be 
remembered among those of the great Scotchmen, who by their 
acquirements, genius, and perseverance, have so materially contri- 
buted to elevate the science of Geology to the rank it now holds 
among all men of learning. 

Much has, however, still to be achieved before the geological and 
paleontological details connected with our country will have been 
completely worked out, and many zealous inquirers must be sum- 
moned to the field; some will do much, others little ; but every accu- 
rate observation is so much gain, and will tend towards the complete 
elucidation of the subject, as well as help to form a basis upon which 
great minds may found with safety their general views and appre- 
ciations. I therefore hailed with much hope and delight the founda- 
tion of a Geological Society in Glasgow, which originated in May, 
1858, with about a dozen young men, who wished to gain knowledge 
of the geological phenomena in the neighbourhood of their great 
city, under the guidance of an experienced and practical geologist ; 
and thus, owing to the active co-operation and direction of Mr. J. P. 
Fraser, and that of some of its founders, the Society has already done 
some good work, and increased its numbers to about’ one hundred. 

Scotland was long believed to be poor in organic remains, and 
although many are the remarkable fossil organisms that have been 
made known from time to time,* it is only within the last twenty 


* Who is unacquainted with the wonderous fishes discovered and so admirably 
described by Agassiz, H. Miller, Egerton, and others, such as the Pterichthys, 
Coccosteus, Dipterus, Cephalaspis, Holoptychius, Megalichthys, Asterolepis, etc. ? 
Have not the Telerpeton Elgimense, the Stagonolepis, the Pterygotus bilobus, etc., 

VOL. IY. Te 


462 THE GEOLOGIST. 


years or so that much attention has been devoted to the subject, and 
the paleontological riches of some of its rocks have been duly appre- 
ciated. It is, therefore, chiefly at the suggestion of my much esteemed 
friend Mr. John Young, of the Hunterian Museum of Glasgow, that 
I here attempt the publication of a special illustrated catalogue, or 
monograph, of all the Scottish species of Brachiopoda that have been 
hitherto obtained from the: strata of the Carboniferous period ; and 
this I have undertaken in the hope that by so doing it may stimulate 
and facilitate further researches, as well as prove of some assistance 
to those friends in Scotland to whom I am personally indebted for the 
gift and loan of the valuable series of specimens which will be made 
use of in the present memoir.* 

Almost all the great geological systems are represented in Scot- 
land, although not generally so completely as a be seen in other 
countries. Many of our principal fossiliferous deposits are to be 
found in the Carboniferous system, and especially so as far as the 
Brachiopoda are concerned. It will, therefore, be a subject for pre- 
sent and future research to determine as nearly as possible the exact 
horizon or vertical distribution of the species, or, in other words, of 
their individual duration in time and space; but prior to entering 
upon this and other paleontological questions which will form the 
main purport of the present communication, it will be desirable to 
preface the subject by a few lines upon the strata themselves, that the 


been recent and startling discoveries? Does not the rich and varied collection 
of Scottish fossils, formed with so much skill and science by the lamented H. 
Miller, as well as that of Dr. Fleming, and many others, show how much palzon- 
tological wealth we already possess, and may still expect to discover. 

Unfortunately, but a small proportion of our species have been hitherto made 
known, and it is to be hoped and much desired that some day the palzontology 
of Scotland will be separately and specially treated—an object the late Professor 
Edward Forbes had always in view, and which, had he lived, was his firm resolu- 
tion to have accomplished. 

* For some years past, I have been accumulating material and observations on 
Scottish Brachiopoda, on account of the monographs which are being published 
by the Paleontographical Society of London; and, although my own field- 
researches in Scotland have been very limited in their extent, I may, perhaps, 
be permitted to mention that I devoted with but little intermission the larger 
portion of the years 1835 and 1836 towards assisting my late friend Robert J. 
Hay Cunningham, while preparing his prize-essay ‘‘On the Geology of the 
Lothians,’ which counties were traversed by us in almost every direction. I 
have also had the advantage of being able to visit some portions of the Lanark- 
shire and Fifeshire coal-fields. 

It is to me a very pleasing duty to acknowledge the important, truly kind, and 
zealous assistance I have received from many of my countryman, while collecting 
material in connection with this paper, and I therefore beg to tender my warmest 
thanks to Sir R. Murchison, Mr. John Young, Mr. J. Armstrong, Mr. Page, Mr. 
J. P. Fraser, Mr. J. Thomson, Mr. A. Bryson, Mr. Rose, Mr. A. Cowan, Mr. J. 
Bennie, Dr. Slimon, Professor Nicol, Mr. Smith, Mrs. Rogers, as well as to the 
memory of the late Dr. Fleming and H. Miller. 

I have also had access to a very extensive and valuable collection of specimens 
derived from the parish of Carluke, made many years ago by a local inquirer, to 
whom I am indebted for much kindness, as well as for the specimens I am able 
to figure, and the information I shall communicate on that important district. 


DAVIDSON—SCOTTISH CARBONIFEROUS BRACHIOPODA. 463 
general reader may better understand the position in the series occu- 
pied by the species to be hereafter described. 

It is well known to every one possessing a knowledge of the first 
rudiments of geology, that the Carboniferous system lies between 
the Devonian and Permian formations; but we cannot expect always 
and everywhere to find the sequence complete. Instances are not 
wanting wherein Carboniferous strata repose directly upon Silurian 
or older rocks, and are overlaid by Jurassic or still younger deposits ; 
but in such cases, which are likewise common to formations of all 
ages or periods, the natural order of succession does not exist, for the 
strata which should underlie or overlie in natural order are wanting 
from some cause or another. 

The rocks which compose the Carboniferous series are not every- 
where exactly similar; for in some districts a certain bed, or series 
of beds, may be largely developed, while they may be attenuated, or 
entirely absent, in another. The Carboniferous system is made up 
of a vast accumulation of conglomerates, sandstones, shales, iron- 
stones, limestones, and coal-seams, and certain portions of the system 
present a marine, others an estuary character, while a third is entirely 
composed of terrestrial vegetation; and, as stated by Mr. Page, in 
his excellent text-book, “ the frequent alternations of strata, and the 
great extent of our coal-fields, indicate the existence of vast estuaries 
and inland seas, of gigantic rivers and periodical inundations, while 
the mountain-limestone, with its marine remains, reminds us of low 
tropical islands fringed with coral-reefs, and lagoons thronged with 
shell-fish and fishes.” 

Before alluding to the divisions that have been proposed for the 
Carboniferous system, we must briefly notice that, although Sir R. 
Murchison and the generality of geologists have pronounced the Old 
Red sandstone of Scotland* to be the full equivalent in time of the 
Devonian rocks of other countries, some geologists, such as Professor 
de Koninck and Mr. Kelly, have suggested that these red sandstones, 
especially in the southern portion of Scotland, and in Ireland, should 
be considered as forming part of the Carboniferous series. Be this 
as it may, the celebrated author of the “ Silurian System” has him- 
self admitted that, “as we approach the summit or higher beds of 
the Devonian or Old Red sandstone, we are gradually introduced to 
the fauna of the Carboniferous era.” Therefore the passage between 
the upper beds of the Old Red sandstone and the lower one of the 
Carboniferous system has been gradual; while the same may be said 
relative to that which connects the upper beds of the Carboniferous 
with the lower ones of the Permian formations. Some geologists 
would, therefore, place the basement-line of the Carboniferous system 
lower down than others appear disposed to admit; and hence the 
difference in opinion that may be traced in the various sections or 


* The rock is not everywhere of a red colour, there being also enormous beds 
of yellow, whitish, purplish, and rusty-coloured sandstone, with coarse con. 
glomerates, and dark-grey micaceous flagstones. 


4.64. THE GEOLOGIST. 


groupings of the Carboniferous deposits that have from time to time 
made their appearance in different works. 

In the valley of the Leven and Strath Endrick the one formation 
passes gradually into the other without any seeming change in the 
angle of dip, so that it is scarcely possible to draw a line between 
the two systems; and it is well known that the late Professor 
Fleming has often expressed a similar opinion. 

It is not, however, the object of the present paper to discuss any 
geological questions, and far less the age or affinities of the Old Red 
sandstone ; but we will conclude the little we have thought neces- 
sary to mention by a short extract taken from the last edition of 
‘“‘Siluria,’’ wherein the author has stated that “the Old Red sand- 
stone in Lanarkshire is of comparatively small dimensions, from the 
great masses of rock which constitute the central and superior mem- 
bers of the group in the north-east of Scotland being there omitted, 
and that it has not afforded any characteristic organic remains; that 
it is only in certain reddish and yellowish sandstones and shales, as 
seen in Fifeshire, the Lothians, and particularly in Ayrshire, that the 
geologist can be said to enter among those strata which here and 
there are linked on the Carboniferous rocks above, as they unques- 
tionably are to the Old Red sandstone below, and which, according 
to the predominence of their fossil contents, may be grouped with 
either deposit, like the tilestones which connect the Upper Silurian 
with the true transition-beds which unite the Old Red with the Car- 
boniferous series.” 

No Brachiopoda have been found in these Old Red sandstone beds 
of Scotland.* 

For general and detailed information concerning the geology of 
the Carboniferous systems we must refer the reader to the well- 
known works of Sir R. Murchison, Professor Phillips, General Port- 
lock, Sir R. Griffith, Mr. Kelly, and of many other geologists ; it 
being sufficient for our present purpose to notice that, although the 
system has been somewhat differently subdivided in England, Scot- 


* Down the river Kildress, in Ireland, General Portlock and Mr. Kelly have 
shown that under the calciferous or calcareous slates there occurs extensive 
alternations of yellowish and reddish sandstones, then a bed of limestone, and 
still lower down another band of red sandstone, replete with the most common 
fossils of the carboniferous period, such as Athyris ambigua, Spiriferina octo- 
plicata, Rhynchonella plewrodon, Streptorhynchus crenistria, ete. Irish geologists 
have rightly considered these strata as constituting the lowest division of the Car- 
boniferous system, and they would be there in all probability some of the equi- 
valents of those strata which Sir R. Murchison has mentioned as occurring in 
Fifeshire and in Ayrshire, and which he considers to form the transition-beds 
between the Carboniferous and Old Red systems ; but with this difference, that 
in Ireland the red and yellow sandstones are full of fossils, while none appear to 
have been hitherto discovered in the corresponding Scottish strata, although the 
same species have been found higher up in the system. It is, therefore, ques- 
tionable whether Irish geologists are justified while applying to this lower red and 
yellow division of the Carboniferous series the appellation of ‘ Old Red sand- 
stone,” in making it a plea for annulling the Devonian system in toto. 


DAVIDSON—SCOTTISH CARBONIFEROUS BRACHIOPODA. 465 


land, and Ireland, geologists are of opinion that it is susceptible of 
being advantageously arranged into three well-marked groups, viz., 
the ‘ Lower Coal-measures,” the “‘ Mountain- or Carboniferous-lime- 
stone,” and the ‘ Upper or True Coal-measures.” 

In England a fourth division is sometimes introduced, viz., the 
** Millstone-grit,’ which is situated between the Mountain-limestone 
and the Coal-measures, but which, according to Professor Phillips, 
would form a kind of transition group, which may sometimes for 
convenience be joined to the lower, sometimes to the upper, and 
occasionally be treated alone. 

In Ireland the system has been differently divided; but Mr. Kelly 
is of opimion that it may be arranged into—lst, “ Lower Coal- 
measures” (comprising the Kildress red and yellow sandstones, and 
still higher calciferous slates) ; 2ndly, the “Carboniferous-limestone ;” 
and 3rdly, the “ Coal-measures.” But it is chiefly the first, or lower, 
division that predominates, and which has induced Professor Phillips 
to assimilate the Irish carboniferous series to the great English and 
Welsh groups. 

In England (according to the same distinguished authority) the 
Carboniferous system, when in its most complete development, 
would admit of the following groups, but which are not to be found 
together in every district : 


1. Upper Coal-measures en b Coal-measures. 


b Millstone-grit. 

¢ Yoredale Rocks. 
d Scar Limestone. 
oeuower Coal-measures  ...........5.---6 e Shales. 


- 


2. Mountain or Carboniferous-limestone ) 


Having thus briefly alluded to the divisions in England and in 
Ireland, we may at once mention that in Scotland the three groups 
are likewise represented. 

It has been calculated by Professor Nicol that the carboniferous 
strata cover nearly a seventeenth of the surface of Scotland ; but it 
is very difficult to form a correct estimate, on account of the numer- 
ous breaks from intrusive igneous rocks rendering mapping ver 
complex. It is, however, in the central portion of Scotland that the 
rocks which we are now describing occupy the greatest surface ; 
they form there a wide sub-parallel band of nearly one hundred miles 
in length, by some fifty in breadth, extending from the northern por- 
tion of the Frith of Forth to the Clyde, and as far as the extremity 
of Cantire. No portion of the system appears to have been dis- 
covered in the north; but im the south there exists a narrow band, 
or separate patches, which extend along the frontiers of Scotland and 

England, from Berwick to near Kircudbright, on the Solway Frith. 

- Scottish carboniferous deposits differ, however, from strata of a 
similar age, existing both in England and Ireland, in the manner in 
which the various beds of encrinal- and coralline-limestones are inter- 
calated with coal-beds and bituminous schists in the lower parts of the 
system. 


466 


THE GEOLOGIST. 


In no single locality do we find a section in which all the beds 
occur in regular and uninterrupted succession; the absence of some, 
or the thinning-out of others, constitute local differences which should 
always be expected and duly considered. Thus, in Lanarkshire 
generally, as well as in other parts of the Clydesdale coal-field, the 
strata composing the Carboniferous system have been divided into 
four principal groups; and I am indebted to a friend in Carluke for 
the section here given, and which we will describe in the descending 
order. 


I. The Upper CoAL-SERIES, mea- 


suring in some localities 


about one hundred and fifty- Horizon of the “ Ell Coal” 
nine fathoms. It consists of 
eleven seams of workable (In this column are enumera- 


coal and numerous smaller | ted the fossiliferous strata where- 
seams (among which we may | in Brachiopoda have been found 
name that which has been | in the parish of Carluke, and 
designated as the “ Ell coal,” which will be hereafter referred to 
and which is situated to- | when we treat of the species. 
wards the top of the group), | The position is given at so many 
of sandstones, for the most | fathoms below the horizon of the 
part white in colour, or white | “ Ell Coal,” but it would be quite 
with dark streaks, of fire | as easy to take the space from the 
clay and shales, a bed of | horizon of the “ Productus gigan- 
freshwater limestone, and a | teus limestone” upwards.) 

few important bands of iron- 

stone. 


II. The Upper LimEsToNE-sERIES, ( Slaty-ironstone, 160 fathoms. 


EEE 


about one hundred and ~ below Ell Coal. 
twenty-five fathoms in thick- 

ness, consisting of three | Thomson’s Balls 173 i 
limestone beds, but no work- 

able coal, although there are< Gare limestone 239 
several thin seams, several 

bands of ironstone, occasion- | Belston Burn lime- 265 = 
ally gritty—and in the lower stone. 

part sandstone of a yellow 

colour, fire clay, and shales. | Belston-limestone 283 3 
The Lower CoasL-MEASURES, 

about thirty-seven fathoms 

in thickness—consisting of 

four workable seams, the un- 

dermost being the “ cannel’’- 

or“‘gas-seam,’’so well known, Maggy ironstones 300 
and several other smaller 

seams; sandstones white and 

sometimes yellow ; fire-clay, 

shale, & afewironstonebands. | 


= 


DAVIDSON—SCOTTISH CARBONIFEROUS BRACHIOPODA. 467 


Lingula-ironstone 317 fathoms. 
Lingula-limestone 337 “ 
IV. The Lower Livestone-sERieEs, | lst Kingshaw lime- 338 
about one hundred fathoms stone 
in thickness, consists of nine | 2nd Kingshaw lime- 341 = 


or ten beds of limestone; coal- | stone. 
seams of poor quality ac- | 1st. Calmy lime- 343 33 
companying, or rather lying stone. 


under, the last three; yellow | Raes Gill ironstone 354 - 
and white sandstone, rather Hosie’s limestone 356 
sparingly developed; vast | 2nd Calmy lime- 371 5 
beds of shales becoming red stone 
towards the base of the series; | Main limestone 379 
fire-clay, red in colour in the | Shelly limestone 391 
lower beds; numerous bands | Great Productus 
of ironstone—resting on the (giganteus) lime- 397 
Oxtp Rep SANDSTONE. stone. 
Tronstone-bed, Pro- 400 i 


bi ductus punctatus 


In all but the upper coal-series have Brachiopoda been found ; 
they appear, however, more numerous in the second and fourth 
divisions. 

No regular section or detailed account of the coal-formation to 
the north of Glasgow appears to exist, yet it is evident from the 
position of the strata, and the similarity of the fossils found in 
the beds, that they also occupy the same stratigraphical position, 
as in the Carluke section, but with this important and notable 
difference, namely, that the lower marine limestones and shales con- 
taining fossils in the parish of Carluke come very close upon the Old 
Red sandstone, without any thickness of strata intervening; and 
this seems also to be the case all along the south-western border of 
the coal-field, while all along the north-western border the lower 
marine limestone and shales are separated from the Old Red sand- 
stone by an immense deposit made up of numerous alternations of 
thin-bedded limestones and marly shales, with one or two beds of 
red and grey micaceous sandstones, locally termed “ Ballagan-” and 
“ Levenside-limestones,”’ from the fine sections of strata exposed at 
those places.* These beds had formerly been regarded by some 
geologists as belonging to the uppermost member of the Old Red 
sandstone, while others referred them to the Lower Carboniferous ; 
and it was only recently, from Mr. Young having in three different 
localities found fossils of a true carboniferous type, that these doubt- 
ful beds, upwards of one thousand feet in thickness, could be referred 


* T am indebted to Mr. John Young for the information I possess relative to 
the strata to the north of Glasgow ; and to Messrs. Thomson and Armstrong for 
that relative to Ayrshire and the neighbourhood of Glasgow. I attach much im- 
portance to these districts on account of the great care with which the Brachio- 
poda have been collected, and of which we will furnish complete lists hereafter. 


468 THE GEOLOGIST. 


with some degree of certainty to the Carboniferous system, and of 
which they will be found to constitute some of the lowest members in 
Scotland. No Brachiopoda or other shells have, however, been 
hitherto discovered in these rocks; and Mr. Young is acquainted 
with no other place where an equivalent to these beds has been found 
but in the Merse of Berwickshire to the south-east of Scotland, where 
they present the same thin-bedded character, and hold the same re- 
lation to the Old Red sandstone and overlying coal-measures which 
they do to the north of Glasgow. Above these beds in the valley of 
Campsie, there occurs a series of thin-bedded strata, which appear to 
Mr. Young to be a continuation of the Ballagan series, over which 
a thick-bedded sandstone forms the floor of the valley, and contains 
numerous casts of plants, &c. In the immediate neighbourhood of 
Lennoxtown, a group of marie limestones and clay-ironstone, with 
intercalated beds of freshwater strata, containing cypride and re- 
mains of fishes, is seen cropping out at the base of the north and 
south hills ; they all underlie the main coal and limestone, and seem 
to be the equivalent of the lowest fossiliferous beds of the Carluke dis- 
trict. Above these beds, in the district under description, occurs the 
Campsie main coal and limestone, with their accompanying alum- 
shales and freshwater limestone; these beds being the equivalents of 
the Carluke main coal and limestone, and twenty-two fathoms above 
this are found a bed of marine limestone and shales with clay- 
ironstone bands, which may perhaps be considered on the same horizon 
with the “ Hosie’s” limestone in the Carluke-parish section. At four 
miles east of Campsie, on the north Hill, we come upon the very 
interesting section of Corrie Burn, which Mr. Young has worked out 
with so much attention, and which consists of thick-bedded calcareous 
shales, coralline and encrinal-limestones, yellow sandstone, and numer- 
ous bands of clay-ironstone, which form the higher members of the 
series, the organic remains being very abundant in the strata, and of 
mountain-limestone types; while the strata itself is the best exempli- 
fication we have of that group in this part of the country. It par- 
takes of the same dip as the beds in the valley of Campsie, viz., to 
the south-east, and may be regarded as belonging to the higher 
members of the lower marine series. In conclusion, we will append 
Mr. Young’s lists of the various strata from which Brachiopoda have 
been derived to the north of Glasgow and valley of Campsie, as 
far as possible, showing the descending order of the series : 


Top, 1. Robroyston beds, near Glasgow : limestone and shales. 
2. Bishopbriges beds, near Glasgow: limestone (impure) 
and shales. 
. Limestone (culmy), Moodies-burn; six miles south-east 
of Campsie. | | 
4. Corrie Burn beds: sandstone, limestone, ironstone, and 
shales ; four miles east of Campsie. 
5 Balquarhage beds: limestone (culmy), shales, with iron- 
stone ; two miles south of Campsie. 


ee) 


DAVIDSON—SCOTTISH CARBONIFEROUS BRACHIOPODA. 4.69 


6. Black limestone (impure) and shales ; South-hill, Campsie. 
7. Main limestone, shale, and ironstone ; Campsie. 


8. Balgrochan Burn beds: shelly limestone, and shales; 
North-hill, Campsie. 

9. Mill Burn beds: limestone, ironstone, and shales; 
Campsie. 

10. Balglass Burn beds: ironstone and shales; Campsie. 

11. Craigenglen beds: limestone (impure), ironstone; and 
shales; two miles south-west of Campsie 

12. Beds in the valley of Campsie, consisting of thin-bedded 
strata known only by boring. 

13. Ballagan beds: great thickness of thin-bedded nodular 
limestone, marly shale, and red and grey micaceous 
sandstone ; north and west of Campsie. 


14. Onp Rep Sanpsrong, of a brick-red colour, and of great 
thickness: has hitherto yielded no fossils. 


The marine limestone and shale extend from Corrieburn to the 
Craigenglen beds, and belong to the lower marine limestone forma- 
tion of Scotland. In the valley of Campsie the upper marine lime- 
stone is wanting. 

In Ayrshire, Arran, and Bute we find, with small local differences, 
much of the same order of succession, and most of the fossils that have 
been collected in Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, Dumbartonshire, and 
Stirlmgshire. Near Dunbar, m Haddingtonshire, we again find similar 
shales and limestones replete with fossils identical with those which 
abound in the parishes of Carluke, Kilbride, at Campsie, Lesmahago, 
&c. And any one would at once conclude that all represent the same 
geological epoch. 

In the Lothians, as well as in Fife, the Lower Coal-measures are 
stated by Mr. Page to have “none of the shaly character, but to 
consist of thick-bedded sandstones, dark bituminous slates, bands of 
ironstone, thin seams of coal, and peculiar strata either of shell-lime- 
stone, or of argillaceous limestone, thought, from the fossils, to be of 
fresh-water or estuary origin; ... . and that the lower group, as 
developed in Scotland, differs little in appearance from the upper 
group: hence the term ‘ Lower Coal-measures’ generally applied to 
it in that country.” In these counties the Brachiopoda are not so 
abundantly distributed as in the Clydesdale basin; still the species 
that have been collected at such places as Dryden, Courland, and 
Scola Burn, near Edinburgh, as well as in other more distant locali- 
ties, do not differ specifically from those found in the other counties 
above referred to. 

We will here conclude the very few stratigraphical observations 
we have thought necessary to introduce, and devote the remainder 
of our paper to the description of the species of Brachiopoda that 
have been hitherto discovered; and, although the series is nume- 

WOT) EE. UU 


4.70 THE GEOLOGIST. 


rically less complete than that of England and Ireland, it is pro- 
bable that the catalogue may be somewhat increased by further 
research. 

It is to the deservedly honoured name of the son of a working 
weaver in Glasgow that science is indebted for the first account of a 
not inconsiderable number of the natural riches of one of the most 
productive coal-fields in Scotland. David Ure, while unemployed at 
his loom, was continually observing and collecting all that appeared 
to him worthy of notice; and in 1793 he published a very remarka- 
ble octavo volume, entitled “The History of Rutherglen and Hast 
Kilbride,” and in which will be found the first descriptions and 
figures of about eleven of the most characteristic Carboniferous 
brachiopoda that occur in the neighbourhood of Glasgow. David 
Ure was acquainted with Fabius Columna’s “ De Purpura,” published 
in 1616, and adopted his term “anomia”’ for the greater number of 
those shells which we now include among the Brachiopoda. In 
1793, and for nearly half a century later, so little was known of 
the true character of the numerous shells that compose the class, 
that it would be unreasonable to expect that Ure, with all that supe- 
rior mind with which he was endowed, could do more than endea- 
vour to class his shells according to what might appear to him their 
external resemblances. He therefore arranged his specimens into 
three sections, viz.: 1. Anomice loves; 2. A. striate; 3. A. echinate. 
No specific denominations were however given ; but in order to con- 
vey to the reader a better idea of the author’s views, we may men- 
tion that in his “ Anomize leves” were placed those species that 
were afterwards termed Athyris ambigua (Ure, pl. xvi. fig 9), and 
Spirifera Uru (pl. xiv. fig 12). In his “ Anomie striate” we find 
Rhynchonella pleurodon (pl. xiv. fig 6), Spirifera bisuleata (pl. xv. fig 
1), and Orthis Michel (pl. xiv. figs 138, 14); while his “ Anomize 
echinatz”’ would comprise Productus longispinus (pl. xv. figs 3, 4), 
Prod. semireticulatus (pl. xvi. fig 12), and Prod. punctatus (pl. xv. 
fig 7). Under the genus “Pecten,” he further adds, Chonetes 
variolata (pl. xvi. figs 10, 11), Streptorhynchus crenistria (pl. xiv. fig 
19), and Sé. radials (pl. xvi. fig 13). Under “ Patella” he figures 
a Discna (pl. xv. fig 10). Such an arrangement of the Brachiopoda 
would now-a-days appear impossible, but in 1793 it was perfectly 
unavoidable, as well as excusable. Ure’s figures are very passable, 
and especially so for the time at which they were engraved. The 
author appears also to have appreciated the importance of internal 
characters ; but, from not being able to interpret the value or use of 
the impressions, &c., he did not always represent them correctly.* 

But few of our Scottish Brachiopoda have been figured or pro- 
perly described since the time of Ure, so that the present contri- 
bution will, I hope, really fill up a deficiency. In his “ History of 
British Animals,” published in 1828, Dr. Fleming does not make 


David Ure was for some time engaged on Sir John Sinclair’s Statistical Ac- 
count of Scotland, and was ultimately a minister of the church of Scotland. 


DAVIDSON—SCOTTISH CARBONIFEROUS BRACHIOPODA. A471 


much allusion to Scottish species, but he now and then refers to a 
few of Ure’s figures, and in particular to pl. xiv. fig 12, to which he 
applies the denomination of Spirifer Urii. 

In the “ Mineral Conchology ” six or seven species or varieties of 
Scottish Producti were figured and described by James Sowerby and 
his son, from specimens communicated by the late Dr. Fleming ; thus, 
Productus longispinus, P. Flemingii, P. spinulosa, P. Scoticus, and P. 
spinosus, were published in 1814; P. lobatus (from Arran) in 1821; 
P. costata (from near Glasgow) in 1827; and Leptena distorta 1840. 

Ina few books and papers we find lists of some Scottish brachiopoda; 
but these I have found from experience not always to be depended 
upon. We may, however, notice that, in his “Geology of Clydes- 
dale and Arran,’ Dr. Bryce mentions seventeen species found by 
Professor Ramsay in Arran, and seven in Bute by Mr. Fraser. 

Some of the same species have been alluded to by Professors 
M‘Coy and Morris; but, with the exception of those figured by Ure, 
Sowerby, and myself (“Monograph of British Carboniferous Brachio- 
poda”), I am not acquainted with any other illustrations of our 
Scottish carboniferous brachiopoda. 

The only other general observation to which we will at present 
refer, is, that Professor de Koninck believes that he has succeeded in 
tracing in the Carboniferous formations of England and Scotland, 
two great different faunas ; the one corresponding to the carbonifer- 
ous fauna of Visé and-Bleidberg, the other to the fauna of the 
Tournay coal-basin (in Belgium). These two faunas, although con- 
temporaneous, are said to be nowhere found co-existent. After 
many endeavours to solve the enigma by means of direct strati- 
graphical observations at Visé and at Tournay, the distinguished 
Belgian paleontologist does not appear to have been able to arrive 
at any further solution than that the generality of species were dif- 
ferent in both localities. I confess myself unable to discuss the 
matter in question, and must wait for the promised development of 
the author’s views; and I content myself by observing, that the 
species found in the Scottish carboniferous deposits are attributed 
by Professor de Koninck to his fauna of Visé. 


SCOTTISH CARBONIFEROUS BRACHIOPODA. 


Famity TEREBRATULIDS. 
Genus Terebralula Lihwyd, 1699.* 


As we have already had occasion to observe, in our monograph published by 
the Palzontographical Society, the species belonging to this genus were not 
specifically numerous during the Carboniferous period, and, as far as our obser- 
vations will conduct us, were characterized by the presence of short simple 
loops, as may be seen in lignograph fig 1. 


* I must refer the reader to the English, French, and German editions of my “General 
Introduction” for full particulars relative to the families and genera of Brachiopoda, 


4.72 THE GEOLOGIST. 


aNd) 

Ui, yy Pil AS 

Y KGal> 

fol) 
Peni 


\ 


Lign 1.—TEREBRATULA ELONGATA (Permian). Lign. 2.—TEREBRATULA VITREA (recent). 
Interior of dorsal valve, with part of the Interior of dorsal valve. 


ventral one. d, Cardinal process. 
H, Rostral or dental plates of ventral valve. 6, Hinge-plate. 
S, Sockets of dorsal valve. s, Dental sockets. 
c, b, Hinge-plates. L, Loop. 
L, Loop. A, Quadruple impression of the adductor, or 
A, Quadruple impression of the adductor anterior and posterior occlusor muscle. 
muscle. 


The family TEREBRATULIDH comprises many genera and sub-genera; but 
these do not all appear to possess an equal value or importance, and time alone 
will decide how far we are justified in certain of the divisions that have been 
proposed. Professors M‘Coy and King are of opinion that Paleozoic Tere- 
bratule such as 7. hastata, T. sacculus, and T. vesicularis, should be separated 
from Terebratula proper (such as 7. vitrea, T. carnea, and T. biplicata) on 
account of certain peculiarities, or differences, and have respectively proposed 
Seminula and Epithyris, Phillips, as generic denominations for their reception. 

The differences between Zerebratula proper and the paleozoic species above- 
mentioned are chiefly confined to the presence of prominent dental or rostral 
plates im the one, and their almost total absence in the other, as well as in certain 
details connected with the hinge-plate. On the other hand, the exterior charac- 
ters are similar; and in the interior, the loop offers the same dispositions—is 
short and simply attached, the longitudinal branches being united by a trans- 
versal band more or less bent up im the middle, as is seen in Lign.2. The 
muscular impressions are also similar, as well as the intimate shell-structure. 
Therefore, while provisionally locating the Carboniferous species under Tere- 
bratula, it will be necessary to bear in mind those small differences observable 
in the rostral cavity of the beak and hinge-plate which appear to distinguish 
the Palzozoic from the Mesozoic species. 


I.—TEREBRATULA HAsTaTA. Sowerby. Pl. xii. figs. 1, 2. 


Terebratula hastata, J. de C. Sowerby, Min. Con. Tab. 446, fig. 1-3, 1824, and 
Dav. Mon. Carb., p. 11, pl. i., figs. 1-12. 


The shell is usually elongated, oval, or obscurely pentagonal, rounded or 
truncated in front, and tapering at the back. The valves are convex, and 


DAVIDSON—SCOTTISH CARBONIFEROUS BRACHIOPODA. 473 


almost equally deep, with a wide mesial depression towards the front in the 
larger number of individuals. The beak is moderately produced, and but 
slightly incurved; the foramen is rather large, oval, and in adult shells approxi- 
mates to the umbone of the smaller valve. The external surface is smooth, 
marked only by a few concentric lines of growth, and the intimate shell-struc- 
ture is minutely perforated by small punctures, which may be easily detected 
on all specimens of which the shell has not been affected by metamorphic action. 
In the interior of the ventral yalve there exists two short diverging dental or 
rostral shelly plates, while m the interior of the dorsal one a short simple 
loop is observed, occupying about one-third of the length of the valve, as in 
Lign. fig. 3. 

Terebratula hastata was ornamented with stripes, 
in all probability of a red colour, similar to that 
still found on several of the recent forms; but it 
is rare to find colour-markings preserved on the 
surface of palzozoic shells; some examples in 
England and in Ireland have been found to be thus 
ornamented, and one was recently discovered in 
Scotland by Mr. J. Young. 

Scottish examples of this shell do not appear to 
have been so numerous as, or to have attained the 
dimensions of some of, those that have been found 
im England and Ireland. The largest individual 
that I have hitherto seen is from the last-named 
country, and is m the possession of Dr. Bower- 
bank ; it measures 263 lies im length by 19 in 
Lign, 3.—rerEseatcza Hastata. breadth and 13 in width. 

eee ae lace valve: T. hastata occurs ‘at about 375 fathoms below the 
Ell-coal at Nellfield and Braidwood, and at 391 
fathoms at Braidwoed Gill, in the parish of Carluke; it is found also at Capel 
Rig, East Kilbride, eight miles S.S.E. from Glasgow; also at Calderside and 
Auchentibber, High Blantyre, and Brockley, near Lesmahago, in Lanarkshire. 
Tn Renfrewshire it occurs at Arden quarry, near Thornlie Bank, four miles south 
from Glasgow. In Stirlingshire it may be collected from the Craigenglen beds, 
the main limestone, and Corrie Burn beds. Im Ayrshire, at Craigie, near 
Kilmarnock, at Auchenskeigh, near Dalry, and West Broadstone, near Beith. 
In Fifeshire, at Limekilns.* 


IL.—TEREBRATULA SaccuLus. Martin, sp. Pl. xii, figs. 3, 4. 
. Conchyliolithus anomites sacculus, Martin. Petreficata Derbiensia, tab. xlvi., 
figs. 1-2, 1809; and Day. Mon. Carb., p. 14, pl. i, figs. 23, 24, 27, 29, 30. 
Shell ovate, or somewhat pentagonal in shape; notched and emarginated in 
front, smooth; valves nearly equally convex, with a slight depression near the 
front im the dorsal valve, and a rather deep mesial furrow in the ventral one. 
T. sacculus does not appear to attam the dimensions of 7. hastafa; and is, 
comparatively speaking, much more convex. Martin states that “the form of 
the shell is purse-like, its margin blunt, hollowed out opposite the beak by an 
obtuse indentation, which is sometimes continued along the back of the 
beaked valve in the shape of a slight hollow furrow or wave.” That last- 


* Tn order to avoid unnecessary repetitions, I may here mention that most of the specimens 
from Lanarkshire were kindly communicated by Mr. Armsirong, Mr. Bennie, Dr. Slimon, 
and a friend in Carluke. Those from Surlingshire by Mr. Young. The Renfrewshire, Dum- 
barionshire, and Ayrshire specimens were lent by Messrs. J. Thompson and J. Armsirong, 
while those from the Lothians and Fifeshire were communicated to me some years ago by 
Dr, Fleming, H. Miller, eic. 


4,74, THE GEOLOGIST. 


named character is that which generally distinguishes it best from 7’. hastata 
and 7. vesicularis; but, although this peculiar sinus is well and deeply 
marked in many individuals, it is at times but obscurely seen in others ; and 
this circumstance has no doubt tempted some paleontologists to unite both 
Sowerby’s and Martin’s shells under a single denomination. 

I am acquainted with but few Scottish specimens. It was found by Dr. 
Fleming somewhere in West-Lothian; and Mr. Armstrong collected a few 
examples at West Broadstone, near Beith, in Ayrshire. 


TIJ.—TEREBRATULA VESICULARIS. De Koninck. PI. xin, fig. 5. 


Terebratula vesicularis, De Konimeck, Animaux Fossils de la Belgique (Suppl.), 
p. 666, pl. lvi., fig. 10, 1851. Dav. Mon. Carb., p. 15; pl. i, figs. 25, 
26, 28, 31, 32; pl. 11, figs. 1-8. 


This small shell usually presents an ovate or pentagonal shape, is longer 
than wide, with its greatest breadth near the middle. In some adult examples, 
and in all young individuals, the valves are evenly and moderately convex, but 
after a certain age a sinus with two lateral ridges is developed in the dorsal 
valve; and at a still later period a small central elevation or rib is produced 
towards the front, forming a somewhat W-shaped frontal wave, of which the 
angles would be rounded. The ventral, or larger valve, is deeper and more 
inflated than the opposite one ; the beak rounded and incurved ; foramen small, 
and partly surrounded and separated from the hinge-line by a small deltidium ; 
surface smooth. The internal dispositions are quite similar to those of 
T. hastata and T. sacculus. T. vesicularis is a small shell, and may be distin- 
guished from the last-named species by the small mesial rib in the dorsal valve. 

Tam acquainted with but one or two examples which were found some- 


where in West-Lothian by the late Dr. Fleming. 

[NOTA.—The three species of Terebratula above described are all with which I am 
acquaintea from the Carboniferous rocks of Scotland. At page 17 of my ‘‘ Monograph,’’ 
published by the Palzontographical Society, I mentioned that Dr. Fleming possessed a Tere- 
bratula from West-Lothian, which I thought might be referred to Terebratula Gillingensis ; 
but, after further examination, it has appeared to me that the specimen in question may be 
only a young shell of 7. hastata. ] 


Faminy SPIRIFERIDA.* 

Of the several genera and sub-genera of which this family is composed, 
Athyris, Retzia, Spirifera, and Spiriferina alone have hitherto been found re- 
presented in the Scottish carboniferous strata. All are provided with spiral 
appendages for the support of the oral arms. 

Genus Atuyris, M’Coy, 1844. (Spirigera, d’Orbigny.) 

The species belonging to this genus bear so much external resemblance to 
many species of Terebratula, that they were for long referred to that genus ; 
but they are clearly distinguished by their non-perforated, or fibrous shell-struc- 
ture, as well as by their internal arrangements. 

The Carboniferous rocks of Scotland have hitherto furnished us with but 
three species, viz., 4. ambigua, A. plano-sulcata, and A. Royssit. 


TV.—Artuyris ampieva. Sowerby sp. PI. xii, figs. 6-9.- 


Spirifera ambigua, Sow. Min. Con., vol. iv., p. 105, tab. ecclxxvi., 1822; 
auions anhigee, Dav. Mon. Carb., p. 77, pl. xv., figs. 16-22, and pl. xvii., 
igs. 11-14. 


In external shape it is more or less obscurely pentagonal, and generally 
rather wider than long. The valves are moderately convex; the dorsal one 


* Av page 457 and following of the first volume of “THE Gronogist”’ the reader will find 


copious details and illustrations in connection with the genera and sub-genera of which this 
family is composed. 


DAVIDSON—SCOTTISH CARBONIFEROUS BRACHIOPODA. A75 


being more often divided into three or four lobes from the central fold, present- 
ing a narrow mesial groove, while a longitudimal and somewhat angular sinus 
extends from the extremity of the beak to the frontal margin in the dorsal one. 
The beak is not much produced or incurved, and is truncated by a small cir- 
cular foramen, which lies contiguous to the umbone of the smaller valve. 
Externally the shell is smooth, bemg marked only by a few lmes of growth. 
In the interior the spiral appendages are directed outwards, as may be seen in 
the figure, lign. 3. page 99, of this volume. 

In the larger, or ventral valve, the hinge-teeth are supported by vertical 
shelly plates, and the free space at the bottom of the valve between and beyond 
these is filled up with muscular impressions. The muscle, whose function was 
the closing of the shell, has formed a small elongated, mesial, heart-shaped 
scar; and under, as well as along the outer side, are seen the impressions of 
the cardinal or divaricator muscles—that is to say, of those which had the 
office of opening the shell, the impressions of the pedicle, or ventral adjustor 
muscle may also be detected, on either side, close to the adductor. In the in- 
terior of the smaller or dorsal valve the hinge-plate presents four depressions, 
which afforded attachment to the dorsal pedicle, or dorsal adjustor muscles ; 
the hinge-plate is likewise perforated close to its summit (under the umbone) 
by a minute cireular aperture. On the bottom of the valve, divided by a small 
longitudimal ridge, may be seen the quadruple impressions left by the adduc- 
tor, or posterior and anterior occlusor muscles. ‘These details are beautifully 
displayed in some valves from Capel Rig, East Kilbride, which were kindly 
communicated by Mr. Armstrong, and whieh will be found represented in 
pl. xin, figs. 8-9. 

Some specimens of this shell from Lanarkshire (wherein the mesial groove 
of the dorsal valve was not so apparent or distinctly marked as in the ordinary 
and typical shapes of the species) have been referred by Professor M‘Coy to 
Philips’ A. globularis, but of which species I have not hitherto seen any well- 
authenticated Scottish examples. Some specimens have likewise presented 
externally a deceptive appearance of striation, but which is not the character 
of the well-preserved shell. 


Athyris ambigua is one of the commonest of the Scottish carboniferous 
species. In the parish of Carluke it is plentiful in the upper limestone series, 
but also hundreds of fathoms lower in the series—that is, in the shelly lime- 
stone band, afew feet above the “Productus giganteus bed.”* Thus at Gare it 
may be collected at two hundred and thirty-nine fathoms, at Braidwood Gill at 
three hundred and ninety-three fathoms, and at Langshaw at three hundred and 
forty-three fathoms below the horizon of the “Hl coal.” In Lanarkshire (besides 
the localities just mentioned) it is found at Lawrieston and Capel Rig, Hast 
Kilbride ; at Calderside and Auchentibber, High Blantyre; at Brockley, near 
Lesmahago; and Robroyston to the north of Glasgow. In Stirlingshire it is 
found at Campsie, im the Craigenglen, Balglass, Mill Burn, Balgrochen, Main 
limestone, and Corrie Burn beds. In Renfrewshire it. is plentiful at Floor’s 
quarry Johnstone Bridge, Barrhead, Arden quarry, and Orchard, near Thorn- 
hebank. In Ayrshire it occurs at Roughwood and West Broadstone, Beith ; 
at Auchenskeigh, Dalry; Golderaig, Kilwinning, Hallerhirst, Stevenston ; and 
Craigie, near Kilmarnock, &c., &c. It is also found in the Island of Arran. 
In Haddingtonshire it is to be collected at Cat Craig, near Dunbar; and in 
many other places which need not be enumerated. 


* In Ireland it is most abundant, under the shape of casts in the red sandstone of 
Kildress which is still lower down in the series than is the great ‘‘ Productus bed” above 
referred to. 


A76 THE GEOLOGIST. 


V.—ATHYRIS PLANO-SuLCATA. Phillipssp. Pl. xu, figs. 10, 11. 


Spirifera plano-sulcata, Phillips, Geology of Yorkshire, vol. 1, p. 220, pl. x., 
fig. 15, 1836; and Dav. Mon. Carb., p. 80, pl. xvi., figs. 2-13,15. 


The shape of this shell is more often orbicular, the valves being equally deep 
and evenly convex, without sinus or fold, or with a slight mesial depression 
towards the front in one or both valves. The beak is small and incurved, with 
a minute foramen placed close to the umbone of the opposite valve. When 
perfect, the surfaces of both valves are ornamented at intervals of less than a 
line, with numerous concentric semi-circular lamelliform expansions, each plate 
being flat and longitudinally striated. It is, however, rare to obtain specimens 
in which the plates are in place, as they generally remain in the matrix from 
whence the shell is detached. ‘The interior arrangements are similar to those 
of A. ambigua. 

A. plano-sulcata does not appear to be a very common shell in Scotland ; it 
occurs at three hundred and forty-three fathoms below the “HII coal,” and near 
Lesmahago, in Lanarkshire. In Stirlingshire it occurs at Craigenglen. In Ren- 
frewshire, at Arden quarry, Thornliebank, Barrhead, etc.; in Ayrshire, at 
Roughwood and West Broadstone, near Beith. It has also been found in West, 


Lothian. 
Vi.—Artuyris Royssu. L’EHveillé. Pl. xu, fig. 12. 


Spirifer de Royssti, L’ Eveillé, Mémoirs de la Société Geologique de France, vol. 
i, p. 39, pl. iL, figs. 18-20, 1885; and Athyris Royssii, Dav. Mon. Carb., 
p. 84, pl. xviii., figs. 1-11. 


This species is generally transversely oval and sub-globose, with equally deep 
and uniformly convex valves up to a certain age; after which a mesial fold of 
sreater or lesser elevation is gradually formed in the dorsal valve, and to which 
corresponds a sinus in the opposite one. The frontal margm is, therefore, 
either nearly straight, or presenting a greater or lesser curve. The beak is 
incurved and truncated by a small circular foramen, which is contiguous to the 
umbone of the dorsal valve. Externally the entire surface is regularly covered 
with numerous concentric scaly ridges, from each of which radiate closely set 
fringes of elongated somewhat flattened spines; and, indeed, so closely packed 
are the spimy ridges, that in the perfect shell no portion of the valve could be 
perceived. Specimens are not, however, to be obtained with their spiny invest- 
ment from the hard limestone matrix, but from the decomposing shales exam- 
ples may sometimes be picked up im which portions of the spines are still pre- 
served. The interior arrangements are similar to those of the two species 
already described. 

Athyris Royssii occurs m the shales of Coalburn and Brockley, near Lesma- 
hago, and at West Broadstone, near Beith. 


© 
SuB-GENUS Retzta. King. 1850. 


The species which compose this sub-genus are Terebratula-shaped, with a 
perforated, or punctured shell-structure, and by this character they appear to be 
chiefly distinguished from Athyris. Interiorly they possess spiral processes for 
the support of the oral arms, with their extremities directed outwards; but I 
have never yet succeeded in procurmg a specimen wherein the details could be 
satisfactorily developed. I am acquainted with but a single species from the 
Scottish carboniferous strata. 


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 4,77 


Vil.—Rertzi1a rapratis. Phillips, sp. Pl. xii, fig. 13. 


Terebratula radialis, Phillips, Geology of Yorkshire, vol. ii., p. 228, pl. xi, 
figs. 40, 41; Retzia radialis, Dav. Mon. Carb., p. 87, pl. xvi, figs. 19, 21. 
A single crushed example of this small species from Scotland has come under 

my examination; it was derived from the Carboniferous shales of the neigh- 
bourhood of Lesmahago by Dr. Slimon. When perfect it possessed a longi- 
tudinal oval shape, with valves almost equally and moderately convex. The 
beak is ailnecd and truncated by a small circular foramen, which is slightly 
separated from the hinge line bya small hinge area. Lach valve is ornamented 
with about twenty small rounded, radiating ribs, of which the central one in 
the dorsal valve is at times the largest, and to which, in the ventral one, cor- 
responds a deepened sulcus. 


(To be continued.) 


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 


By Count MArscHatt, OF VIENNA. 


On Fossil Vertebrata. By Prormssor HE. Surss. Lead before the 
Imperial Geological Institute of Vienna, Feb. 8, 1859. 


M. Gastaldi has recently published an essay on the fossil Verte- 
brata of Piedmont, especially on the Mammals found in the coal of 
Cadibona, which he and Prof. Michelotti consider to be of Lower 
Miocene age ; while Prof. Sismonda and Dr. Rolle think the shells 
occurring in it to be rather of Hocene character. The upper portions 
with Tetralophodon Arvernensis, Hippopotamus major, &c., are called 
Pleistocene by M. Gastaldi, while Dr. Falconer has evidently proved 
them to be genuine Phocenes like the deposits of the Arne-valley, 
the Auvergne (partly), and the mammaliferous Crag of England. 
As it is still to be proved (according to Prof. Heer’s deductions) that 
physical changes must necessarily have affected in the same degree 
the inhabitants of the dry land as they did those of the sea, much 
confusion would be avoided by using local denominations (Arno-, 
Hppelsheim-, Cadibona-fauna, &c.,) instead of hypothetical geo- 
logical terms (as miocene, pliocene, &c.). M. Gastaldi’s excellent 
descriptions and figures have materially contributed to give clearer 
notions of Anthracothervum magnum, Anthr. mimum, Amplitragulus 
communis, Rhinoceros mimutus, Rh. incisivus ; the last species is still 
doubtful. 

The Swiss lower Molasse, the coal of Kovencedo, near Vicenza, 
and probably some other more eastern deposits may be coeval with 
those of Cadibona. The remains of Rhinoceros from the brown-coal 
of Hart, near Glogenitz, belong to a smaller species not occurring 

VOL. Il. xX 


478 THE GEOLOGIST. 


elsewhere within the Vienna-basin, and possibly identical with that 
of Nuceto, referred to by M. Gastaldi to Rhin. minutus, Cuv. Chev. 
Fr. de Hauer has remarked, respecting the stratigraphical circeum- 
stances, that the coal of Breemberg (W. Hungary) may be of more 
ancient date than the lowermost marine deposits of the Vienna basin. 


Prof. E. Suess on some Fossil Bovide. Proceed. Imp. Geol. Institute 
of Vienna, March 29, 1859. 


The Imperial Geological Institute of Vienna has purchased a col- 
lection of mammalian remains obtained from the Galician Loess, 
an ancient loam deposited in the valleys of the rivers Wistock and 
Dunajec. This region, long ago renowned for its abundance of 
fossil remains, is no less conspicuous for the uniformity of its ancient 
fauna, represented only by three herbivorous species—Bospriscus, Bos 
primigenius, and Hlephas primigenius (the last by far the most preva- 
lent). The skulls of the two species of Bos offer very striking 
differences in their structure and proportions. In Bos priscus the 
frontal bone is vaulted, and has no superior edge prominent over the 
surface of the occipital bone; the basis of the horns 1s somewhat 
beneath the upper frontal edge; the horns are proportionally short, 
strong, directed horizontally outwards, with ends shghtly curved up- 
wards; the orbits are nearly beneath the bases of the horn-roots. 
Bos primigenius has a narrow concave forehead, forming upwards a 
strong edge prominent over the surface of the occipital; the horns 
are inserted exactly on the upper margin of the frontal, and are 
longer and more curved than those of B. priscus; they are directed 
horizontally outwards, then inclined inwards with ends slightly 
curved downwards. The orbits are far beneath the roots of the 
horns, with a deep depression in the middle of the forehead between 
them. 


On Listriodon. Prof. E. Suess. Proceed. Imp. Geol. Institute of 
Vienna, March 29, 1859. 


A molar of Listriodon splendens, H. v. Meyer, (Tapirotherium of 
some French paleontologists) has been recently found in the Leitha 
limestone of Fiinflirchen, Central Hungary. The same species is 
known to occur in the Leitha Mountains, between Austria and 
Hungary ; and in France, Départment du Gers and Départment de 
la Drome ; a proof that the fauna of the epoch, as the subsequent one 
of Eppelsheim, far from being a merely local one, extended over a 
large portion of Hurope. 


Prof. Unger on the Plants of Egypt. Proceed. Imp. Academy, 
Vienna, July 14, 1859. 


Among the plants, the remains of which are to be found in 
sepulchres, or figured on the monuments, etc. of Egypt, some fifty 


GEOLOGICAL TOPICS. 479 


species admit botanical determination. Nearly the whole of these 
species were objects of culture, and consequently introduced from 
other countries simultaneously with, or soon after, the immigration 
of the tribes who peopled ancient Egypt. Many of them, as the 
date-palm, the flax, the cerealia, etc., may be proved to have been 
cultivated as early as under the reign of Menes (B.C., 3623). Prof. 
Unger has found no traces of any change from one species into 
another having taken place during a period of nearly fifty centuries, 
from Menes to our times. 


Ossiferous Cavern. Proceed. Imp. Academy, Vienna, July 14, 1859. 


Prof. O. Schmidt, of Gratz, has found in the Grebeuzer Alp, Upper 
Styria, a fissure, or cavern, containing remarkably well preserved re- 
mains of the Elk, together with those of another extinct species of 
the genus Cervus. 


GEOLOGICAL TOPICS. 


THE FIRST TRACES OF MAN ON THE EARTH. 
(Continued from page 434.) 


The second volume of M. de Perthes’ book, that which we have to deal with 
especially in this notice, is illustrated by twenty-six plates contaimmg 
nearly five hundred figures. In the interim, too, between the publication of 
the first and second volumes, that author added greatly to his collection of 
primitive (antediluvian) and Celtic instruments (those of historic periods). 
This collection is now unrivalled, and has been accumulated by travels and pur- 
chases from all parts of the world. To make sure of the origm of these 
objects, M. Boucher de Perthes has himself been to search for them, not only 
in the North, n Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, 
but also in the South, where these stone-implements are much rarer, in Spain, 
Htaly, Sicily, Greece, Turkey, along the shores of the Black Sea, and lastly, he 
has carried his researches even into Asia and the French African possessions. 
His object in these travels was not only to collect specimens, but also to con- 
sult foreign savans ; and he acknowledges m glowmg terms the courtesy he 
everywhere met with, and the flattermg and ready aid given to his researches. 
His book, so controverted in France, he found had met with better reception 
abroad, and morever that it had also been better comprehended as detailing the 
proofs that “‘a race before unknown, a human family of which the origin was 
lost in the might of Time—a race contemporaneous with the great pachyderms 
of which we find the remains, had lived upon the soil we tread, and, many ages 
old, had been witness to terrible revolutions, and at length to that last catas- 
trophe which had changed the surface of the globe, and modified, with its 
climates, the form of nearly every living species.” The former long existence 
in Hurope of this people, which M. Boucher de Perthes considers to have 
ended with the Deluge, is supported by demonstrative procfs. 


480 THE GEOLOGIST. 


It is thus that author opens out a new branch of science—“ Archeo-geology” 
for the investigations of the historian, the antiquary, and the geologist. 

“Since,” continues the writer of the preface before quoted, “the way is 
open, let us follow the author; the first who do so will find ample reward. 
Soon it will not be a single gallery that will suffice to conta the relies of the 
past : it is an entire museum under the porticos of which should figure also 
the tools, the dolmans, the raised stones, antique evidences, if not of the 
aptitude, at least of the power, of man; for the erection of these monoliths 
without the aid of machines is still a problem. But, hasten we on: that 
which age and barbarism have spared disappears before civilization. Broken by 
the hammer or cut by the saw, these oldest of our monuments have already, at 
more than one point, served to pave the road, or to form the abutment of a 
bridge. If governmental protection does not take them under its safe-guard 
they will all perish, . . . No! these- stones great and small, arms, 
utensils, idols, symbols, or characters, are not to be disdamed: a whole suite 
of revelations is there. Not solely those which prove the existence of a people, 
but those which shew its whole life, for they indicate not simply thew domestic 
habits, their means of living or of satisfymg the necessities of the moment, 
ae ae they prove that there was in them a sentiment of futurity, a belief, 
a faith, a religious want, an adoration, lastly that they had a perception of the 
divinity. Yes! upon the first men who united their efforts to dress this stone, 
who worked off the angles to make the form regular . . . a ray of 
light from on high had descended; they had drawn near to heaven; it was a 
first homage which they rendered to God. Let us render it lke them, and 
break not His altar.” 

There is certainly something very beautiful in these speculations; and no- 
thing will lnk our minds so closely to the study of the changing phases of the 
earth’s antique history as thus associatmg the primitive tribes of our race 
with the events of a vastly remote geologic age. M. Boucher de Perthes’ 
book is however highly speculative throughout ; and we would have our readers 
bear in mind that we are at present only attemptimg to detail, as concisely and 
as accurately as we can, the ideas he has put before the world. Undoubtedly 
these speculations were in the first instance, and still are, a great barrier to 
the acceptance of his book; for in many instance we ourselves cannot but re- 
gard them as visionary. In saying this, however, we wish not to detract from 
the real merits of his labours, for we willingly admit that in some of the wildest 
of his notions, there les latent a germ of truth, valuable alike to the antiquary 
and to the geologist. 

It is somehow a character of the French light style of writing that they tell 
you a great deal about themselves, at the same time that they are telling their 
story and describmg what they have seen. The reward of the geologist, as 
M. Boucher de Perthes in his first chapter aptly remarks, is immediate and 
positive. He sees at once in the simple section the superposition of the beds, 
their identical or their different character. The same withthe archeologist. It 
is not difficult in the soil which he opens to perceive the fibula, the statue, or 
the com; the broken fragments of a vase, a brick, or tile inspire him with con- 
fidence, and the hope of finding better, and hope doubles the zeal of even 
the mere workman who always believes in finding a hoard of gold. “It is not 
thus in the diluvium. There everything is sand, flints, blocks of stone, and 
far and far between, some gigantic tooth, some enormous fragment of the head 
or femur of an elephant, or a rhinoceros, which, after having evoked the 
curiosity of the worker leaves him but regret: scarcely is the debris of the 
giant of former ages divested of its matrix and exposed to the air than one sees 
it crumble away and resolve itself into dust. What remains then for the 
inquirer! A souvenir, an indication: still it is not this for which he searches. 


GEOLOGICAL TOPICS. AST 


Alone in front of these masses of sand piled in horizontal beds, curved into a 
vault which the pick has hollowed out, he hesitates at the task he has imposed 
upon himself, to examine, at the risk of beg overwhelmed by their falling in, 
these imumerable flints one by one. 

“« Happy were he if the result were assured ; but thousands of these stones will 
pass through his hands without the least trace—without the slightest sign indi- 
eating to him the workmanship he requires; he recognizes but the friction of 
the waves, or the effect of the dashing of one stone against another. 

“Tt is thus one searches long without finding, or finding without recognizing 
that for which he seeks. Without doubt there are some of these worked flints 
im which the handiwork of man is seen at once, but there are others where the 
human workmanship appears only after an attentive examination, and when the 
fragment is entirely disengaged from the particles of sand and clay which en- 
veloped it. One comprehends thus how they have escaped former investigations.” 

In this, M. de Perthes speaks by his own experience. ‘“ How many of these 
flints,” says he, “have I handled im every sense, measured upon all their faces, 
without distinguishing a single one worthy of being preserved, and it is amongst 
those, even in the banks where I had found none of them, that I have since 
collected them by hundreds. Evidently some had passed under my view, but 
then my eyes, less experienced, had not seen them.” 

“Since then,” he contimues, “ I have been more fortunate. How many times 
the pick of the workman has launched at my feet the stone where without hesita- 
tion we distinguished the human hand! What joy for us both! the workman 
in receiving his promised coin, I in carrying off my treasure! At other times 
the discovery was less prompt, the desired stone had escaped the work- 
men. One trace, almost invisible, showed me it amongst a thousand. Soon 
this trace led me to another, and this again to another. The workmanship 
was evident. It was a type, a new figure for me; lastly it was a fine dis- 
covery—fine in my eyes, at least; for of these inscriptions of the first ages, of 
this subterranean language, very few have comprehended the future. What 
matter, if they one day comprehend it, and if the light bursts out from this 
feeble ray? 

“ Had it not been so, I should not regret either my time or my pains; for, 
in proportion as I progressed in this unknown tongue, happy in my efforts, I 
abandoned myself to my dreams; I believed myself to be that traveller to whom 
a new world revealed itself. 

“T had foreseen for a long time the existence of this antediluvian race, and 
during many years had anticipated my joy of proving it, when in these banks which 
the geologist has so often declared barren and antecedent to man, I should find 
at last the proof of his existence, or in default of his bones, the traces of his 
works. 

“Of these works, after so many ages and terrible commotions, those only 
of which the material was hard and solid, could be able to resist destruction. 
The movements of the waves, their dissolving action, and the shock of the 
erratic blocks, would have broken and pulverized all that which was friable or 
oxidizable. If the bones of so many animals, of those millions of elephants, of 
hippopotami, of mastodons, rhinoceroses, &c., have not been pounded, it is 
because they were swept away living and in their flesh. These great mam- 
mifers, covered with their skin and their hair, have been preserved by this triple 
envelope. In the new valleys, then, in those reservoirs scooped out by the 
torrent, are piled pell-mell bodies and relics, traces of that which had been 
brought to an end. 

“Ts it not what we see after inundations andrain-storms? Yes. It was in 
these deposits, in these deluvial débris, that I did at last find a trace of 
man, and my joy was great when I had found it.” 


4.82 THE GEOLOGIST. 


Many other antiquaries follow the old and exploded. notion of these so-called 
diluvial- gravels having been solely formed by the action of water. This is an 
error, for water has been only the motive power their distribution. Beyond 
this, all it has effected has been by its continued frictional action im the partial 
rounding by abrasion of the sharp angular edges of those more or less triangular 
fragments into which flints naturally break by the action of frost or by per- 
cussion. Whole beds of shattered flints are of frequent occurrence in chalk, 
and the mere waste and destruction of the strata would hberate heaps of frag- 
ments with angular edges as sharp as those of a flint freshly broken by the 
hammer. The knocking action of one pebble dashed against another could not 
produce the triangular pieces we have alluded to, but would cover the sur- 
face with innumerable pits, due to the natural conchoidal fracture of the chips 
broken out. 

M. de Perthes next details the researches made by himself, Dr. Rigolet, and 
others in the neighbourhoods of Abbeville and Amiens, some accounts of which 
were, from time to time, laid before the “Société d’Kmulation” of Abbeville, 
and “Société des Antiquaires de Picardie,’ and published in their respective 
transactions. 


(To be continued.) 


BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING. 
(Continued from page 444). 


QUERIES ON SLICKENSIDES SUBMITTED TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE GEOLO- 
GicaL Section, ABERDEEN Mertine, September, 1859, by Mr. J. Pricz, of 
Birkenhead, with Replies to the Queries by Prorussor D. T. AnsrEp. 


I offered the following remarks to the Section, under a conviction that 
individual and local observation of small facts could never, as such, be 
out of place at the meetings of an association so eminently Baconian 
as that then assembled at Aberdeen; and that this must ever be the 
province of the majority of naturalists—to provide instances for the few master 
minds to generalize. I mean to include under the name “Slickensides” every 
mineral surface which, apart from crystallization, exhibits an extraordinary 
degree of polish. And as I believe this phenomenon has never yet received 
anything approaching to a satisfactory explanation, I wish to call the attention 
of practical geologists to the subject, and induce them to look out for it in sec- 
tions (whether natural or artificial) of every rock-formation. I am acquainted 
with the fact i situ only in the neighbourhood of Birkenhead (New Red), par- 
ticularly the celebrated Labyrmthodon quarries at Storeton, where it is very 
well illustrated, and in the “mountam-limestone” at Llysfaen and Bryn 
Huryn, near Abergele, North Wales. But I believe I have met with hand 
specimens of it (generally ballast) m granite, serpentine, coal, coal-shale, and 
trap, near Shrewsbury. I presume “specular” galena, antimony, &c., to be the 


BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING. 483 


same fact. I hardly ever saw it zz situ without finding two contiguous 
instances—7. ¢., two pairs of polished surfaces sometimes within half an mech, 
sometimes two feet of each other, the intervening space being occupied by 
rock more or less altered in character, and generally more compact. The planes 
never agreeing with the stratification, and often nearly perpendicular to it. L 
never saw any termination of the polished planes, so that I should suppose 
they imtersect whole mountains. In granite and trap the surfaces I have seen 
were far from plane, and exhibited a different substance rather like steatite or 
soapstone (so In serpentine). In sandstone the polish is such as could not be 
produced by artificial means (without vitrifying); but, however sleek the sur- 
face, 1t always exhibits striee, sometimes parallel, but often inclined at various 
angles. The followimg questions seem worth following up, to obtain more 
light on the subject :— 


. Are all rocks found to exhibit these surfaces ? 

. If so, are the circumstances alike in the main? 

. If not, what sort of rocks seem excepted ? 

. Are conglomerates exempt? Is chalk? Is rock-salt ? 

. Is it a question of age? Is it as common in Old Red as in New? 

. If in roofing slate, what is its relation to cleavage ? 

. If in trap-dikes, does it crop the dike ? 

. If in soft silurian shale (“mudstone”) does it harden that? N.B. It 


does not seem to alter coal at all, and I have seen something very like it in 
clay, not so hard as French chalk. 

9. Is it found to pass mto contiguous rocks, that overlie—e. y., from Moun- 
tain-limestone into Old Red sandstone. 

10. Does it ever pass into rocks lyimg conformably ? 

11. Does it affect the accidental minerals of the rock through which it 
passes—e. g., Barytes in Mountain-limestone ? 

12. Does crystallization interrupt it, or vice versa ? 

13. Are the strize universal ? 

14. Does it never correspond with stratification ? 


15. Are the surfaces coated with a different substance, or is it merely the 
rock itself altered ? 


16. Has it been seen on the opposite sides of valleys, or of mountains ? 


17. Have the apparently parallel pairs been found to meet, and so come to 
anend? I have seen something like this. 


Mr. Cunningham asserts that here they form a barrier to springs of water. 
Is this general ? 

Allow me to commend to the notice of tourist-geologists Llysfaen, near 
Abergele, as exhibiting within a very small compass five very remarkable and 
perfectly distinct drifts; also a good mountain-limestone fossil station, with a 
good flora (silurian fossils near) between Rhyl and Llandudno. 


: ee Queries.—18. Does the “slick” or polished surface indicate a 
ault | 

19. Is the “slick” ever intersected by mineral veins ? 

90. Are the perfectly level “specular” surfaces and those which, though 
glossy, are uneven, to be referred to the same agency? 

21. Do they ever coincide with the stratification, partings, cleavage, ‘“ lamina- 
tion,” or “foliation” (H. Forbes), and are they to be considered as absolutely 
sui generis, or to be classed with some of these ? 


CO “I Sd ot H OO ~w} 


484, THE GEOLOGIST. 


22. I have heard them called “trap dykes.” Is this name justified in any 
localities ? 

23. In what relation do they stand to fossils ? 

Here (Birkenhead, &c.), where they abound, nothing ever intervenes between 
the two pairs of “slicks” but sandstone (sometimes altered) ; elsewhere the 
coal, though highly polished, is simply coal. Sir C. Lyell mentions polished sur- 
faces produced by molten lava passmg through fissures im old lava. And this 
reminded me of a “slick,” as there would, of course, be four surfaces (two 
vis-a-vis) in those dykes of Somma. ; 

I have more hopes of this curious subject bemg pressed, since Mr. Cunning- 
ham, of Liverpool, by giving it a practical turn m connection with a “water 
question,” has enlisted the cw bono party m our inquiry. If they form a 
barrier to subterraneous “ water-works,” they want looking after indeed. 


Replies to Mr. Price’s Queries —1. Slickensides occur, I believe, in all hard 
metamorphosed partly crystallie rocks, and especially in limestones, sand- 
stones, and perhaps some slates. ‘They occur also in some clays and in coal. 


2. The general conditions being the same, the phenomena are very similar, 
but they vary greatly with the nature of the rock. 


3. Soft sands, uncrystallized limestones, and some clays are excepted. 


4. I never saw a case in conglomerates, but should not be surprized at find- 
ing one. The same with rock-salt. Chalk is exempt. 


5. It is not a question of age. Jam not aware of any difference between 
Old and New Red sandstone that could affect the question. 


6. I never saw a true slick in roofing-slate, but I think I have in indurated 
slate. It can have no relation to cleavage. 


7. There is no reason why it should not. 
8. Very similar, if not identical, phenomena are common in some clays, chiefly 


very smooth and fine-grained varieties. It does not harden such clays, nor does 
it alter them. 

9. In passing from one rock to another of very different mineral character, 
the appearance of the slick is so different that it could hardly be identified. 

OS Mes: 

11. It makes a clear cut through the limestone and its contents. 

12. No, to the best of my knowledge. 

13. They vary m each case. Some striation or approximate appearance | 
have always seen. 

14. Not that I am aware of. 

15. The rock itself altered by compression, and perhaps by heat produced by 
friction. 

16. Not that I am aware of. 

17. I believe the opposite faces where the slick is compound are not strictly 
parallel, but wedge-shaped. 

18. Not necessarily a fault affecting underlying beds, but a slide of the bed | 
in which it occurs, though often to a very small extent, and locally. . 

19. I think I have seen instances of it. 

20. Yes. 

21. [believe them to be sui generis. 

22. No. 

93. They may occasionally intersect fossils, but the surface change has, as | 
far as I have seen, always obliterated all organic character—D. J. ANSTED. 


BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING. ARS 


Abstract of a Paper “On some FisHes anp TRACKS FROM THE PassaGE- 
ROCKS, AND FROM THE LOWER RED SANDSTONE OF HEREFORDSHIRE.” By 
THE Rev. W. 8. Symonps, F.G.S. 


Mr. Symonds, in this paper, called upon Sir Roderick Murchison to make 
greater allowances than he had hitherto seemed disposed to do for the appear- 
ance of fish in the Lower Ludlow rocks of Leintwardine, Herefordshire. This 
fish, the Péeraspis Ludensis (Salter), was not found as Sir R Murchison seemed 
disposed to regard its discovery, in strata a few feet below the original upper 
Ludlow “bone-bed,” but in the Lower Ludlow deposits, with the whole thick- 
ness of the Upper Ludlow shales and Aymestry rock intervening. There was 
no doubt of the fact that fish-life must now be immensely ante-dated, even since 
the publication of Sir R. Murchison’s last edition of his work upon Siluria. 

Mr. Symonds called the attention of the audience to a collection of fossils 
showing the gradation of the Pteraspis from the Lower Ludlow rocks, through 
those passage- or transition-rocks which lie between the upper Silurians and the 
Old Red sandstone, into the central Old Red rocks of Herefordshire. The 
species were different, but the genus was the same. Stereoscopic plates were 
exhibited of a large slab of Old Red sandstone which was rippled by the waves 
of the ancient Old Red sea, and scored deeply by some Old Red fish or crus- 
tacean which had wended its way over a shallow beach or sandy shore. The 
slab was obtained by the late Rev. T. T. Lewis of Aymestry, the friend and 
coadjutor of Sir R. I. Murchison, and who at his death left it to Mr. Symonds. 


On THE ORIGIN OF THE STRUCTURE CALLED CowE-IN-Conz, by H. C- 
SorBy, F.R.S., &e. 


Cone in Cone is met with im so many stratified rocks, that most geologists 
must be familiar with its general characters. No one, however, appears to 
have thoroughly investigated it; or to have given any very satisfactory explana- 
tion of its origm. The cones often occur in bands parallel to the stratification 
of the rock, their apices starting from a well defined plane; and, after extending 
upwards or downwards for a greater or less distance, with their axes perpen- 
dicular to the plane of stratification, they end in bases parallel to the stratifi- 
cation, but not all at the same exact level. They are not perfect cones, but 
are of such forms as would result from the varied interference of surrounding 
cones, and from the development of others withm their own substance. On 
examining thin, transparent sections with a low magnifying power, under polar- 
ized light, the author had been able to ascertain that this peculiar structure is 
intimately connected with some kinds of oolitic grains. In the formation of 
oolitic graims small prismatic crystals were deposited round a centre-nucleus, 
radiating to all sides im nearly the same amount, so as to give rise to irregular 
ovoid bodies; whereas, in the formation of cone in cone, very similar crystals 
were deposited almost entirely on one side, along the line of the axes of the 
cones, in such a fan-shaped manner as to give rise to their conical shape. In 
the thin sections of some specimens prepared for examination, every connecting 
lnk between imperfect oolitic grains and genuine cones can be seen to great 
advantage with polarized light. The growth of the cones did not, however, 
proceed without interruption, for other smaller fan-shaped groups were developed 
within the larger; and thus by the mutual interference of contiguous groups 
and of others contained within themselves, there was formed a mass of irregular 
cones inclosing other cones. We must therefore conclude that this structure 
is one of the peculiar forms produced by concretionary crystalization after the 
deposition of the rock. 


VOL. II. Yioy 


A486 THE GEOLOGIST. 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 


GrciocicaL Socrety or Lonpon, November 2, 1859.—Prof. J. Phillips 
President, in the Chair. 
The following communications were read -— 


1. “On the Passage-beds from the Upper Silurian Rocks into the Lower 
Old Red Sandstone, at Ledbury, Herefordshire.’ By the Rev. W. 8S. 
Symonds, F.G.S. 

In the cutting at the Ledbury Tunnel, on the Woreester and Hereford Rail- 
way, a series of beds have been exposed, which range from the Upper Silurian 
or Downton beds to the Old Red sandstone, including bluish-grey rock with 
fossil fish, crustaceans, and shells, like those found in the railway-cuttie and 
elsewhere near Ludlow. The following is the ascending order of the ih ob- 
served:—l. Aymestry rock, with Pextamerus Knightii, &e. (ten feet). 2. 
Upper Ludlow rock, with Chonetes lata, &c. (one hundred and forty feet. The 
Ludlow Bone-bed seems to be wanting here). 8. Downton bed, thin (nine 
feet), with Lingula. 4 to 8. Red and mottled marls and thin sandstone (two 
hundred and ten feet), with Lingala and Pteraspis (2). 9. Grey shale and thin 
erit (eight feet), with Cephalaspis and Pterygotus. 10 and 11. Purple shales 
and thin sandstones (thirty-four feet). 12. Grey marl, passing into red and 
grey marl and bluish-grey rock (twenty feet), with Auchenaspis, Plectrodus, 
Cephalaspis (2), Onchus, Pterygotus Ludensis, Lingula, and a Lituite (?). 
These pass upwards conformably into a series of red marls, with yellowish-grey 
and pink sandstone, containing Pleraspis and Cephalaspis, and undoubtedly 
forming the base of the Cornstone-series of the Old Red Sandstone. The 
author remarks that there are other cornstones, namely those of Wall-hills near 
Ledbury, of Foxley, Writfield, &c., which are at least three thousand feet above 
the Downton sandstone. He also remarks that, as the word “'Tilestones” is 
inapplicable to the Ledbury rocks, he quite agrees with Sir R. Murchison in 
replacing it by the term “ Passage-beds.” 

2. “On the so-called Mud-volcanos of Turbaco, near Carthagena.” By F. 
Bernal, Esq.; in a letter to Sir R. I. Murchison, F.G.S. 

Turbaco is a village, about fifteen miles from Carthagena, at an elevation of 
about nine hundred and eighty feet above the sea. At a distance of about 
three miles from the village, and at a higher elevation, in the midst ef a forest, 
are some twenty or thirty conical hillocks, about eight or ten feet high, each 
with its little crater or orifice, about two feet in diameter. These are filled 
with a muddy water; and every two or three minutes a slight noise is heard, a 
bubbling up of air or gas takes place, the muddy fluid runs over, and forms into 
cakes of blue clay. The water is quite cool, nor is there any present or 
anterior marks or vestiges of the action of fire or heat. 

3. “On the Coal-formation at Auckland, New Zealand.” By Henry Weeks, 
Esq., communicated by the President. 

The district is formed of stratified sandy clays, of Tertiary age; they vary in 
colour from white to ight-red. The white clays contain beds of lignite, vary- 
ing from a few inches to several feet in thickness. Sections of these beds are 
exposed along the banks of most of the tidal inlets with which the district 
abounds. In some places, near the hills, the lignite is seen to rest on trap- 
rock ; elsewhere a shelly gravel underlies it. 

At Campbell’s farm a whitish sandstone lies on the hienite, and at the junc- 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 487 


tion is hardened and contains ironstone-nodules; these, when broken, yield 
remains of exogenous plants. A fossil resin is found abundantly in the lignite. 
On Farmer’s land the lignite is sixteen feet thick, including a little shale; at 
Campbell’s it is seven thick, but thins away. There is some iron-pyrites in the 
lignite, but not sufficient to deteriorate its value as a coal. Similar coal has 
been found at Muddy Creek to the N.W.; at Mokau, about one hundred miles 
to the south; and near new Plymouth. 

The Auckland tertiary beds are everywhere broken through by extinct vol- 
canos, varving from two hundred to eight hundred feet in height. The craters 
are generally scoriaceous, in a perfect condition, with a depression of the rim 
usually to the north or east. There are also around the district other volcanic 
hills, rounded, scoriaceous, more fertile than the crateriform hills, and 
apparently of an older date. 

4. “On the Geology of the South-east part of Vancouver’s Island.” By 
Hilary Bauerman, Esq., communicated by Sir R. 1. Murchison, F.G.8. 

The author described, first, the metamorphic rocks which are everywhere 
seen in the neighbourhood of Esquimalt and Victoria; principally dark-green 
sandstones and shales, passimg insensibly into serpentine, chlorite-schist, mica- 
slate, and gneiss. At some places unfossiliferous crystalline limestones are 
associated with them. Dykes of greenstone, syenite, porphyries, and trap-rocks 
frequently penetrate the metamorphic rocks. To the westward of Esquimalt 
black cherty limestones and red porphyry occur. 

To the north, at Nanaimo, rocks with cretaceous fossils appear, also at 
Comoux Island, twenty one miles north-west of Nanaimo. The fossils occur in 
nodules, and consist of fish-scales, Nautilus, Ammonites Baculites, Inoceramus, 
Astarte (?), Terebratula. 

Lignitiferous deposits (sandstones, grits, conglomerates, and micaceous flag- 
stones) succeed the cretaceous rocks, and are extensively developed over a 
great extent of country, forming the mass of the islands in the Gulf of Georgia, 
as far south.as Saturna Island. Northward they occur at Fort Rupert. ‘Two 
seams of coal, averaging six to eight feet each in thickness, occur in these beds, 
and are extensively worked for the supply of the steamers navigating between 
Victoria and the Frazer River. The coal is a soft black lignite, interspersed 
with small lenticular bands of bright erystallme coal. Retimite is common in 
the more earthy portions. Shales with plant-remains are interstratified with 
the lignite. At Bellingham Bay, on the mainland, similar coal-bearing sand- 
stones have been observed by the American geologists. 

A pleistocene boulder-clay is widely distributed over the southern part of 
Vancouver’s Island and the opposite coasts of the mainland. In the neighbour- 
hood of Esquimalt and Victoria the rocks are deeply scratched and grooved 
along the shore ; and so also is the rock-surface beneath the drift, which at 
Esquimalt Harbour is about twenty feet thick, whilst it is much more at the 
Barracks, and more than one hundred feet thick between Albert Head and 
Esquimalt. 

November 16.— Supplemental Observations on the Order of the Ancient 
Stratified Rocks of the North of Scotland and their associated Kruptive Rocks.” 
By Si R. L. Murchison, V.P.R.S., F.G.8., &e. 

These observations were founded on a joimt-examination of the north-west 
highlands by the author and Prof. Ramsay, in the autumn of this year, Sir 
Roderick having been anxious to verify and enlarge his previous researches in 
Sutherland and Ross, the results of which -vere published in the Society’s 
Journal of August last. Professor Ramsay’s examination of the country re- 
sulted in the confirmation of the author’s published views; and ina very careful 
working out of three important sections, which afforded distinct evidence of the 
continuous succession and conformability of the micaceous flagstones overlying 


488 THE GEOLOGIST. 


the quartz-rocks and limestones of Durness and Assynt. The author mentioned 
also that Professor Harkness, having subsequently traversed the ground, had 
supplied him with sections and notes confirmmg the accuracy of his views, and 
especially illustrative of that phenomenon to which Sir Roderick had attributed 
the greatest importance, namely, the broad distinction between the fundamental 
gneiss and the micaceous schists and flagstones superposed on the Silurian 
quartz-rocks and limestones. 

Referring to the gneiss of Cape Wrath as the fundamental rock of the dis- 
trict, and as the equivalent of the “ Laurentian rocks” of Canada, Sir Roderick 
pointed out its massiveness, its granite-veins, its high degree of metamorphism, 
and the westerly dip of its lamme, as characters distinguishing it from the 
micaceous flagstone and chloritic schists which have been termed the “ younger 
gneiss,” which has a general easterly dip, and which, when near intrusive rocks, 
take on a gneissose structure, especially to the east. A few more details were 
given of the red sandstones and conglomerates of Cambrian age lying uncon- 
formably on gneiss. The Silurian quartz-rocks and limestone were then de- 
scribed as seen im their successive and conformable strata in three clear and 
important sections, showing how completely the chief limestones lie between a 
lower and an upper quartz-rock ; and how all this series is followed by another 
limestone, which in its turn is conformably overlaid by micaceous flagstones. 
The first of these sections is to be traversed along a line from the post-office of 
Assynt, on the west, across the ridges of limestone of Inchnadamff to the 
quartzose hills of Cnocandrien, Ben Uran, and Ben More, to Kinloch and Loch 
Ailsh. Some greenstones are interbedded at Inchnadamff and at Loch Ailsh, 
and some porphyry intrudes at Cnocandrien, but the conformable sequence of 
the strata is not thereby at all interfered with. 

The next section is on the south bank of Loch More. Here the lower 
quartz-rock hes unconformably on the bottom gneiss, the Cambrian rocks being 
absent, and a gradual passage from the upper quartz-rock into the micaceous 
flags of Ben Neath and Kinloch was clearly seen. A third, and, if anything, a 
still better section was followed from Benspionnach, on the west, across Loch 
Eriboll to Meolbadvartie and Ben Hope. Above EHriboll a specimen of Ortho- 
ceras Bronguiartu has been found in the quartz-rock overlying the lower lime- 
stone. ‘The upper limestone is here overlaid bya clear succession of quartzose 
beds and micaceous flagstones, which pass upwards into mica-schists of Meol- 
badvartie, in which isinterbedded a thin band of felstone, without any disturbance. 
This condition of the strata extends along the strike for twenty or thirty miles 
at least. At Whiten Head, the northern prolongation of the quartz-rock of 
Hriboll, the limestone has died out, and the two quartzose bands have united 
_ Into one great series. The author observed no reversal in the dip of the over- 
lymg micaceous beds at any point along the northern coast; and he was 
strengthened in his conviction that these flaggy strata, altered here and there 
by plutonic imfluences, are really an overlying series, younger in age than the 
lower Silurian quartz-rocks and limestones of Durness and Assynt. Sir 
Roderick further repeated his belief that probably the crystalline rocks of the 
Highlands will be mainly found to fall into the same category, and will in time 
be paralleled with Silurian rocks of the south of Scotland. Lastly, he ob- 
served that, with local exceptions, he believed that these flagstones and mica- 
schists were unaffected by mechanical cleavage. 


Groxocists’ AssocraTion.—The meetings of this Society were resumed on 
October 3rd, when the first part of a Memoir on the Echinide of the Chalk, 
by E. Cresy, Esq., was read. At the second meeting, on the 7th ult., the 
reading of this paper was concluded. 


PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 489 


The author commenced by indicating the position of the Echinide as a large 
and important section of the Radiata, and pointed out the several steps in the 
series which connected the completely circular types with those having a marked 
tendency towards bilaterality. 

The principal characteristics of the order were then enumerated, commenc- 
ing with a description of the calcareous shell, or test, constituting an internal 
and integral portion of the animal being secreted by and enclosed within 
organized membranes, and participating in the life of the organism—the homo- 
logue of the vertebrate skeleton rather than of the shell of the mollusca. 

The several elements of the tests were then described, the ten columns of 
small plates constitutmg the ambulacra, the ten larger, the interambulacra, 
separated from each other by ten rows of holes—the poriferous zones. The 
tubercles with which these plates are studded were then enumerated—the large 
primaries, the secondaries, the mmute granules, and the miliary granulation. 
The varities of form and arrangement of the pores were next reviewed, and 
then the relative position and varymg shapes of the two great orifices, the 
receptive and rejective poles. The internal organization was briefly glanced at, 
and the principal viscera enumerated. The apical disc was described, its 
separate elements, the ovarian, and ocular plates, their relative nature and posi- 
tion indicated. 

The varieties of spines, their forms, sculpture, attachment, and the structure 
of their parts, was also pointed out. . 

The author next proceeded to dwell upon the relative value of the external 
organs in classification, beginning with the position of the mouth and vent, and 
especially urging attention to the physiological import of these and the other 
organs, and even of sculptural decoration of the test as indicative of purpose 
and design, and not to be considered merely valuable as means of classifica- 
tion. He dwelt upon the necessity of taking into consideration the mutual 
relations of the great vital functions of digestion, reproduction, vision, and 
locomotion as the basis of any sound natural arrangement. The position of 
the vent either within or external to the elements comprising the apical disc 
was shown to be a good character by which to divide the order into two great 
divisions—the Exocyclic and the Endocyclic Hchinide ; the structure of the 
ambulacra and poriferous zones, taken im connection with the position of the 
vent, formed good secondary characters for groupmg the genera into natural 
families, while the former were well defined by the form, number, and arrange- 
ment of the spmes and tubercles, the miliary granulation, the size and number 
of elements of the apical disc, and the position of the vent taken collectively. 
The author then intimated that the limits he had assigned to himself did not 
permit of any indication of specific characteristics, but that he should content 
himself with an enumeration of the principal points of the generic classification 
of the Hchinide of the chalk, and of the families to which they belonged. 

He then proceeded to describe by the aid of numerous large diagrams the 
generic distinctions of Cidaris, Diadema, Cyphosoma, Hchinus, Salenia, Dis- 
coidea, Galerites, Cacatomus, Nucleolites, Catapygus, Pyrina, Holaster, 
Cardiaster, Ananchytes, Micraster, Hemipneustes, Hemiaster. 

A vote of thanks having been passed, the author stated that in selecting this 
subject he had been guided by an old admiration of an order which, from 
living in a chalk-district, had attracted his attention in early youth, and he 
had often felt the want of such a guide as the observations he had just made 
would furnish. He particularly denied all claim to originality, his only merit 
being that of havimg collected mto one view, materials which lay scattered in 
a number of rare and costly works. 


4.90 THE GEOLOGIST. 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 


Tur Deposttion oF Warp.—Derar S1r,—During a short visit m York- 
shire, I have had my attention again directed to the process of warping, and 
upon which I am anxious to submit two questions. 

Ist. Where does this warp come from ? 

That it comes from the sea is certain, because it is only carried on to the low 
lands at high tides. The amount of sediment brought up these rivers, especially 
in dry seasons, 1s very considerable. Upon one farm near Howden, I am told 
that a deposit of warp two feet thick has been formed by four spring-tides, 
which, with the intervals of neap-tides—when the land would not be flooded, 
would occupy about two months. 

In wet seasons, when it might be expected that a larger amount of solid 
matter would be carried into the rivers from the higher lands, the quantity of 
warp deposited is far below the average, and that the greatest deposits are im 
dry seasons. | 

This warp in the Humber and its tributaries seems to be exhaustless. It 
has been deposited on the lands surrounding these rivers for a number of years, 
and it is as abundant now as ever. 

The question then naturally arises, whence comes this warp? Is it the dis- 
integrated materials from the rocks which form the abrupt coast of Yorkshire ? 
Throughout the whole extent of this coast the sea is constantly wearing away 
its cliffs, corroding its promontories into fantastic forms, and hollowing its rocks 
into “deep and solemn caverns.” At Withemsea, Hornsea, Bridlington, and 
many other places, there have been remarkable encroachments of the sea with- 
in a few years, to the destruction of some miles of surface-land. If this warp 
be the worn materials of these rocks, why do not other rivers, such as the Tees 
and the Tyne, deposit it on their surrounding lands ? 

This warp is procured on the low-lands adjoming the Humber, &c., as a sub- 
stitute for manure; and the prolific crops both of cereal and roots which it 
produces is a sufficient proof of its fertilizmg properties. The ordinary crops 
of wheat, for instance, average as much as six quarters to the acre, and the 
potatos in the London market grown on these warped lands are said to be 
preferred to any other. 

2nd. How is it that the Humber and its tributaries—the Trent, Ouse, Don, 
&c., are the only rivers in Great Britam that deposit “warp” ? 

That there is no other river in this country which deposits solid matter such 
as “warp,” on the low lands that may be flooded by it at high tides I am 
ereditably informed is a fully ascertained fact. I have had but one opportunity 
for inquiry of a friend residimg near the Mersey, who tells me, if the waters of 
that river were allowed to overflow the adjacent lands at high tides, which is 
sometimes done for the sake of irrigation, that no sediment whatever would be 
deposited; any deposit like the warp of the Yorkshire rivers would bury the 
grass to the depth of several inches, which the water was intended to invigorate. 

There is another fact or two which appears to me to have a geological bear- 
ing, and which I will state as briefly as possible. 

You will no doubt remember a period when the herring-fishery off Boston, at 
what is called Boston Deep, was the most important and extensive herring- 
fishery in these islands. Great Yarmouth was also justly celebrated for its 
mackerel, and I believe it was the custom at one time to send to the reigning 
sovereign of Kngland the first fish of this species that was caught in those seas. 


NOTES AND QUERIES. AOL 


At the present time a herring cannot be taken in Boston deep; and if the 
crown of England depended on the mackerel caught at Yarmouth it would be 
forfeited. Is this change of habitat occasioned by any alteration in the sea- 
bottom, or from some change in the direction of sea-currents ? 

I remember when a boy to have played on the sea-shore near Boston, when 
it was a firm and extensive arenaceous plain at low tide. This coast is now 
silted up with a deposit of a similar nature to the “warp” of the Humber, and 
only one or two patches of the former sandy shore remains. To such an extent 
has the sea deposited this material in that portion of the Wash, that an en- 
closure of thirty-two thousand acres has been seriously spoken of. If this same 
condition that exists on the shore is extended over any considerable area of sea- 
bottom, which it is quite reasonable to suppose, it may have some connection 
with the departure of the herrings from those waters. 

Tam but an amateur geologist—young im the science but anxious to know 
more of those important changes which have been in constant operation on the 
earth’s surface during a vast succession of geological periods. The above facts 
appear to me to have some relation to those changes both as regards fluviatile, 
or fluvio-marine deposits and the removal of species from a locality in which it 
has been formerly abundant.—Yours &c., W., Nottingham. 

Fossin Ferns 1n FRuctirication.—De8ar Srr,—lI have paid considerable 
attention to recent ferns, both natives of the tropics and of cooler regions of 
the earth, and I wish now to extend my observations to the fossil species. 
Will you be kind enough to tell me if there are any works treating specially 
upon them, and which are cheap enough to be within my reach? Lyell and 
the other authors I possess, or can borrow, mention many genera, but seldom, 
if ever, give their distinguishing characteristics. We shall no doubt have de- 
scriptions of them suflicientiy clear when your articles upon “The Common 
Fossils of the British Rocks” have advanced so far as the Carboniferous-period, 
but I am somewhat impatient to proceed with the study of them. 

In the arrangement of the recent species the form of the frond and the vena- 
tion, or arrangement of the veins, are only secondary matters; the primary 
characters bemg taken from the form, and whether they be naked or covered by 
an indusium. In the cabinets of my friends and the larger collections which [ 
have seen, I have in vain sought for any specimens bearing their fructification. 
Lyell says they are found “for the most part destitute of fructification ;” I am 
therefore led to imagine that fertile fronds are sometimes discovered, though 
rarely. Can you tell me if there are any in the public collections in London 
whieh still retam their fructification? I am extremely anxious to compare 
them with living forms; and by information on these points you would greatly 
oblige, Yours very respectfully, C. W. Crocker, Royal Botanical Gardens, 
Kew.—The best authors on fossil ferns are :—Adolphe Brongniart, “ Histoire 
des Végétaux Fossiles” Paris, 1828, 1 vol., quarto, which contains illustrations 
and descriptions of a large number of the known genera and species.—Lindley 
and Hutton, “The Fossil Flora of Great Britain,’ with figures and brief de- 
scriptions, London, 1831., 3 vols., octavo. Through which are scattered illustra- 
tions of many of our British fossil Filicine ; the descriptions are extremely short. 
H. R. Goppert, “Systema Filicum Fossilum.” (with forty-four plates) Bres- 
law and Bonn, 1836, quarto. The figures are very good, and many examples of 
fructification are given—G. K. Sternberg, “Fersuch emer geognostisch- 
botanischen, Darstellung der Flora der Vorwelt.” Leipsic and Prague, 1820, 
folio, 2 vols. The plates of this work are beautifully executed; and the 
descriptions, being in Latin, are more accessible to the general student than 
the German text. 

Mantell’s “Medals of Creation,” vol. i., second edition, 1854, octavo, con- 
tains an outline of fossil botany, and gives some description of the genera of 


492 THE GEOLOGIST, 


ferns, with cuts. This last would perhaps prove most useful, because it can be 
purchased for a small sum; whereas the large works alluded to above are ex 
pensive. They are in the libraries of the British Museum, the Geological 
Society, Somerset House, and the Geological Survey, Jermyn-street. We can- 
not do better than call attention to the fine collection of fossil ferns in Room I, 
of the North Geological Gallery m the British Museum. A great addition has 
just been made by the purchase of the valuable, and in many instances unique, 
specimens of oolitic plants from Scarborough, which formed the collection of 
Mr. Bean, a gentleman who has devoted very many years of his life to their 
accumulation. By applying to the keeper of the geological department, the 
student may obtain permission, as in all the other departments of our national 
museum, to visit the collection on private days; and every facility is afforded 
for the examination and comparison of specimens. The characters, so important 
in the classification of recent ferns being frequently absent or wanting in the 
fossil remains, the paleeobotanist is compelled in many instances to accept the 
most worthless and least reliable characters, in order to form some sort of clas- 
sification to guide others who may follow him in his labours. 

We have seen some coal-ferns from Ilmenan (Germany) with fructification ; 
but this condition is rare. 

We must not forget to mention H. B. Geinitz’s magnificent work on the 
Saxony coal, “Die Verstemerungen der Steim-Kohlenformation im Sachsen.” 
folio, Leipsic, 1855, with numerous plates, as a first-rate source for information 
on some fossil ferns; especially as he has taken much trouble to reduce to 
their true specific limits the very numerous forms of fragmentary ferns re- 
garded by authors as typical of so many species. In the 2nd. volume of 
Mantell’s “ Wonders of Geology” 8vo., 2 vols., Bohn, London, 1858, several 
references to descriptions of fossil ferns will be fouud in the chapter on coal. 

Mr. Gregory, of No. 4, King Wilham-street, Strand, has recently obtained 
some very good specimens of Cyclopleris Hibermca from Ireland, in full fructi- 
fication ; and we believe that he has also some foreign specimens of other ferns 
in the same state. 

CEMENTED ROCK-DEBRIS, NEAR BLANCHARD, NORTHUMBERLAND.—SIR,— 
In the November number of the “ Gronocist’ I observe a paper on the os- 
siferous fissures at Oreston, near Plymouth, by W. Pengelly, F.G.8., m which 
the author states it as his opmion that the cavern originally communicated with 
the surface by an opening sufliciently wide to allow the passage of all its con- 
tents ;” and that this opening had afterwards been filled up by “large angular 
fragments of limestone cemented by carbonate of lime, easily enough mistaken, 
without a careful inspection, for ordmary limestone somewhat rich im coarse 
veins, and which the quarrymen say is as hard as the surrounding rock.” 

This reminds me of a cireumstance which lately came under my notice of a 
mass of shale-debris having become cemented in the same manner. 

Tn working a lead mine it is customary to drive strong pieces of timber, 
locally called “stemples” betwixt the sides of the vein, at short distances apart. 
These are covered by other smaller pieces called “ polings,” reaching from one 
stemple to the other. Upon these the workmen deposit their rubbish. 

Ina mine at Shildon, near Blanchland, in the county of Northumberland, 
there is a spring of water highly charged with carbonate of lime, which having 
filtered for a considerable number of years through the debris consisting of 
shale deposited as above, has so hardened and cemented it together, that, the 
timber having decayed, the cemented rock not only retains its position, but it 
would require blasting to remove any part of it, beg as the miners declare 
actually harder than the original bed. 

This I think would support Mr. Pengelly’s theory—Yours respectfully 
T. Hurcuinson, Waskerley Park, near Darlington. 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 493 


LANDSLIP IN THE Istyu oF SHEPPy.—Srr,—The following extract from a 
Kentish newspaper, dated Sept. 25, 1859, may be worth preserving in your 
magazine, which should be the geologist’s repository for recorded facts. “ An 
extraordinary slip of land has recently taken place at Warden-point, on the 
north-east end of the Isle of Sheppy, which has placed the ancient church of 
of that parish in great danger, as the east end of the church is only forty-one 
feet from the edge of the cliff. Persons residing near the church state that for 
three or four days previous to the slip taking place a noise was heard at very 
short intervals hike distant thunder. Several parts of the land (pasture), with 
rows Of large trees, hurdles, fences, and hedges, have dropped down, and the 
trees stand, with the hedges,*hurdles, &c., perfectly upright, as though they 
had been moved by magic; other trees are partially inclined towards the sea, 
and others are quite reversed; the immense roots, the growth of many years, 
are turned upwards, but not a single tree is buried by the soil. A landslip of 
less magnitude took place about two years since, which together with the 
present one acted upon a space of more than ten acres of pasture land, in con- 
sequence of which the coast-guard station at this place, being considered unsafe, 
has recently been taken down. ‘The land for some considerable distance south- 
east of the church is still opening in large chasms, varymg from three inches 
to three feet, and in depth from three to thirty feet.’—Yours &c., J. R. T. 

GroLocy oF Harrocate.—Sir,—I am at present staymg in Harrogate, 
Yorkshire, aad am very much at a loss as to the geology of the neighbourhood, 
and the best localities for finding fossils. Thinking it was possible that 
some of your readers might find the same difficulty, | have ventured to make 
the imquiry, which I hope to have answered through the medium of the 
“ Gnotoeist,’—Yours truly, a SuBscRiBeR and Brernner.—Harrogate is 
situated on the millstone-grit (or carboniferous sandstones of the series below 
the coal-measures.) ‘These sandstones (or Yorkshire flagstones) do not yield 
many fossils; occasionally a few casts of stems, and some tracks of animals— 
referred to worms, crustaceans, fishes, &c. Fossil rain-prints are said to have 
been seen on some of the surfaces of the slabs. At Knaresborough, three or 
four miles east of Harrogate, the red rocks and magnesian limestone of the 
Permian series occur. ‘This limestone is at places rich in fossils. The coal is 
absent there; but to the south, near Leeds, it is found im its place on the mill- 
stone-grit, and passmg under the Permian rocks to the east of .that town; 
and these im their turn disappear under the New Red sandstone, and clays of 
the Vale of York. About fifteen miles west of Harrogate, the lower rocks are 
exposed beneath the Carboniferous sandstone, namely the Yoredale slates and 
limestone, at Bolton Abbey, and the great “Scar” limestone is also shown at 
places near by, but still better to the north west in Wharfedale and Ribblesdale. 
In the latter valley the still lower rocks (Silurian) come to day. The geologi- 
cal map of Yorkshire, by Prof. J. Phillips, (sold by Monkhouse, York) 
should be the excursionist’s companion in the wilds and valleys of Yorkshire. 

SEDIMENTARY Deposit oF MINERALS IN A Rock SrrRata.—Srr,—Your 
obliging notice of my queries respecting the sedimentary deposit of minerals, 
leads me to explain more clearly the views I hold respecting the origin of 
minerals, and their dispersion and subsequent aggregation in the various strata. 
Throwing aside preconceived ideas of internal heat, let us remember that our 
globe was probably first gaseous, then liquid, and now solid; that minerals have 
been condensed from the air and sea, not sublimated from beneath. When land 
emerges from the ocean it is saturated with all the various compounds of the 
sixty elements. Its elevation is, I conceive, generally speaking the superficial 
result of volcanic action, and an enlargement of its alain through the forces of 
erystallization. On its exposure to drying influences, the land becomes fissured, 
and its constituent parts attempt to assume an aggregate state, each metal and 

WOU UI Z Z 


494, THE GEOLOGIST. 


mineral crystallizing in veins according to the temperatures and precedence due 
to each; thus quartz crystallizes first, afterwards those the aflimities of which 
bind them most strongly together, and which require longer time and lesser 
temperature for becoming solidified. Veins running north and south, and veins 
running east and west, often contaming different deposits, may be accounted 
for by currents having overlaid each other, and made saturations of distinct 
kinds in any given spot; and this draws me to say that were the former forces 
and sources of the currents calculated, a perfect conclusion might be arrived at 
respecting the shape of the present continents; for no doubt the waters have 
deposited and shaped the lands. At first, when no land broke the surface of 
the globular sea, variation of temperature was the only source of its disturbance 
besides the tides and the motions of our planet around its axis, so that those 
acquainted with the laws of the winds and tides might readily surmise which 
had been the pomt where the greatest accumulation of solid matter took place 
in the shape of a reef or shoal, and how its first appearance above the level of 
the sea affected the then state of thmgs. In contradistmetion to received 
opinion, I should say the New World was the first formed, its unbroken coast- 
line showing that the currents were not then so complicated as they are now ; 
but if you will give me an opinion on the subject, however crude the idea may 
appear, it may help to elicit facts hitherto unthought of—Your obliged corres- 
pondent, A., Belfast. 

P.S. According to my theory, of course we must look on granite as having 
been made from sand and sand from granite, the bosses into which it becomes 
weathered showing the seams of its deposit plamly enough. The sands of 
Africa and of the other desert countries may le on granite, the upper part of 
which is still sand unchanged by igneous agency. 

PuospHate oF Lime Nopures.—DxEar Srr,—In reply to Mr. Mortimer’s 
letter addressed to you in Number 22 of the “Guotoetst,’ I am afraid I 
cannot answer either of his questions satisfactorily ; for | am unable to say how 
the phosphate of lime was detected in the nodules of the Upper Green Sand at 
Cambridge in the first instance, although, as you justly remark, they have 
long been known to contain it. Some of the nodales are supposed to be copro- 
lites, from their peculiar form, and occasionally having scales and other remains 
of fish, &c., embedded in them; but the majority are, I think, not considered 
to be organic, although they yield phosphate of lime; for I believe it is now 
acknowledged that this mineral occurs in rocks more extensively than was ima- 
gined, without being derived from bones. When I was at the University, now 
more than twenty years ago, these concretions were known to yield this phos- 
phate; but it is only of late years that the green sand has been so extensively 
worked for economical purposes. I have not seen the preparation of the 
nodules for agricultural uses, but I believe they are ground down in a mill, and 
in due course, when properly prepared, may be applied as a manure in the same 
way as guano, lime, and bone-dust. I have not written any special paper on 
this subject, but in a lecture delivered last January, at the winter meeting of 
the Warwickshire Naturalists’ Field-Club, held at the Warwick Museum, on 
“The History of Fossil Bone-beds,” I suggested the possibility of the applica- 
tion of the well-known Lias “bone-bed” to this end, and I referred to the value 
and importance of the green sand at Cambridge, and of the Crag in Suffolk, 
from which such large quantities of phosphate of lime are now obtained. 
IT heard that a notice of this appeared in the Mark Lane Express, where it is 
possible Mr. Mortimer may have seen it.—Faithfully yours, P. B. Bropiz, 
Vicarage, Rowington. : 

_ Fosstr Horns rrom Brun Cray, near Gatrnousr.—There was lately found 
in the canal leading from the Bay of Fleet to Gatehouse a pair of horns attached 
to a portion of the skull apparently belonging to an animal of the stag species. 


NOTES AND QUERIES. 495 


They were found in a compact blue clay about twenty feet from the surface, and 
are in excellent preservation. These are now in my possession. Hach horn has 
seven antlers, and the following are the dimensions—viz., length of horn three 
feet ten inches; length of the bottom antlers thirteen inches ; width between the 
top of the horns three feet two inches; circumference of the horn nine inches ; 
circumference of the bottom antlers five inches; width between the top antlers 
on each horn fifteen inches; width of the skull eight inches; weight of the horns 
twelve and a-half pounds. H either you or any of your readers can give any 
information respecting them or the animal to which they belonged, it will much 
oblige yours, &c., Wu. Gorpon, Gatehouse. 

Coat at Murrer on Punsas Rattway.—A few weeks ago a “ Report,” 
accompanied by a number of ilustrative geological plans and sections, was for- 
warded to the Government from the Punjab Railway, upon the discovery of coal 
and iron at Duntelle and Mohara, by Mr. Calvert, C.H. and F.G.S., one of the 
Staff, who brought down large blocks of coal from thence. But, it is said, the 
mountaimous character of the district, and its bemg withm the dominion of 
the Maharaja of Cashmere, who asked an exhorbitant “Royalty,” or tax 
on it, induced the company to abandon further search, although Mr. Calvert 
entertained opinion of a successful result.—‘ Lahore Chronicle,” Sept. 
10, 1859. 

_Pirtep Surrace or Macnustan Limestone.—Sir,—I have just returned 
from a visit to Roche Abbey, m this county (Yorkshire), and as I usually 
examine the rocks and quarries whenever I have an opportunity wherever I go, 
I was much surprised to find the beds im that locality, which I think are mostly 
magnesian limestone, marked by indentations in layers every two or three feet 
by what appeared to be rain-drops. I had often read of such markings in some 
localities, but hitherto had never met with them. I at first thought it might 
be the effect of crystallization, but had this been the case, it would have per- 
vaded the whole mass of rock, whereas it was only in layers. If [ am right in 
attributing it to rain-drops, the limestone must have been in a state of soft mud 
at the time, and exposed to the surface, for the markings are so deep and abun- 
dant as to form a very strikimg feature, and large slabs of five or ten feet 
square, or perhaps fifty or sixty might be had. I have frequently sought for 
fossils in this limestone, and almost in vain; but | felt much interest in this 
phenomenon. I enclose you a small piece for your inspection —G. W., Wakefield. 
—The roughly-pitted surface of the limestone alluded to is due to weathering, 
or to the percolation of water between layers of the rock. Many limestones 
and marbles exhibit surfaces more or less fretted or eaten into inthis way; and 
the mesh-like arrangement of the cavities is perhaps due to the destructive 
agency of water removing some softer atoms at different spots, each of which 
latter becomes a centre of further chemical operations, and is separated from 
the neighbouring pits by less destroyed ridges. 

ANTHRACITE AND [Ron.—Sir,—Taking advantage of the monthly ‘“ Notes 
and Queries” in the “ Gxoxoeist,” I beg to trouble you with the two following 
questions. 

First: In reading lately a geological work on Coal, the author, after stating 
its vegetable origi and describmg the various kinds of coal, mentioned Anthra- 
cite, which I suppose means Cannel-coal, and stated that Anthracite was black- 
coal buried deeper in the earth, was more mineralized, and, in consequence of 
its contiguity to some volcanic rock, had lost its pitch. If this be the origin 
of Cannel-coal it does not seem to solve my question; for here we have, at one 
hundred and twenty yards from the surface a bed of two feet of good “ house- 
coal, eighteen-inches of dirt, then a foot of “engine-coal;” forty yards higher a 
bed of good ‘“house-coal” twenty-six inches thick; twelve yards higher 
“engine-coal,” eighteen inches thick; dirt six inches; ‘“‘drossy’-coal three 


4.96 THE GEOLOGIST. 


inches; good Cannel-coal thirteen inches. There is no appearance of a volcanic 
rock anywhere near. How then can we reconcile the two ? 

Second: Is Iron of vegetable-origin, as Hugh Miller seems to give the idea 
in his transmigration of iron in his Old Red sandstone; or of what origin is it? 
Troubling you so far, I remaim, Yours truly, A New Susscriper, Dewsbury. 
First : Anthracite not bemg the same as cannel-coal, the first question falls 
to the ground. 

Coal that has lost its hydrogen, whether on account of the proximity of ig- 
neous rocks, or from other causes, is Anthracite (stone-coal, culm, ‘steam-coal, 
&e). Cannel-coal has usually more earthy and animal matter in it than com- 
mon coal has; and has probably resulted from the compressed peaty mud, often 
full of fishes, formed in the carboniferous lagoons. 

Second: Iron-ores are frequently associated with coal and other fossil vege- 
table matter, and some of the iron may probably have been once in the form of 
bog-iron, which is said to consist of ferruginous infusoria ; or it may have once 
been to some extent contained in the wood, stems, and leaves. At all events 
it appears that in the decomposition of the vegetable matter, carbonic acid 
would be formed, and this would wnite with the oxide of iron, which is so uni- 
versally distributed in earths, muds, gravels, &e., and would form a carbonate 
of iron. This would often become aggregated into masses in the silt or elay- 
beds, and form the ironstone-nodules of the coal-measures. But the mass of 
the oxides, the carbonates, and other salts of iron found in the rocks has pro- 
hably been converted and reconverted again and again, now im one stratum of 
deposit now in another, now in a trap rock now im a granite, now on the sur- 
face, and perhaps in some organic body, now deep down in a mineral-vein ; and, 
after passing through successive changes of combination, are still sufiering 
alterations within the natural limits of chemical affinity, and subject to the 
nany mechanical agencies that are lable to remove them from one place and 
rearrange them in another. 


REVIEWS. 


Beach Rambles in search of Sea-side Pebbles and Crystals, with some Observations 
on the Origin of the Diamond and other precious Stones. By J. G. FRANcIs. 
London: Routledge, Warne, and Routledge. 1859. 


When people with good reputations indorse the paper of other people who 
have no reputation at all, they must take the consequences. All the world 
knows as well as we do the many good books the Messrs. Routledge have pro- 
duced: their names alone to a book are sufficient to, and do, sell it; and they 
must, therefore, submit to the strictures and commentaries that hundreds of 
others besides ourselves will make on such a pretentious volume—one of the 
poorest in zoological, geological, mineralogical, and chemical knowledge it was 
ever our misfortune to be under the obligation of readmg. We have the 
greatest personal respect for those gentlemen, and gratefully remember the 
many hours of amusement and instruction their works have afforded us, the 
cheap rates at which many valuable publications have issued from their hands, 
and the important modifications made by their efforts in the general book-trade. 
They must forgive our remarks, however severe they may be, in domg that 
duty which, as long as we exist as a popular exponent of a popular and grand 
science, we shall fearlessly do, of defending its sacred domains from the intru- 


REVIEWS. 497 


sion of any kind of trash. We do not want to pull Mr. Francis’s book alto- 
gether to pieces, for some passages are nicely written; but we can not stand 
by to see some thousands of people thirsting for knowledge and drinking in 
innocence from such an unwholesome stream. 

We have read the book only half through—we confess it : we could not get 
any further. To do as much as this even we pulled up several times. We 
managed to get at the first stage over sixteen pages. When we opened the 
book we anticipated better things. “I know,” it begins, “of few things more 
pleasant than to ramble for a mile along one of our southern beaches in the 
early days of autumn. We get the sniff of the sea-breeze; we see prismatic 
colours dappling the water, or curiously reflected from capes of wet sand; 
solemn beetling cliffs, broken here and there by a green slope, rise on one side 
of us; while on the other, we are enchanted by the wild music of the waves, 
as they dash noisily upon the shingle at our feet, and then trickle back with 
faint lisping murmurs into the azure gulf.” 

At the third page, however, we tripped a little over a confusion of “ agates,” 
“fossils,” “pebbles,” and “ pebbly-beaches.” As we progressed onwards we 
had sundry little slips over “ quartz-agate” (p. 13), “ribs of a conglomerate” 
(p. 13), “tubular arms branching out from one central trunk” of a choanite, 
and many like absurdities. We were fairly taken aghast at page sixteen by 
the “limestone tubes” and gelatinous substance of the interspace between 
them attributed to that sponge; this gelatinous substance is described as “ still 
retaining that appearance in a medium of semi-pellucid chalcedony,” whereas 
in reality the so-called gelatinous substance was once sponge-tissue, since lost 
in the process of mineralization. We read on. “ By the side of the choanite 
is another fossil which we now call an ‘alcyonite’, the learned name of the 
nearest living species being ‘aleyonium digitatum.’ It is well known in the 
Isle of Wight as ‘dead man’s fingers.” And what, indeed, do these petrified 
“dead-man’s fingers” prove to be? The wood-cut solves the mystery, the 
artist has drawn what he has seen, and the fossil is really the roots of a creta- 
ceous sponge turned upside down ! 

At the next page our author speaks of ‘‘a zoophyte not ézjected as are the 
choanites, but preserved bodily in gray flint. It is an undoubted ‘actinia,’ in 
every respect the same as those pulpy individuals who are displaying their jelly- 
like bodies and floral hues in many a household aquarium. ‘This creature once 
floated up and down in shallow marine pools, or clung to banks of ribbon-weed 
fringing the coast-skerries. At present, himself of stone, he is firmly wedged 
in a hollow within a large pebble, and reminds us of the words of a pretty 


song— 
*T dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,’ ’’ 


We put the book down. We had been brought to a full stop. This was too 
bad. We need scarcely say the fossil he was thus describing was a choanite. 
No regardis paid to the alliances of the sponges, choanites, and ventriculites 
at all. Mr. Toulmim Smith would reject the assertion that the ventriculites 
must have been creatures lower down in the scale than the choanite, and Dr. 
Mantell would have been disgusted to have been told that living ventriculites 
“yesembled in stature and configuration an ordimary toad-stool.” Indeed, the 
name “ventriculite,’ if the author knew its meaning, might have saved him 
from such an exposure of his ignorance. Verily he seems to know nothing 
correct of the nature of the choanite, nor of the other fossils he figures or 
describes, but to be entirely misled by fanciful similitudes. His “ vermicular,” 
fossils, his “asterid,’ his “nondescript,” his “ myriapod,” his “ terebratula,” 
are as gross instances of ignorance as anybody with a B.A. after his name could 
invent. In the “myriapod” of plate v. we have merely a choanite cut through 


498 THE GEOLOGIST. 


obliquely ; and not to weary the reader with too numerous selections of such 
palpable fancies, we restrain ourselves to the notice of one other—plate vit, 
fig. 2. Let us quote the description of this “ Fig. 2.— Terebratula’ : The 
entire pebble was formed inside of a ‘ pecten’-shell, and inside the pebble \ies this 
formation, which was a living organism connected with the hmge.” 

Can amore magnificent jumble of absurdities be penned > This specimen, as 
we see by the plate, is an ordinary moss-agate, from which the structure of a 
choanite has disappeared under the effect of mineralization, and to the unedu- 
cated eye of the author, dreaming of likenesses instead of tracing out nature, 
has appeared to bear a vague resemblance to a shell which he has termed, of all 
things under the sun, a terebratula. 

Neither can we avoid commenting here on the author’s very evident want of 
knowledge of the different characters and conditions presented by the substance 
of which the objects he pretends to describe are composed, otherwise we should 
not find him speaking of “ quartz-agate,” “ agatine-siliceous,” &c. His know- 
ledge of mineralogy might surely have been sufficiently improved by a reference 
to any popular handbook to have saved him from an exposure of his ignorance 
of the distinctive characteristics of flint, chert, chalcedony, agate, carnelian, 
and quartz. The “ silicified parti-coloured madrepore” spoken of at p. 62, and 
the pebbles ‘“ chafed and worn to skeletons” on the Bognor shore (p. 62), must 
be curiosities indeed worth preserving. 

After our pause at page 17, by an effort we did resume our reading, hoping 
to find some redeeming qualities for such sad errors. At page 18 are some 
figures of fossils, amongst them one of the most abundant from the white chalk, 
which formerly was called Spatangus, and of late years Micraster cor-anguinum. 
The prefix to the wood-cut of this is merely cor-anguinum. Was the author in 
doubt which generic cognomen to take, or can not it be possible he could be 
ignorant of the proper name of so common an object ? 

With the practical directions contained m the account of “the lapidary’s 
workshop” we were certainly pleased, and regard it as the best written portion 
of the work. 

The chapter on the contents of a good beach might have been deemed good 
also, had it been correct; but when we hint that the author supposes the pre- 
sence of bitumen in chalk-flmts—that he throws his refuse chalcedony-pebbles 
“into the sea, there to undergo a fresh impregnation”’—a strange notion which 
is repeated at page 65, where he refers to the effects produced by the “ erystal- 
lizing waves”—we shall have done quite enough to expose the shallowness of 
his mineralogical acquirements. 

Those who read (?) the work will find he employs his mother tongue im a 
very loose manner indeed, as this sentence from page 5 will exemplify. “ But 
what have I got? Above thirty globes of chalcedony, blue and white, as oval 
as bantams’ eggs.” Although a book upon ‘‘ pebbles,” he rarely if ever uses 
that word even with its proper meaning, for he confines it merely to denote 
more or less transparent and parti-coloured siliceous stones. The natural his- 
tory knowledge displayed is no better than that shown of other departments of 
science. At page 41, the choanite—a bulbous sponge—is described as 
“undoubtedly a beautiful creature,” and at page 42 as possessing “feelers.” 
At page 42, too, that there might be no mistake about that absurdity, the 
unfortunate “actinia” is again alluded to as being “of the ‘crass’ kind” with 
“tubular tentacles.’ We puzzled ourselves at first what the “crass” kind of 
actimia were. Our knowledge of the objects of the sea-shore is not slight : 
after five-and-twenty years residence on the coast, we were tolerably familiar 
with most of the ‘“sea-anemones,” and yet we did not know the “crass” kind. 
At last a light struck im upon our reveries, and we suspected “crass” was a 
slang contraction of “crassicornis.” We do not like slang, and there is far too 


oe 


REVIEWS. 4.99 


much of “fast” language in the book; but vulgarity of vulgarities, to talk 
about tobacco-smoking. 

His geological statements are equally valueless, as witness at page 5 his 
remarks about “veins of porphyry and serpentine in the trap and basalt ;” 
those at page 44 about “the extinct volcanic agency” that had made “red, 
yellow, and green jasper-flints” out of “burnt flints” from the chalk; and others 
of the like sort too numerous to mention. 

Although his notions about kaolin, sapphires, the age of granite, and the 
relations of clay and feldspar, and on many other subjects may be vague and 
ridiculous enough, he sometimes shows out in his better self, and presents us 
with passages which by themselves might be regarded almost as beautiful. 
One of these in reference to gems we pick out as well worthy of a better book. 
* As to our own sea-gitt isle, it is surely as guiltless of indigenous gems as of 
white elephants or birds of paradise. Had any such existed with us, they 
must long ere this have been brought to light and appeared in the market. 
We have bored the plam to two hundred fathoms depth; we have pierced the 
hill-side in tumels which extend for miles; geologists and antiquarians have 
delved, and hammered, and sifted; many curious fossils have turned up, and 
a world’s wealth in mmerals, but never anything lke a diamond or oriental. 

“Tt is well that to console us under such apparent poverty as to the gems, we 
possess the treasure an hundred-fold m other shapes, though derived from the 
same sources. Clay gives us no sapphires; but it floors our ponds and canals, 
furnishes our earthenware, and yields the bricks which have built the ribs of 
London. Carbon refuses to flash upon us im the rays of an indigenous 
“brilliant,” but it feeds our furnaces, propels our steamers and locomotives, 
and cheers a million of household hearths under the well-known form of coal. 
And iron is our national sceptre; it reddens here no jacinth or ruby; but it 
supplies us with spades and ploughshares, lays down thousands of miles of 
railway, and has made England the forge and workshop of the known world 
for giant engines and massive machinery. 

“Tf our earth be less dazzlmg than that from Golconda or Peru, it is, we 
may hope, more durable, flowing to us through a healthier channel, by the 
honest labour and steady perseverance of the sous of the soil.” 

We have admitted that we have read only half the book ; we have, however, 
skimmed over the rest, hoping sincerely to find some redeeming parts ; but, 
alas ! we have only found it worse and worse. 

Here and there, as we have already said, there are pretty bits of writing ; 
but as neither gold nor silver, however beautifully elaborated by human art, 
redeems the treacherous mock jewel within the setting, so such attractive pas- 
sages only gild with a showy film the rottenness of the work within. 


Handbook of Geological Terms and Geology. By Davip Pact, F.G.S. Lon- 
don and Edinburgh: Blackwood and Sons, 1859. 


This is a valuable book that has long been wanted by professional geologists 
and amateurs. The “General Terms and Technicalities” (pages 55—381) are 
carefully elaborated. The derivations are correctly given; the explanations are 
full and suggestive. The right pronunciation of the terms is indicated by 
proper accentuation. 

The list of “Specific Appellations” (pages 885—416) will be aboon to many 
a student, who can hereby make himself acquainted with their meaning and 
pronounce them correctly, though unacquainted with Latin and Greek. 

The “Tabular Schemes of the Chemical, Mineral, Lithological, and Vital 
aspects of the Globe” (pages 11—51) form a skeleton of geological knowledge. 


500 F THE GEOLOGIST. 


Elementary substances, minerals, plants, and animals of all grades are here 
carefully classified ; and the geologic series of phenomena are tabulated with the 
latest corrections. 

We fully coincide with the author in his prefatory remarks, that such a hand- 
book as this is greatly needed; that technicalities must exist in a new science, 
to express new objects and new facts; that im this book the ordinary reader 
referrmg to it will generally find the mformation he requires in the first 
and second sentences of a definition; and that the student, the miner, the en- 
gincer, the architect, the agriculturist, and others, will find much that is use- 
ful to them in the longer descriptions and explanations. 

The book is well printed, with good clear type, and is remarkably free from 
errors: an advantage doubtless arising from the fact that the work is from the 
hands of an author who knows his subject, takes a pleasure in it, and conscien- 
tiously bestows upon it plenty of time. We hope he will soon have occasion 
to produce a second and enlarged edition. 


Elementary Geological Collections ; and Geological and Entomological Cabinets. 
Issued by the Naruratists’ AssociaTiION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF 
ScreNncE, 17, Dean-street, Soho, London. 

No. 47.—Small box with lifting trays containing a collection of ninety speci- 
mens of minerals classified and arranged according to their chemical bases. 

No. 48.—The like collection bound m two volumes. 

No. 15.—Geological Collection of Rocks and Fossils, containing about 120 
specimens illustrative of the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Cainozoic, the leneous and 
Volcanic rocks. 

Cabinet No. 10.—Containing six drawers for Entomological, Geological, or 
other collections. 

We inspected these cabinets and the selections of minerals, rocks, and fossils 
with much pleasure, because pains have been taken to get them up tastefully, 
cheaply, and well. The specimens of even the smaller elementary collections are 
sufficiently large to display the general characters of the objects. The geolo- 
gical collection of rocks, No. 15, is formed of pieces almost large enough to be 
termed hand-specimens; while the common typical fossils with which these 
are interspersed give additional value and interest to the series. 

The small cabinet, No. 10, is a very tasteful affair. The door and the 
drawers being veneered, it presents quite a drawing-room appearance. It is 
well adapted for small collections of insects, or very select fossils, and 1s one of 
a series of cheap cabinets, which will supply a long-desired want amongst ama- 
teur naturalists. 

In one instance, in No. 48, we detected two wrong minerals; but this is ap- 
parently only a misplacement in their respective spaces of Oxide of Manganese 
and Oligist Iron, as in the same collection bound in book-like cases, these minerals 
are correctly placed. In the list of strata the granite and some other rocks are 
(contrary to some classifications) very properly and correctly grouped together 
with the intrusive rocks. . 

Altogether these selections are very creditable and very fairly reliable. 


END OF VOL. II. 


INDEX. 


A 


Aérolites, Minerals in, 84: 

Aérolite, large recent, 257 

Algze, Parasitic, in shells, 328 

Alum, Formation of, 34 

Anderson, Rev. Dr., On Tilestones of 
Forfarshire, 149 

,» On Dura Den, 291 
, Monograph of Dura Den 

reviewed, 456 

Anglesite, Crystalline forms of, 84 

Animal Kingdom, Grouping of, by 
S. J. Mackie, 346 

Anonymous Communications, 42 

Ansted, D. T., on Slickensides, 484: 

Anthracite of South Wales, Dr. Bevan 
on, 75 

Anthracite, Note on, 495 

Arsenic in Lignite, 120 

Austen, R. A. Godwin, “ Natural His- 
tory of European Seas” reviewed, 
453 ae 

Australia, Southern, Geology of, Sel- 
wyn on, 292 

Aveyron, Burning Coal Pits of, 34 


B 


Beach Rambles in search of Sea-side 
Pebbles, reviewed, 496 

Beadnell, Geology of, Mr. Tate, on, 59 

Beaver, First British fossil, 409 

Biaritz, Harthquake at, 33 

Binney, H. W., On Lias near Carlisle, 
165 

Bottom Rocks, S. J. Mackie, on, 153, 
181 

Bourgueticrinus, Mr. Wetherell, on 
some stem-plates of, 449 

Brachiopoda, Carboniferous, of Scot- 
land, T. Davidson on, 461 

Brachiopoda, Palzeontological Notes 
on, by T. Davidson, F.G.S., 97 

British Association Meeting, 397, 434, 
482 

British Shells, [lustrated Index of, by 
G. B. Sowerby, reviewed, 332 


C 


Cabinets, cheap, noticed, 500 

Cabinets for Fossils, Cheap, 329 

Canada, Geological Survey of—Report 
of progress for 1857, reviewed, 372 

Canoes, Ancient, 371 

Catalogue of British Fossils, by Prof. 
J. Tennant, reviewed, 90 

Caucasian Geology, Notes on, 92 

Cement for Chalk Fossils, 215 

Cemented Rock-debris, near Blanchard, 
492 

Cephalaspis asterolepis, Mr. J. Harley, 
on, 95 

Chalk Strata around Wealden Area, 
Thickness of, 215 

Chemical Geology, Some Points in, T. 
Sterry Hunt, on, 93 

Chitonidze, Permian, J. W. Kirkby, on, 
167 

Clarke, Dr. Hyde, On the utility of 
Local Geological Surveys, 169 

Clinometers, Forms of, and manufac- 
turers of, 220 

Coal, Artificial formation of, 161 

, Crystalline, 161 

—— that cuts Glass, 163 

at Tete, South Africa, R. Thorn- 

ton on, 166 

, Vegetable Structures in, Dr. 

Dawson on, 167 

near Worksop, Notts, Messrs. J. 

Lancaster and Wright on, 292 

at Murree, on Punjab Railway, 


495 

Colonists, Communications from, 37 

Common Fossils of the British Rocks, 
8. J. Mackie on, 153, 181, 341, 381, 
421 

Cone-in-Cone Structure, H. C. Sorby 
on, 485 

Copper Smelting, Dr. Hyde Clarke 
on, reviewed, 180 

Cotteswold Naturalists’ Field-Club, 172 

Crackers, and other Fossiliferous 
Nodules, 91 

Cretaceous Rocks of Norfolk and Snf- 
folk, 372 


ca INDEX, 


Cretaceous Beds of Limbourg, Sketch 
of, by Binkhorst, reviewed, 417 
Strata of Maestricht, 419 
Crocodilus Hastingsiz, Dermal Ar- 
mour of, Huxley on, 209 
Crystals, Optical Properties of, Des- 
cloizeaux on, 206 


D 


Davidson, T., Paleontological Notes 
on Brachiopoda—No. 2, Strophome- 
nidz and Productide, 97 

Davidson, T., the Carboniferous System 
in Scotland characterized by its 
Brachiopoda, 461 

—_—_——.,, On Spirifera convoluta, 313 

Daubree, Prof., Researches on Meta- 
morphism, 121 

Dawson, Dr., On Fossil Plants of 
Devonian Rocks of Canada, 93 

—_—_———, On Vegetable Structures 
in Coal, 167 

Dendritic Markings, 217 

Devonian Rocks of Canada, 
Plants of, Dr. Dawson on, 93 

Diagrams, Elementary Geological, 
published by Mr. J. Reynolds, re- 
viewed, 90 

Dicynodon Murrayi, Huxley on, 166 

Drift Deposits, Age of, 173 

Clay at Leicester, Blocks of 
Oolite in, 176 

Dundry Hill, Note on, by Mr. R. 
Htheridge, 209 

Dura Den, Yellow Sandstone and Fos- 
sil Fishes of, Dr. Anderson on, 41,291 

, Monograph on, by Rev. Dr. 

Anderson, reviewed, 456 


Fossil 


H 


Harth and the Word, The, reviewed, 
128 

Earthquakes in Turkey, 87 

at Pavia, 205 : 

, Supposed Relations be- 
tween, and Phases of the Moon, 205 

Hlementary Geological Collections 
noticed, 500 

Encrinites and Crinoids, Note on, 299 

Erratic Phenomena in Hungary, On 
some, by Prof. Suess, 288 


ay 


Falconer, Dr., On the Grotta di Mac- 
cagnone, 289 
Fish, Shoal of, buried in Sand, 216 


Flints, Banded, 404 

of High Port, Mark Norman 

on, 297 

, small Nodular Concretions in, 
N. T. Wetherell on, 193 

Ferns Fossil, in fructification, 491 

Footprints in Old Red Sandstone at 
Cummingstone, Beckles on, 48 

Foreign Correspondence, by Dr. T. 
Phipson, 32, 80, 120, 161, 205, 257, 
279, 477 


$$ , by Count 
Marschall, 278, 328, 477 

Forfarshire, Flagstones of, Hugh Mit- 
chell on, 147 

—__—_—_—\—, Tilestones of, Dr. Ander- 
son on, 149 

Fossils, Collecting from Workmen, 410 

, Localities for, around London, 


173 
Frogs, Live, 42 
in Stone and in Trees, 299 
——, Respiration of, 330 


G 


Gems from Private Collections, 160, 
313 
Geological Chart, by Prof. J. Morris, 
reviewed, 180 
Excursions, 217 
—— Inferences, Observations on, 
by Mr. J. A. Davies, 404: 
— Map of Central Europe, by 
Von H. Bach, reviewed, 300 
——_——— Pearls, G. B. Rose on, 295 
Geological Society of London, 43, 93, 
124, 165, 207, 289, 486 
Topography, 215 
Geologists’ Association. 39, 48, 95, 
169, 214, 488 


, Summer Meet- 
ings of, Suggested, 329 
——— , Field Meetings 


of, 368 

Geology, Class Lectures on, 411 

Gibb, Dr. G. D., On Fossil Lightning, 
195 

Girvan, Ayrshire, Fossils from, 412 

Glacial Action in Wales, 127 

Gloag, Paton J., Rev., The Primeval 
World by, reviewed, 128 

Gold Field of Ballaarat, H. Rosales on, 
95 

Gower, A Week’s Walk in, by Dr. 
Bevan, reviewed, 332 

Granite, Weathering of, T. Rupert 
Jones on the, 801 

, Non-protrusion of Solid, 415 


INDEX. li 


Grotta di Maccagnone, Dr. Falconer 
on, 289 

Gypsum and Dolomite, Formation of, 
T. Sterry Hunt on the, 293 


H 


Handbook of Geological Terms and 
Geology, by D. Page, reviewed, 499 

Harrogate, Geology of, 493 

Hematite, Deposits of, Glamorgan- 
shire, Dr. Watson on, 241 

Harkness, Prof. R., On Geology of 
Hook Point, 28 

Hautes Alpes, Physical Geography of, 
281 

Hereford, Map of, by E. Curley, re- 
viewed, 340 

Highlands, Northern, of Scotland, Mr. 
J. Miller on, 44 

— —— —, Sir. R. 

Murchison on, 45 

Hook Point, Geology of, Prof. R. 
Harkness on, 28, 71 


Hunt, T. Sterry, On Chemical Geo- 
logy, 93 

Huxley, Prof., On Dicynodon Murrayi, 
166 

—————,, On Amphibian and Rep- 
tilian Remains from South Africa 
and Australia, 207 

, On a Fossil Bird and a 

Fossil Cetacean from New Zealand, 
209 

—————,, On Rhamphorhynchus 

Bucklandi, 208 


Icthyosaurus platyodon in York Mu- 
seum, 218 

Iguanodon Remains at Atherfield, Isle 
of Wight, 41 

Inferences, Geological, J. E. Davies 
on, 449 

Initials, Protest against the Use of, by 
correspondents, 38 

Iron, Notes on, 495 


J 

Jurassic Flora, Baron de Zigno on, 289 
K 

Kaolin, French, 35 


L 


Landslip in the Isle of Portland, 127 

————-n Isle of Sheppy, 493 

Layvas formed on Steep Slopes, Sir C. 
Lyell on, 315 

Leckenby, Mr. J., On Speeton Clay of 
Yorkshire, 9 

Lectures on Geology, 411 

Liassic Deposits near Carlisle, EH. W. 
Binney on, 165 

Lightning, Fossil, Dr. Gibb on, 195 

Lingula Flags or Primordial Zone, 
Foreign Fossils of, J. W. Salter on, 
165 

, 8. J. Mackie 

on, 421 

Lisbon, Earthquake at, 32 

Lizard, Live, in a Seam of Coal, 410 

Local Museums, 177 

Loftus, W. Kennett, 
of, 176 

London Clay, Fossils from, 415 

Lyell, Sir C., On Lavas formed on 
Steep Slopes, 315 


Obituary Notice 


M 


Mackie, S. J.. On Common Fossils of 
British Rocks, 153, 181, 341, 381, 
421 

Malvern, Guide to the Geological Lo- 
calities of, 218 

, Natural History Field-club, 
170 

Mammalia, Fossil, of the Vienna Ter- 

tiary Strata, 287 
, Oldest Fossil, 122 

Mammalian Remains near Wells, 40 

—__—____—_—__—_—— at King’s Lynn 
and Chatteris, 92 


== ine hhew Dover 


Museum, 127 


in the Valley of 
the Soar, Leicestershire, 174: 
—_——\— at Barton, Pet- 
worth, &c., in Sussex, 219 

near Mendip, 


Wales, 220 
—__—__—_—— in Hssex, Norfolk, 
Northamptonshire, and Durham, 220 
—_——— at Brockhall and 


Stutton, 452 
—____—__—_—_ Supposed Trias- 
sic, Mr. C. Moore on, 173 
re at Gatehouse, 494 
Man, First tracesof, onthe Harth 432 
479 


iv INDEX. 


Manure, Mineral, in the Greensand, 
AIA 

Map, Geological, of Englandand Wales, 
by Prof. Ramsay, reviewed, 135 

Marcou, M. Jules, On Neocomian and 
Wealden Rocks in the Jura and 
in England, 1 

Marschall, Count, 278, 283, 285, 328 

Mastodon Remains in Canada, 217 

Megaceros, First Fossil, 177 

Metalliferous Strata of Rochlitz, 283 

Metamorphism by Granite Rocks, De- 
lesse on, 206 


undergone by Hruptive 
Rocks, Delesse on, 281 

Metamorphic Rocks, Notes on, by J. A. 
Davies, 451 

Meteoric Stones, 85 

—____—_—_——., Coal and Carburetted 
Hydrogen in, 161, 278 

Meteorites, Notices of, by Hérnes, 
Wohler, and Haidinger, 285 

Miller, Mr. John, On the Succession of 
Rocks in the Northern Highlands, 4:4 

Mineral Kingdom, The, by Dr. J. G. 
Kurr, reviewed, 178 

Mineralogy, Lecture on, by Prof. 'Ten- 
nant, 169 

Minerals, Rock-forming, Descriptive 
List of, 231 

Minerals, Sedimentary Deposit of, in 
Rock Strata, 493 

Mineral Springs of Goritzia and Istria, 
284. 

Mineral Veins in Limestones and Sand- 
stones, 40 

, H. C. Sorby’s Note on, 40 

, Formation of, by Sedi- 
mentary Deposit, 416 

Mitchell, Hugh, On the Flagstones of 
Forfarshire, 147 

Morayshire, Sandstones of, Sir R. Mur- 
chison on, 45 

Mosaic Narrative, Third and Fourth 
Days of, 410 

Murchison, Sir R. I., On the Geologi- 
cal Structure of the North of Scot- 
land, and the Orkney and Shetland 
Islands, 43 

, On the Geological Struc- 

ture of the North of Scotland, 45 

’s Siluria, reviewed, 88 


N 


Napoli and Palmieri, New Minerals 
described by, 280 

Natural History of the European Seas, 
by Forbes and Austen, reviewed, 453. 


Neocomian and Wealden Rocks in the 
Jura and in England, M. Jules Mar- 
cou, 1 

Nodules, Artificial, 412 

Noises, Subterranean, 83 

Notes and Queries, 37, 91, 127, 173, 
215, 295, 329, 368, 404, 445, 490 


O 


Oldhamia, The Discoverer of, 371 

Old Red Sandstone, Crustaceans of, 42 

—_________—_.,, Fishes of, Egerton 
on, 290 

Oolite of South of England and of 
Yorkshire Coast, Dr. Wright on, 209 

Oreston, Ossiferous Fissure at, W. 
Pengelly on, 434: 

Ore-Veins, Formation of, H. C. Sal- 
mon on the, 355, 389, 427 

Organic Life, Tabular View of Divi- 
sions of, by 8. J. Mackie, 344 

Oxford, Strata, Phillips on, 290 


P 


Page, D., Advanced Text Book of Geo- 
logy, reviewed, 332 

Page, D., Handbook of Geological 
Terms and Geology, reviewed, 499 

Palzeontological Society, 414: 

Palzontology, The Archzeology of, 176 

Paradoxides noyvo-repertus, 165 

Pattison, 8. R., The Harth and the 
Word, reviewed, 128 

Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers, reviewed, 

— 336 

Pengelly, W., On Ossiferous Fissure at 
Oreston, 434: 

Pentacrinite Plates, Movements of, in 
Vinegar, 218 

Persia, Minerals from, C. A. Murray 
on, 166 

Price, J., on Slickensides, 482 

Phacops caudatus, from Dudley, 160 

Phipson, Dr., Foreign Correspondence 
by, 161, 205, 257, 278 

Phosphate of Lime Nodules, Notes on, 
by Rev. P. B. Brodie, 494: 

Pitted Surface of Magnesian Lime- 
stone, 495 

Platina, Native, 328 

Pleistocene Deposit at Cambridge, 
Shells in, 215 

Pre-Adamite Ages, J. A. Davies, note 
on, 451 

Primeval World, The, reviewed, 128 

Proceedings of Societies, 43, 93, 124, 
165, 207, 289, 486 


INDEX. Wi 


Productidz, Davidson on, 97 
Purbeck Dirt-bed, Original thickness 
of, 216 


Geologic Scenery of, by P. 
Brannon, reviewed, 133 


R 


Ramsay, Prof., Geological Map of Eng- 
land and Wales, reviewed, 135 

Red Chalk of England, Rev. T. Wilt- 
shire on, 261 

Red Sandstone of Herefordshire, Fos- 
sils from, Rev. W. 8. Symonds on, 
485 

, List of Fossils from, 275 

—__—_—_——.,, Note of Fossils from, 417 

Reptilian Eges, Supposed, from Great 
Oolite, Buckman on, 290 

Remains from South Africa, 

Owen on, 211 

Reviews, 88, 128, 178, 300, 332, 372, 
417, 496 

Rhamphoryhynchus Bucklandi, Hux- 
ley on, 208 

Roberts, Mr. G. E., On Upper Ludlow 
Tilestones, 117 

Rock Basins, Artificial Origin of, 368 

Formations, Contemporaneity of, 
415 

——,, Suggestions respecting, 452 

— , H. C. Salmon on, 221 

, their Chemical and Mineral Com- 

position, H. C. Salmon on, 49 

, Chemical Symbols of Elements 

of, 52 

, Constituents of, 55 

, List of Hlements and Primary 

Compounds, 53 


s 


Salmon, H. C., On the Formation of 
Ore-Veins, 355, 389, 427 

—————., On Rocks, 41, 221 

Salt-basins of ? Hérault, 35 

Salter, J. W., On Foreign Fossils of 
Lingula Flags, 165 

Sand-hills of the Mediterranean and of 
the Coast of Flanders, 81 

Sand-pipes near Swainstone, Isle of 
Wight, 175 

Saurian, new fossil, 124 

Scilly Isles, Geology of, Rev. Francis 
Stratham on, 12 

Scotland, North of, Murchison on, 43 

Scrope, G. Poulett, On Volcanic Cones 
and Craters, 124: 


Secondary Rocks, Lower, South- 
easterly Attenuation of, Mr. Edward 
Hull on, 213 

Selenite, Films of, 175 

, Manner of cutting Films of, 40 

Selenium and Tellurium at Vesuvius, 
279 

Shap District, Geology of, 92 

Siluria, by Sir R. I. Murchison, re- 
view of, 88 

——, Count D’ Archiac’s, Notice of, 
330 

Silurian Strata of Brittany, Supposed 
Vertebrate Remains in, 36 

Rocks, Lower, 8. J. Mackie on, 

341, 381 

Strata, Numerical Table of 
Fauna and Flora of, 331 

Slickensides, J. Priceon, 482 

Dr. T. Ansted on, 484 

Smith, Toulmin, Inaugural Address to 
Geologists’ Association, 95 

Sorby, H. C., on Cone-in-Cone Struc- 
ture, 485 

Sorby, H. C., On Structures produced 
by Currents in Stratified Rocks, 
137 

Sowerby, G. B., Illustrated Index of 
British Shells, reviewed, 332 

Speeton Clay of Yorkshire, Mr. J. 
Leckenby on, 9 

Spiders, Live, in Flints, 299 

Spirifera convoluta, Davidson on, 313 

Spirit of Good Books, 315 

Spitzbergen, Notes on, 
Lamont, 293 

Sponges, Chalk, of Yorkshire, 40 

in Chalk of Yorkshire, 409 

Stagonolepis Robertsonii, Huxley on, 
46 


by M. J. 


of Elgin, Murchison on, 
164 

Statham, Rev. F., On Geology of the 
Scilly Isles, 12 

Strophomenidz, Davidson on, 97 

Structures Produced by Currents in 
Stratified Rocks, Sorby on, 137 

Subterranean Noises, 122 

Succession of Life, First Traces of, 
Mackie on, 341, 381 

Sulphuriferous Strata in Roman States, 
284: 

Symonds, Rev. W. 8., on Fishes and 
Tracks from the Passage Rocks and 
Lower Red Sandstone of Hereford- 
shire, 485 

Symonds, Rev. W. S., On the Malvern 
Strata, 170 


al INDEX. 


uh 


Temperature of Harth’s Crust at Sight 
Depths, 86 

Tennant’s, Prof. J., Catalogue of British 
Fossils, “reviewed, 99 

Tertiaries of Horn (Lower Austria), 279 

Tertiary Deposits in Hast Indies, Rey. 
S. Hislop on, 293 

Strata at Peckham, 412 

at Woolwich, Rev. T. G. 
Bonney on, 296 

Text Book, Advanced, of Geology, by 
D. Page, reviewed, 332 

Tilestones, Upper Ludlow, Mr. G. H. 
Roberts on, 117 

Tin-Ore at Hvigtok, Greenland, J. W. 
Tayler on, 167 

Toad, The Case of a, 330, 479 

Topics, Geological, 432 

Tungsten, The Metal, 260 


Vv 


Vegetable Kingdom, General Group- 


ing of, 8. J. Mackie, 384 


Venus’-Hair Stone, 412 

Vesuvius, Activity of, 87 

Vibrations of the Harth, 259 

Vitriolite, a New Mineral, 260 

Volcanic Cones and Craters, Mode of 
Formation of, G. Poulett Scrope on, 
124 

Volcano in Isle aii Bourbon, 86 


W 


Warp, Deposition of 491 

Watson, Dr., On Hematite Deposits of 
Glamorganshire, 241 

Weardale, Physical Geology of, 38 

Wetherell, N. T., On Small Nodular 
Concretions in Flints, 193 

, On some’ Stem-Plates of 

Bourgueticrinus, 449 

Wharfedale, Geological Tour in, by Mr. 
Edward Wood, 445 

Wigton, Cumberland, Geology of, 296 

Wiltshire, Rev. T. On the Red Chalk of 
England, 261 

tooled. ‘Tertiary Strata at, 296 


LIST OF LIGNOGRAE ES 


LIGN. PAGE. 
1. Section, North Side of Permel- 
lm Bay, beneath Mount 
Flagon. . oo 6 IY) 
. Natural Cave 0 on the Hugh 4 24 
. Porphyritic Dyke or Hlvan- 
course, at Watermill Bay, 
St. Mary’s, Scilly . . 24: 
4, Granite Blocks at Porth Hel- 
ie kava 26 
5. Cast of Dorsal Valve of Cyr- 
tina septosa . . 98 
6. Athyris ambigua, internal 
Cast of Dorsal Valve. . . 98 
7. Internal Cast of Ventral Valve 98 
8 
9 
0 
1 


© bo 


. Interior of the Dorsal Valve . 99 
. Producta horrida, interior of 

Dorsal Vialyen gw amnee eee OG, 
. Interior of Ventral Valve . . 106 
. Longitudinal Section of Cho- 


MCLE GCOMOILGES ene een 


12. Diagram of Current-bedding . 139 
13. Diagram of Ripple-bedding . 142 
14, Diagram of Ripple-drift . . 148 


15. Section of the Longmynd. . 185 


16. Sea, Rippless 7 ier ee ae S71 
17. Pygidium of Palseopyge Ram- 
Sayl . 5 eg dliste: 


18. Dikelocephalus Minnesotensis 189 
19. Nodular Concretions in Chalk 


Mlimts a ae . 193 
20. Ideal Section of Tonks near 
Llantrissant . . 243 


21. Plan of Ancient Mine Work- 
ings in Vein of Heematite 
Tron Ore, Lilanharry . . . 254 
22. Map of Part of Yorkshire, Lin- 
colnshire,and Norfolk, show- 
ing outcrop and range of the 


Red Challe oe . 262 
23. Hunstanton Cliff (ooking to 
the north) . . 269 


24. Tertiary Strata at “Chariton 
Pit, near Woolwich . . . 297 
25. Vion Tor, Dartmoor, Devon- 


Shireen ee . 301 
26. The Cheesewring, n near Lis- 
kierd, Cornwall . . . . 302 


35. 


36. 


INDEX. vil 


. Haytor, Dartmoor, Devon. . 303 
. The Logging Stone, St. Levins 


Wersyyalbys is es 3 808 


. Blackistone, Dartmoor. . . 304 
. Joints inGranite, Eastern Face 


of Old Quarry, near Haytor. 305 


. Eastern Face of New Quarry, 


Haytor .. 5 ise) Oeeneo 05) 


. Portion of atone Face of 


New Quarry, Haytor. . . 306 


. Outlines of Rock-basins on 


Haytor . . . 309 


. Spirifera convoluta, ‘fro om the 


Carboniferous Limestones of 

Thorneley . . 314 
Ideal Section of Mount Fina, 

to illustrate the theory of a 

double axis of elevation . . 318 
Non-parallel Lavas, Northern 

Escarpment of the Val del 


41. Scolithus linearis, from an 


American specimen . . . 388 
42. Lingula Davisi . . . . . 422 
43. Olenus micrurus. . . . . 423 
44, Aonostus pisiformis . . . 423 
45, Paradoxides Forchhammeri (2) 

from British strata . . . 424 
46. Hymenocaris vermicauda. . 424 
47. Paradoxides Forchhammeri 

(of Angelim)y yes ae eo 
48. Olenus bisulcatus . . . . 426 
49" Olenus humilis 2.9) 2). A26 
50. Olenus scarabzeoides (British 

Specimen) . . 426 
51. Olenus scarabseoides Gt Wah- 

lenberg) : . 426 
52. Radiating Crystals in Brec- 

ciated Ore-Vein . . . . 428 


53. Banded Form of Ore-Vein . 428 
54. Ossiferous Cavern, at Oreston 436 


12-0. . 320 55. Ossiferous Fissure, at Oreston 441 
37. Curvatures in the Lavas of 56. Specimens, of Stem-Plates of 
Zocealaro . . . 320 Bourgueticrinus . . . 449 
38. Map of Etna, the Val del Bove, 57. Terebratula elongata, inferi ior 
and the Coast of Ripesto . 321 of Dorsal Valve Gane EMU 472 
39. Furrows of Aqueous Erosion 58. Terebratula vitrea, interior of 
on the Cone of Tengger. . 322 Dorsal Valveof. . . . 472 
40. Basins near the Blackistone 59. Terebratula hastata, interior of 
eee ps 6» 869 Dorsal Valve of, . . . 473 
SSO SPATE. 
PLATE. PAGE, 
I. Comparative Tabular Sections of Foreign and British Upper Rae 
Wealden, and Neocomian Beds Se a ae re Eg 
I. Worm Tracks (?) from Stratanear Beadnell . . . ..... 66 
III. Various Species of Productide and Strophomenide ...... 97 
TV. Various Species of Productide and Strophomenide ...... 97 
VY. Phacops caudatus, from the Limestone of Dudley. . . .. .. +. 160 
VI. Fossil Rain-Drops from the “ Bottom-Rocks”’ of the Longmynd . . 182 
VII. Ripple-Marks, Sun-Cracks, Raim-Drops abraded by the Surf, and 
Worm-Holes in the Sheltered Hollows—from the “ Bottom Rocks” 
of the Longmynd . Hn 186 
VIII. Oldhamia antiqua—from Bray Bead! i Seay eA at ¢ Heatiouio 2) 
IX. Patella vulgaris and Balani, on a econ of the eee of a Lead- 
Vein from Llantrissant ine . 247 
X. Mwyndy Iron-Mine, near Lilantrissant. . .. . : 6 5 BAD) 


XI. Section of Hematite and Manganese Mine, Guar con near Bridgend 256 
XII. Various Species of Carboniferous Brachiopoda . . . .. . =. . 4621 


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TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


M. Juzes Marcou, Zurich.—On the Neocomian and the Wealden Rocks in the 
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Joux Lecxensy, Esq. Scarborouigh.—Note on the Speeton Clay of Yorkshire . 9 
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Isles . ee i ee eee 
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NV APS, PLANS, SECTIONS, and DRAWINGS on STONE 
4Y& and WOOD, ENGRAVINGS on METAL, WOOD, and STONE, LECTURE- 
DIAGRAMS, and all kinds of Scientific Illustrations, are executed at the Office of 
“The Geologist,” 154, Strand. . 


A* ARTICLED PUPIL is required by the Editor of “The 
Geologist.” - Address by letter to 154, Strand. a 


SADDLERY AND HARNESS FOR INDIA AND THE COLONIES. 3 
AY ete MILROY AND SONS beg to inform Emigrants and — 


Residents in India and the Colonies, that they Manufacture, and have always — 
on hand, a Large Stock of every description of SADDLERY and HARNESS © 
peculiarly adapted for use in India, Australia, and the other Colonies. - . 

Manvractory, Sun-Court, CornhilJ, London. 


GRICULTURAL AND CHEMICAL COLLEGE, | 
38 and 39, Lower Kennington-lane, London. ; 
Principal—J. C. NESBIT, F.GS. F.C.S. &e. . 
In this Institution unusual facilities are afforded for acquiring a thorough knowledge 
of Agricultural, General, and Analytical Chemistry, and also of Surveying and © 
Mathematics. 
The Terms for Students, resident or non-resident, may be known on application. 


Analyses and Assays of every description are promptly and accurately executed at — 
the College. | 


OUBLE” REFRACTING SPAR.—Mr. Tennant, Geologist, — 
149, Strand; has just received from Iceland some unusually large and fine — 
specimens of this interesting mineral. Mr. Tennant arranges Elementary Collections 
of Shells, Minerals, Rocks, and Fossils, to illustrate Conchology, Mineralogy, and 
Geology. He also gives Practical Instruction in Geology and Mineralogy. ; 


Just published, 8yo. 3s. 6d. sewed. 


(PRE GROUND BENEATH US: its Geological Phases and 
Changes. Being Three Lectures on the Geology of Clapham, and the neigh- 
bourhood of London generally. By Josern Prestwron, F.RB.S. F.G.S. &e. 3 
Joun Van Voorst, 1, Paternoster Row. 


a —— _ y | 
ROVINCIAL INSTITUTIONS desirous of making arrange- 
ments for the delivery, during the ensuing season, of popular Lectures on 


Geology, are requested to communicate with the Editor of “‘ The Geologist” during 
the present month. 


PRICE ONE SHILLING. 


VOL. II. FEBRUARY, 1859. NO. 14. 


| THE GEOLOGIST; 


MONTHLY MAGAZINE 


OF 


hMEOLOGY 


EDITED BY S. J. MACKIE, F.G.S. F.S.A. 


“ Geology, in the magnitude and. sublimity of the objects of which it treats, 
undoubtedly ranks in the scale of the sciences next to Astronomy.”—Herschel : 
Discourse on Study of Natural Philosophy. 


LONDON: 
_ PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE OF THE GEOLOGIST, 154, STRAND; 


AND SOLD BY 
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO. STATIONERS’ HALL COURT. 


PRINTED BY R. CLAY, BREAD STREET HILL. 


Tur Editor requests that contributors will bear in mind the POPULAR 
character of THe GEoLocist, and endeavour to make their articles explicit 
and intelligible to general readers. 

Students or others wishing for information on particular points of 
Geology, or for explanation of Geological terms and phrases, are requested 
to address their questions to the Editor of THe GroLogist. Answers 
will be given to them in the ensuing number of the Magazine. 

Letters and communications by Post, specimens, books for review, and 
parcels for this Magazine, to be addressed to THe EDITOR OF THE GEOLOGIST, 
154, Strand, London, W.C. to whom all advertisements may be addressed. 

The Editor requests subscribers to forward their names and addresses 
direct to himself, to insure correctness of delivery. 

Tur GEOLOGIST is sent by Post free to Subscribers for six months on 
receipt of a Post-Office order for 5s. 9d., or 6s. in Postage Stamps ; Post- 
Office orders are to be made payable to the Editor, at the Charing Cross 
Post-Office. 


GEOLOGIST OFFICE, S. J. MACKIE, 
154, Strand. Editor and Proprietor. 


CORRESPONDENTS. 


Communications received from T. Davipson, Esq. F.R.S. F.G.8.; H. C. Sorpy, Esq. 
F.G.S. Bromfield; W. H. Beystep, Esq. Maidstone; 8. R. Parrison, Esq. F.G.S. 
Torrington Square; Rev. W. 8S. Symonps, Pendock, Whedbury; L. H.‘Fuez, Esq. 
Plymouth; Mr. R. Damon, Weymouth; Mr. M. W. Norman, Ventnor; W. 
Wuirraxker, Esq. Hungerford ; Mr. W. Mircuennr. 


BOOKS RECEIVED. 


“ The Earth and the World,” by F. R. Partison, F.G.S. Longman & Co. 

* The Primeval World,” by Rev. Paton J. Guoag. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 

Pamphlet “ On the Carboniferous Rocks of Ireland, and chiefly on the Yellow 
Sandstone, and its Relations with the Coal Measures and other Groups,” by Joun 
KELty. 


Preparing for publication, in post 8vo. price to Subscribers, 5s. 


(PHeE CHALK CLIFFS OF DOVER; a Geological and 
8.5 


Paleontological Description of the typical section of the Hnglish Upper Cretaceous beds.—By 
. Mackig, F.G.S. F.S.A. 

Of the beautiful and instructive section of the Chalk Strata at Dover, there exists no other descrip- 
tion than the original and admirable paper by William Phillips in the Geological Transactions of 1818. 
The author’s long and intimate acquaintance with this locality gives him peculiar facilities for pre- 
senting in a light and readable form a concise and accurate account of the White Cliffs of this 
celebrated shore, and which he trusts will be thought worthy of being regarded as a text-book 
generally for the chalk districts of England. 

The proposed work will be illustrated by first-class woodcuts, and will be issued to Subscribers at the 
price of Five Shillings. Subscriptions will be received by the Author, 154, Strand. 


London: J. VAN Voorst, Paternoster-row. 


SUBSCRIBERS’ NAMES ALREADY RECEIVED. 
Additional Names received :— 


J. C. MawnsEt, Esg. Longthorn, Dorsetshire. 
GeorGE MansEL, Esq. Longthorn Lodge, Dorsetshire. 
Wma. Sxipp, Esq. Blandford, Dorsetshire. 

Dr. J. Brespy, 89, Gloucester Place, Portman Square. 


(A EOLOGY.—KING’S COLLEGE, LONDON.—PRO- 
J} FESSOR TENNANT, F.G.S. commenced a course of Lectures on Geology, on 
Friday Morning, January 28th, at 9 o’clock. They will be continued on each 
succeeding Wednesday and Friday, at the same hour.—Fee, £2 2s. 
R. W. Jeur, D.D. Principal. 


“To STUDENTS AND GENTLEMEN FORMING COLLECTIONS. 
OSSILS from the CHALK MARL and GREENSAND 


i DEPOSITS, can be obtained at moderate prices of 
Marx Wm. Norman, Ventnor, Isle of Wight. 


OSSILS AND MINERALS FOR SALE.— Devonian Fishes, 


and Fossils from other formations, can be had (singly, or in small series,) from 
any particular formation or district; also Coloured Casts of rare Fossils. 
A great variety of fine Specimens of Rare Minerals, both British and Foreign, just 
received, which may be selected singly, or in small series. 
Collections of Precious Stones for Cabinets, either polished as Gems, or in their 
Natural State, to be had of 
James R. Grecory, 59, Frith Street, Soho, London, W. 


OUBLE REFRACTING SPAR.—Mr. Tennant, Geologist, 


149, Strand, has just received from Iceland some unusually large and fine 
specimens of this interesting mineral. Mr. Tennant arranges Elementary Collections 
of Shells, Minerals, Rocks, and Fossils, to illustrate Conchology, Mineralogy, and 
Geology. He also gives Practical Instruction in Geology and Mineralogy. 

A NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION OF MURCHISON’s “SILURIA.” 
Now ready, Third Edition, thoroughly Revised and Enlarged, with large Coloured 
Geological Map, and Frontispiece, 41 large Plates, and 206 Woedcuts. 8vo. 42s. 
ILURIA. The History of the Oldest Fossiliferous Rocks and 
their Foundations, with a brief Sketch of the Distribution of Gold over the 
Earth. By Sir Ropsrick J. Murcuison, F.R.S. Director General of the Geological 
Survey of Britain. 


Joun Murray, Albemarle Street. 


GEOLOGISTS’ ASSOCIATION. 


PRESIDENT—Toulmin Smith, Esq. 
VicE-PRESIDENTS—James Carter, Esq. M.R.C.S.; Hyde Clarke, Esq. D.C.L. &c.; The Rev. 
Thomas Wiltshire, M.A., F.G.S. &c.; Chas. Woodward, Esq. F.R.S. 
TREASURER—William Hislop, Esq. F.R.A.S. &e. 
Honorary SrecretTaARY—J. E. Wakefield, Esq. 


The object of the Association is to facilitate the study of Geology and its allied 
Sciences, by the reading of Papers, the delivery of Lectures, the formation of a Library 
and Museum for reference, the exchange of Fossils among the Members, and the 
printing of Proceedings. 

The Association consists of Town and Country Members, all residents within the 
Metropolitan Postal Delivery being deemed Town Members. 

Ladies are eligible for election as Members. 

Town Members have the privilege of attending all tne Ordinary Meetings of the 
Association, and are entitled to the full benefit of the Association in respect of the 
Museum and Library, and of the services of the Committee for facilitating the ex- 
change of Specimens, They are also entitled to a copy of all Papers printed by the 
Association. 

Country Members are entitled to the benefit of the Association as regards the ex- 
change of Specimens, the receiving such information as it may be in the power of the 
Association to afford, and to a copy of all Papers printed by the Association. 

Candidates for admission to be proposed by two or more Members, who shall sign a 
Certificate of recommendation, setting forth the name, description, and place of re- 
sidence, of the Candidate. 

Annual Subscription for Town Members, Ten Shillings; for Country Members, 
Five Shillings. 

The Annual Subscription may be commuted by payment of Five Guineas for Town, 
and Three Guineas for Country Members. 

All Members elected after the 25th March, 1859, shall pay an Admission Fee of Ten 
Shillings for Town, and Five Shillings for Country Members. 

Communications to be addressed (pre-paid) to J. H. Waxezriznp, Highgate Rise, 
London, N.W. 


a race 


TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


H. ©. Satmon, Esq. Plymouth—On Rocks; their Chemical and Mineral Com- 
_ position, and Physical Characteristics . . . pete ae sper naei rg 1 A 


Tarn, Esq. F.G.S.—The Geology of Beadnell, in the County of Northum- 
ea see eit A description of some Annelids of the Carboniferous Formation 59 


Professor R. Harness, F.R.S. F.G.S.—The Geology of Hook Point. ... 71 
Dr. J. P. Bevan, F.G.S.—On the Anthracite-coal of South Wales . . . . . 75 
Dr. T. L. Parrson, Paris—Foreign Correspondence .. . . « - « « «+ + 80 
BuVIRWS oc eS ew ee elms a USNS fe 8) a ae ea, aa ee 
Wores AND QUERIES 40 § SU. NEMS We al ek EE ia cae a yh Od 
Proceepines or Geonogican SoormTIpS . . . s 6 - © + ee ww ew we OB 


Now ready, Vol. I. of “ The Geologist,” handsomely bound in cloth, price 14s. 6d. 
Ornamental Covers for binding can be obtained at the Office of “‘ The Geologist,” 
154, Strand, price ls. 3d. 


EOLOGY & MINERALOGY.—UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, 
LONDON.—PROFESSOR J. MORRIS, F.G.S. will commence a Course of 
Lectures on the above subjects, on Tuesday, February 1, at 2 past 4, pu. The 
Lectures will be continued every Tuesday and Thursday, at the same hour. During 
the Course, Field Excursions will be taken. 
Payments, including College Fee, £2 2s. 
Tuomas L. Donarpson, M.I.B.A. Ph.D. . 
Dean of the Faculties of Arts and Laws. 
Cas. C. ATKINSON, 
Secretary to the Council. 


Now ready. 


ae GEOLOGICAL DIAGRAMS. Prepared under the 
superintendence of JOHN MORRIS, F.G.S. to illustrate the principles of this 
important science. The series includes a large Section of the Harth’s Crust, exhibiting 
the arrangement of the various Rocks, and some of the principal Geological Pheno- 
mena; Table of the Order of Succession of the Strata; Forms of Stratification ; 
Section of the Carboniferous Group (the source of Coal and Iron); Section of the 
London Basin, illustrating the Principles of Water-supply, Springs, Artesian and 
Common Wells; Interior of a Coal Mine; Section of a Copper Mine, &c. At the foot 
of each Diagram is given a succinct explanation, printed in large type. On nine 
sheets, each 25 by 20 inches, coloured, price’ 10s. 6d. the series; or on one large 
roller, varnished, 18s. : 
NEW and POPULAR EDUCATIONAL DIAGRAMS illustrative of NATURAL 
and PHYSICAL SCIENCE, MACHINERY, MANUFACTURES, &c. published by 
James Reynoups, 174, Strand, London. 


APS, PLANS, SECTIONS, and DRAWINGS on STONE 

and WOOD, ENGRAVINGS on METAL, WOOD, and STONE, LECTURE: 
DIAGRAMS, and all kinds of Scientific Illustrations, are executed at the Office of 
“The Geologist,” 154, Strand. 


_An ARTICLED PUPIL required, For Premium and Terms apply to the Editor 
of “The Geologist,” 154, Strand. 


——<——— 


AGRICULT URAL AND CHEMICAL COLLEGE, 
38 and 39, Lower Kennington-lane, London. 
j Principal—J. C. NESBIT, F.GS. F.C.S. &e. 

In this Institution unusual facilities are afforded for acquiring a thorough knowledge 
of Agricultural, General, and Analytical Chemistry, and also of Surveying and 
Mathematics. 3 

The Terms for Students, resident or non-resident, may be known on application, 


ace and Assays of every description are promptly and accurately executed at 
the College. 


PRICE ONE SHILLING. ~ °° —~ 


= ree Ht ae Ss eee ade. 


VOL. II. MARCH, 1859. NO. 15. 


THE GEOLOGIST; 


A POPULAR 


MONTHLY MAGAZINE 


OF 


EOL O G Y. 


EDITED BY S8. J. MACKIE, F.GS. F.S.A. 


“ Geology, in the magnitude and sublimity of the objects of which it treats, 
undoubtedly ranks in the scale of the sciences next to Astronomy.”’—Herschel : 
Discourse on Study of Natural Philosophy. 


LONDON: 
PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE OF THE GEOLOGIST, 154, STRAND, 


AND SOLD BY 
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO. STATIONERS’ HALL COURT. 


PRINTED BY R. CLAY, BREAD STREET HILIy 


Tux Editor requests that contributors will bear in mind the PO PULAR 
character of THE GEOLOGIST, and endeavour to make their articles explicit. 
and intelligible to general readers. 


Students or others wishing for information on particular points of 
Geology, or for explanation of Geological terms and phrases, are requested 
to address their questions to the Editor of THE GEOLOGIST. Answers 
will be given to them in the ensuing number of the Magazine. 


Letters and communicatious by Post, specimens, books for review, and 
parcels for this Magazine, to be addressed to THs Ep1T0oR OF THE GEOLOGIST, 
154, Strand, London, W.C. to whom all advertisements may be addressed. 


The Editor requests subscribers to forward their names and addresses 
direct to himself, to insure correctness of delivery. 


Tur GroLogist is sent by Post free to Subscribers for six months on 
receipt of a Post-Office order for 5s. 9d., or 6s. in Postage Stamps ; Post- 
Office orders are to be made payable to the Editor, at the Charing Cross 
Post-Office. 


GEoLocIst OFFICE, 8. J. MACKIE, 
154, Strand. : Editor and Proprietor. 


CORRESPONDENTS. 


Communications received from Mr. Waxuriztp, Hampstead; Rev. W. S. Srmonps, 
F.G.S., Pendock; S. R. Parrison, Esq. F.G.S., Torrington Square; Ernest P. 
Wixtns, Esq. F.G.S. Newport, Isle of Wight; A. B.; — 8. A. B. del. M., Port 
Stewart; G. E. Roperts, Esq. Kidderminster; W. D. Guypz, Esq. Winsham, 
Chard; J. E. Jerrarp, Esq. Honiton; H.C. Saumon, Esq. Plymouth, F.S.A. ~ 


BOOKS RECEIVED. 


“ A New Geological Chart, showing at one View the Order of Succession cf the 
Stratified Rocks, &e.” by Professor Jonn Morris, F.G.S. London: J. Reynolds, 
174, Strand. 

“Geological Map of England and Wales,’ by Professor Ramsay. London: 
Stamford, Charing Cross. 


Preparing for publication, in post 8vo. price to Subscribers, 5s. 


f° HE CHALK CLIFFS OF DOVER; a Geological and 
Paleontological Description of the typical section of the English Upper Cretaceous beds.—By 
S.J. Macxiz, F.G.S. F.S.A. 

Of the beautiful and instructive section of the Chalk Strata at Dover, there exists no other descrip- 
tion than the original and admirable paper by William Phillips in the Geological Transactions of 1818. 
The author’s long and intimate acquaintance with this locality gives him peculiar facilities for pre- 
senting in a light and readable form a concise and accurate account of the White Cliffs of this 


celebrated shore, and which he trusts will be thought worthy of being regarded as a text-book 
generally for the chalk districts of England. 


The proposed work will be illustrated by first-class woodcuts, and will be issued to Subscribers at the — 
price of Five Shillings. Subscriptions will be received by the Author, 154, Strand. 


London: J. VAN Voorst, Paternoster-row. 


SUBSCRIBERS’ NAMES ALREADY RECEIVED. 
Additional Names received :— 


Dr. J. ForsEs Youne, Upper Kennington Lane. 2 Copies. 
W. WAKEFIELD, Esq. Grenville Cottage, Ventnor, Isle of Wight. 
Wm. Harrison, Esq. F.G.S. Galligreaves House, Blackburn, Lancashire. 


*,* A few Copies will be Printed on Tinted Paper, and Bound in Superior Style, at 10s. 6d. 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


RIZE MEDAL, 1855, awarded to W. H. CHILD for his 
superior TOILET ‘BRUSHES. Soie Manufacturer of the PURE VEGE- 
TABLE TOOTH BRUSHES for the Indian Market, for which he has received 
the following Testimonial :— 
* Lonpon, March 17, 1858. 

“ We beg to bear our testimony to the excellence of the Tooth Brushes manu- 
factured by Mr. W. H. Cuiup expressly for the Indian Market ; and to certify that 
as they are exclusively made from vegetable substances, NaRer KA CHILKA and 
Nvssatat Kuatts, they are thereby adapted for all classes of the Indian com- 
munity, by whom they may be used with the utmost confidence. 

(Signed by) His Excertency Movivez Mussrrnooprrn, Movnver 
Monummep SHAn Coomroopprrm UsHmup, Mrnr 
Owiap ALi, and Syep ABDOOLAH.” 


W. H. Cutty, Wholesale and Export Brush Manufacturer, 21 and 22, Providence- 
row, Finsbury, London. 


HINA AND GLASS FOR EXPORTATION, &c.— 

ADAM & CO. have on view several hundred DINNER SERVICES of the 

most approved patterns, from plain to the most costly designs. Dessert, Tea and 

Coffee Services in equal variety ; every description of glass for the table, suitable 

for Regimental Messes, Clubs, and Private Families. An extensive stock of every 
variety of Electro-plated Goods on Nickel Silver, Lamps, Chandeliers, &c. 

Parties furnishing may select from the most extensive stock in London, at a 

saving of 20 per cent., at 
Apam & Co. 87, Oxford-street, London. 


RATT’S ELASTIC STOCKINGS are recommended by 
the most eminent Physicians and Surgeons as the best remedy for Varicose 
Veins, Weakness of the Legs, knees, and ankles. Price, thread, 4s. 6d. and 6s. 6d. ; 
silk, 9s. 12s. and 15s. each. Also, PRATI’S NEW TRUSS for Hernia, approved 
by her Majesty’s Army Medical Board. Price 15s. single; 30s. double. 
For an Elastic Stocking, send circumference of calf, ankle and foot, and length 
from below knee to ground. 
For a Truss, send measurement round the hips. 


Observe—Pratt, Surgical Instrument and Bandage Maker, 420, Oxford-street, W. 


FRENCH, 
9, ROYAL EXCHANGE, LONDON. 


ATCH, CLOCK, and CHRONOMETER MAKER to 
the Admiralty, and by Appointment to the Queen of Spain, and Sultan 
of Turkey: established a.p. 1810. 


WATCHES and CLOCKS of every description for exportation. 


N.B.—9, Royal Exchange is the only place of business of Frenou, late of the Old 
Royal Exchange, and 80, Cornhill. 


O ANGLERS IN INDIA.— CHARLES FARLOW, 

of 191, Strand, London, begs to inform Officers and Gentlemen in India 

that he continues to Manufacture his very superior RODS for MAHSEER 

FISHING, as also every description of Reels, Lines, Flies, Spinning Tackles, and 

Artificial Baits, and the New American Baits, at moderate prices. All orders are 

respectfully requested to be forwarded, accompanied by a remittance or reference 
in London, to Cuarizs Fartow, direct, or through any East India Agent. 


Catalogues gratis. 


ee ee 


AE 


Fae 


Se 


NE ee oa 


Se Big Sy ol 


Sapo eae ES ae LER N 


=< 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


INDIA. 
ALLEN’S NEW CAMPAIGN TRUNKS 


ARE MADE EXPRESSLY FOR THE INDIAN SERVICE. 


LLEN’S ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE of PATENT 

PORTMANTEAUS, TRUNKS, DESPATCH BOXES, WRITING and 

DRESSING CASES, TRAVELLING BAGS with Square Openings, and 500 
other articles for travelling, by post for two stamps. 


J.W. & T. Auten, Manufacturers, 18 & 22, Strand, London. Merchants supplied. 


CAMERON’S PALMERSTON SAUCE. 


HIS EXTRAORDINARY and REALLY DELICIOUS 
ADDENDUM to the PLEASURES OF THE TABLE is acknowledged 
by the most celebrated members of the Gastronomic Art, as also by epicures (to 
whom it was submitted previous to an appeal to public patronage), to excel, as a 
PIQUANT and DELICIOUS CONDIMENT and provocative to the Appetite, all 
the other Sauces of the day. 
For universality of application it stands unrivalled. 


Sole Proprietor, W. O. CAMERON, 


GOVERNMENT STORES, GOULSTON STREET, LONDON. 


GENUINE KITCHEN GARDEN SEEDS. 


JAMES CARTER & Co. 


ARE NOW READY TO SUPPLY 


SEEDS FOR THE VEGETABLE GARDEN, 


Which will be found, as usual, of the Best Quality only. 


CARTER’S 


“ENCYCLOPADIC CATALOGUE OF SEEDS, AND GARDENER’S 
VADE MECUM.” 


[HE TWENTY-FOURTH ANNUAL ISSUE of the 


above is now ready, and in addition to its usual comprehensiveness, has 
affixed a CALENDAR of OPERATIONS for each month in the year for the 


Vegetable and Flower GARDEN, also for the Stove, Conservatory, Greenhouse, 


Orchid House, Pineries, Vineries, Pits, Frames, &c., forming a complete Gardener’s 
Book of Reference, which it is hoped will be found useful alike to the Amateur 
and Professional Gardener. Forwarded free of charge and post-paid to all parts 
of the world upon application. 


James Canter & Co., Seedsmen, 238, High Holborn, London, W.C. 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


RUPTURES.—BY ROYAL LETTERS PATENT. 
(7 HITE’S MOC-MAIN LEVER TRUSS is allowed by 


upwards of 200 Medical Gentlemen to be the most effective invention in 

the curative treatment of HERNIA. The use of a steel spring, so often hurtful 
_ in its effects, is here avoided; a soft bandage being worn round 
the body, while the requisite resisting power is supplied by the 
MOOC-MAIN PAD AND PATENT LEVER, fitting with so much 
ease and closeness that it cannot be detected, and may be worn 
during sleep. A descriptive circular may be had, and the Truss 
(which cannot fail to fit) forwarded by post, on the circumference 
of the body (two inches below the hips) being sent to the 


Manufacturer, Mr. WHITE, 288, Piccadilly, London. 


Price of a Single Truss, 16s. 21s. 26s. 6d. and 31s. 6d. Postage 
ls. Price of a Double Truss, 31s. 6d. 42s. and 52s. 6d. Postage 
1s. 8d. Post-office Orders to be made payable to Joun Wuirs, 
Post-office, Piccadilly. 


ELASTIC STOCKINGS, SOCKS, KNEE CAPS, &c. 


The material of which these are made is recommended by the Faculty as being 
peculiarly ELASTIC and COMPRESSIBLE, and the best invention for giving 
efficient and permanent support in all cases of WEAKNESS and SWELLING 
of the LEGS, VARICOSE VEINS, SPRAINS, &e. It is porous, light in texture, 
and inexpensive, and is drawn on like an ordinary stocking. Price from 7s. 6d. 
to 16s. each ; postage 6d. 


JOHN WHITE, Manufacturer, 228, PICCADILLY, LONDON. 


TEETH, WITH FLEXIBLE GUMS. 


BY HER MAJESTY’S ROYAL LETTERS PATENT. 


A NEW DISCOVERY, whereby Artificial Teeth and 

Soft Gums are supplied with precision and accuracy hitherto unattainable : 
they act as supports to any loose Teeth that may be in the mouth, or may be 
fitted over stumps where the Teeth are entirely gone. They imitate nature so - 
closely that the practised eye of the dentist cannot detect the difference. These 
advantages have been pronounced by the highest medical authorities unattainable 
by any other method. “ 


“ A great improvement upon the old system.” —B, Observer, June 16, 1857. 


To invalids and other parties used to warm climates, where calomel is freely 
administered without the patient’s knowledge, they will be found invaluable. 

Supplied, at strictly moderate charges, only by Mussrs. GABRIEL, the old 
established Surgeon-Dentists. Observe the Address, 


33, LUDGATE HILL (five doors west of the Orp Bartzy). 
110, REGENT STREET, LONDON. 
AND AT LIVERPOOL, 134, DUKE STREET. 


The PATENT WHITE EN AMEL, for restoring decayed front teeth, has 
achieved a world-wide reputation. Its efficacy remains unchallenged— warranted 
to retain its colour. 


“ We have seen testimonials of the highest character, both from the medical 
world and the press relative thereto.”—Sunday Times, September 6, 1857. 


EsTABLISHED 1807. 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


J. F. HOPE’S NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
NOVELTY IN NOVELS, BEAUTIFULLY ILLLUSTRATED. 


In Three Vols. post 8vo. price 31s. 6d. 


BLIGHT; 
OR, THE NOVEL HATER. 


By the Author of “Goop in Everyruine,” &e. &e. 


NEW WORK BY OC. F. HOWARD. 
In Two Vols. post 8vo. price 21s. 


GILBERT MIDHURST, M.P. 


Author of “ Onympus,” “ Essays ror tHe Ags,” &c. &e. 


THE GORGET PATENT SELF-ADJUSTING SHIRT. 


Co ease and novelty with perfection of Fit. Price, 
including the Elliptic Wristband, Six for 42s. The Elliptic Three-fold 

Collar, opening back and front, with Patent Elastic Fastenings, 12s. the dozen. 
Measurement for Collar, No. 3 below. 

1. Round the Chest, tight over the Shirt. 

2. Round the Waist, tight over the Shirt. 

3. Round the Neck, taken about the middle of the throat. 

4, Round the Wrist. | 

5. The length of Coat Sleeve, from the centre of back down the seam of 

sleeve to bottom of Cuff. 


6. The length of Shirt at back. Say if the Shirts are to open back or front. 
If with Collars attached, 3s. the half-dozen extra. 


J. FRYER & CO. late Cooper & Fryur, Patentees, next door to the Haymarket 
Theatre, London. 


Order direct payment in London, or through Messrs. Suitu, Exrpzr & Co. 58, 
Cornhill, London ; or Messrs. Surrn, Taytor & Co. Bombay. 


SLER’S TABLE GLASS, CHANDELIERS, LUSTRES, 


&c. 44, Oxford Street, London, conducted in connexion with their Manu- 
factory, Broad Street, Birmingham. Established 1807. An extensive Stock in 
every variety of Wine Glasses, Decanters, Water Jugs, Goblets, Dessert Services, 
and all kinds of Table Glass, at exceedingly moderate prices. 


In inviting the attention of merchants, shippers, and parties furnishing, to 
their London house for the sale of glass, Mzssrs. OsLER beg to state that, having 
for many years had an extensive Manufactory at Birmingham, they are enabled to 
offer these and all other articles of their workmanship, on exceedingly advan- 
tageous terms. 


Ornamental glass (English and Foreign) in the greatest variety. Export Mess, 
and general furnishing orders in Glass, properly executed. 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


TO STUDENTS AND GENTLEMEN FORMING COLLECTIONS. 


OSSILS from the CHALK MARL and GREENSAND 
DEPOSITS, can be obtained at moderate prices of 


Marx Wm. Norman, Ventnor, Isle of Wight. 


OSSILS AND MINERALS FOR SALE.—Devonian 


Fishes and Fossils from other formations can be had (singly, or in small 
series,) from any particular formation or district; also Coloured Casts of rare 
Fossils. 

A great variety of fine Specimens of Rare Minerals, both British and Foreign, 
just received, which may be selected singly, or in small series. 

Collections of Precious Stones for Cabinets, either polished as Gems, or in their 
Natural State, to be had of 


James R. Grecory, 59, Frith Street, Soho, London, W. 


, eee REFRACTING SPAR.—Mr. Tennant, Geologist, 


149, Strand, has just received from Iceland some unusually large and fine 
specimens of this interesting mineral. Mr. Tennant arranges Elementary Collec- 
tions of Shells, Minerals, Rocks, and Fossils, to illustrate Conchology, Mineralogy, 
and Geology. He also gives Practical Instruction in Geology and Mineralogy. 


GRICULTURAL AND CHEMICAL COLLEGE, 


38 and 39, Lower Kennington-lane, London. 
Principal—J. C. NESBIT, F.GS. F.C.S. &c. 


In this Institution unusual facilities are afforded for acquiring a thorough know- 
ledge of Agricultural, General, and Analytical Chemistry, and also of Surveying 
and Mathematics. 

The Terms for Students, resident or non-resident, may be known on application. 

Analyses and Assays of every description are promptly and accurately executed 
at the College. 


EOLOGY AND MINERALOGY. — UNIVERSITY 
COLLEGE, LONDON.—PROFESSOR J. MORRIS, F.G.S. commenced 
a Course of Lectures on the above subjects, on Tuesday, February 1, at 3 past 4, 
p.m. The Lectures will be continued every Tuesday and Thursday, at the same 
hour. During the Course, Field Excursions will be taken. 
Payments, including College Fee, £2 2s. 


Tomas L. Donatpson, M.I.B.A. Ph.D. 
Dean of the Faculties of Arts and Laws. 


Cuas. C. ATKINSON, 
Secretary to the Council. 


EOLOGY.— KING’S COLLEGE, LONDON. — PRO-. 


FESSOR TENNANT, F.G.S. commenced a course of Lectures on Geology, 
on Friday Morning, January 28th, at 9 o'clock. They will be continued on each 
succeeding Wednesday and Friday, at the same hour, until May. 


R. W, Jer, D.D. Principal. 


TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


s PAGE 
Tyomas Dayrpson, Esq. F.R.S. F.G.8. Ete.—Palzontological Notes on the 
Brachiopoda . 08.0 207 PP ey eee cee oe, ge ae ne et 
Grorce E. Rosurts, of Kidderminster.—On the Upper Ludlow Tilestones . 117 
Dr. T. L. Purpson, Paris—Foreign Correspondence. . . 2. . »- - ~~ 120 


Proceepines or Gronogroan Somers ©.) Aas St es ee 
Nowas AWD QUERIES 06.0 Von; nn muss bw ithe Gea ieee ee 
BVIEWS cee oun pee n ec Wy ww icy ae gece gRbiiat aCe tnt ba cetera ir RL 


Now ready, Vol. I. of “ The Geologist,” handsomely bound in cloth, price 14s. 6d. 
Ornamental Covers for binding can be obtained at the Office of “ The Geologist,” 
154, Strand, price 1s. 3d. 


i\ APS, PLANS, SECTIONS, and DRA WINGS on STONE 
and WOOD, ENGRAVINGS on METAL, WOOD, and STONE, LEC- 
TU RE-DIAGRAMS, and all kinds of Scientific Illustrations, are executed at the 
Office of “‘ The Geologist,” 154, Strand. 
An ARTICLED PUPIL required. For Premium and Terms apply to the 
Editor of “The Geologist,’ 154, Strand. 


LECTURE-DIAGRAMS. 


On the 1st of April will be published No. I. of a Series of Original Geological 
Diagrams for Lectures, to be continued on the First of every Month. 


(PHESE DIAGRAMS will be of LARGE SIZE, on CANVAS, 
and will be accompanied at intervals by Sets of Smaller Diagrams [Illustrative 
of the Works of Lye, Manrent, De ta Becus, Paan, and Anstxp, as also by Skele- 
ton-lectures for Provincial or Amateur Lecturers. 
Special Sets of Lecture-diagrams, illustrative of Popular Geological Subjects 


may be had on hire. x 


No. l1—A GEOLOGICAL MAP OF THE BRITISH ISLES, with Part of the 
CONTINENT OF EUROPE. Size 9 ft. Gin. by 11 ft. 6in. 


“ Guotogist” Office, 154, Strand, W.C. 


Just Published, price 3s. in wrapper; 4s. 6d. on Roller varnished. 


NEW GEOLOGICAL CHART, showing at one 


view the Order of Succession of the Stratified Rocks, with their Mineral 
characters, Principal Fossils, Average Thickness, Localities, uses in the Arts, &c. 
Arranged by Prorzssorn Joun Morris, F.G.S. On a large sheet, Coloured. 


Also lately Published, price 10s. 6d. in wrapper; 18s. on Roller varnished. 
ARGE GEOLOGICAL DIAGRAMS, to illustrate the 


A Principles of this important Science. On a series of Nine large sheets, 
Coloured, with succinct description at the foot. Well adapted for teaching 
Geology in Schools, &e. Edited by Prornsson Joun Morris, F.G.S. 


London; Jamzs Ruynoups, 174, Strand. 


PRICE ONE SHILLING. 


ce 4: ing fe APRIL, 1859. NO. 16. 


THE GEOLOGIST: 


A POPULAR 


MONTHLY MAGAZINE 


OF 


mm OL OG Y. 


EDITED BY S. J. MACKIE, F.G.S. F.S.A. 


“ Geology, in the magnitude and sublimity of the objects of which it treats, 
undoubtedly ranks in the scale of the sciences next to Astronomy.”—AHerschel : 
Discourse on Study of Natural Philosophy. 


- LL LDA LID 


LONDON: 
PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE OF THE GEOLOGIST, 154, STRAND; 


AND SOLD BY 
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO. STATIONERS’ HALL COURT. 


EEE 
SE CS I ET BOS ee aD EE RE i Re a, 
PRINTED BY R. CLAY, BREAD STREET HILL. 


Tue Editor requests that contributors will bear in mind the POPULAR 
character of Tur GEoLocisT, and endeavour to make their articles explicit 
and intelligible to general readers. . 

Students or others wishing for information on particular points of 
Geology, or for explanation of Geological terms and phrases, are requested 
to address their questions to the Editor of THz GuoLogist. Answers 
will be given to them in the ensuing number of the Magazine. 

Letters and communicatious by Post, specimens, books for review, and 
parcels for this Magazine, to be addressed to THE EpiTor oF THE GEOLOGIST, 
154, Strand, London, W.C. to whom all advertisements may be addressed. 

The Editor requests subscribers to forward their names and addresses 
direct to himself, to insure correctness of delivery. 

THE GroLocist is sent by Post free to Subscribers for six months on 
receipt of a Post-Office order for 5s. 9d., or 6s. in Postage Stamps ; Post- 
Office orders are to be made payable to the Editor, at the Strand Post- 
Office. 


GroLocist OFFICE, S. J. MACKIE, 
154, Strand. Editor and Proprieior. 


CORRESPONDENTS. 


Communications received from Dr. G. D. Criss, Portman Square; J. Brown, Esq., 
F.G.S., Stanway ; J. Curry, Esq., Boltsham; Gzo. HE. Roperts, Esq., Kidder- 
minster; C. P. Hopxrrx, Esq., Huddersfield; J. E. Werusrent, Esq., Highgate ; 
J. Prant, Esq., Leicester; J. De St. Marceaux, Limé. 


BOOKS RECEIVED. 


by Hypz Cranks, C.E. London: Mining Journal 


> 


“On Copper Smelting,’ 
Office, 26, Fleet Street. 1858. 

“ The Mineral Kingdom,” by Dr. J. G. Kurr, Professor of Natural History to the 
Polytechnic Institution of Stuttgart. Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas, 88, Princes 
Street. 1859. 


Preparing for publication, in post 8vo. price to Subscribers, 5s. 


(fHE CHALK CLIFFS OF DOVER; a Geological and 
S.J 


Paleontological Description of the typical section of the English Upper Cretaceous beds.—By 
. Macxiz, F.G.S. F.S.A. 

Of the beautiful and instructive section of the Chalk Strata at Dover, there exists no other descrip- 
tion than the original and admirable paper by William Phillips in the Geological Pransactions of 1818. 
The author’s long and intimate acquaintance with this locality gives him peculiar facilities for pre- 
senting in a light and readable form a concise and accurate account of the White Cliffs of this 
celebrated shore, and which he trusts will be thought worthy of being regarded as a text-book 
generally for the chalk districts of England. rs 

The proposed work will be illustrated by first-class woodcuts, and will be issued to Subscribers at the 
price of Five Shillings. Subscriptions will be received by the Author, 154, Strand. 


London: J. Van Voorst, Paternoster-row. 


SUBSCRIBERS’ NAMES ALREADY RECEIVED. 
Additional Names received :— 


THos. PURDUE, Esq. Witney, Oxfordshire. 

W. H. T. Auten, Esq. 8, Gray’s Inn Square. 

Jas. Hitton, Esq. 2, Warnford Court, Throgmorton Street. 
J. E. WAKEFIELD, Esq. Meadow Cottage, Highgate. 

J..H. Fuer, Esq. F.R.C.S. 

NatH. Harpine, Esq. Blandford. 

W. S. Fussett, The Close, Salisbury. 

JoHun Curry, Esq. Boltsham, Darlington. 


A few Copics will be Printed on Tinted Paper, and Bound in Superior Style, at 10s. 6a. 


Pe 
* 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


eeu G RODS AND TACKLE.—Fiust-class SALMON, 

TROUT, and other RODS, Artificial Flies and Baits, Lines, Reels, Gut, 
and all the newest and most approved Tackle, may be had at CHAS. WRIGHT'S 
Wholesale and Retail Manufactory, 376, Strand, W.C. Rodsrepaired. Catalogues 
gratis. Manufacturer of Bows, Arrows, and all kinds of Archery, &c. 


EID’S SANS-PLI SHIRTS. Six for Thirty-eight Shillings. 


These Shirts are so celebrated for their excellence of fit, durability, and 
comfort, as to need no remark. One trial will convince, and ensure continued con- 
fidence. Self-measurement in inches; Round the Neck, Chest, and Waist; Length 
of Sleeve from centre of Back to Knuckles. To be obtained at WILLIAM REID'S 
Outfitting Establishment, 51, Conduit Street, Regent Street, London. Patronised 
by the Governor-General of India, and the Governor of Bombay. 


} AIR DYEH.—248, HIGH HOLBORN.—ALEX. ROSS8’S 

LIQUID DYE produces, with little trouble, light or dark colours to grey 
hair. 3s. 6d. free, in plain covers, per post, for 54 stamps. Private Rooms for 
Hair Dyeing. 


REY HAIR RESTORED to its NATURAL COLOUR 
by F. M. HERRING’S PATENT MAGNETIC COMBS, HAIR and 
FLESH BRUSHES. They require no preparation, are always ready, do not 
deteriorate by use, and cannot get out of order. Hair Brushes, 10s. and 15s, ; 
Flesh Brushes, 10s., Combs from 2s. 6d. to 20s. each. Grey Harr anp BALpness 
PREVENTED By FM. H.’s Patent Preventive Brusu, price 4s. and 5s. Offices: 
32, BASINGHALL STREET, LONDON. Where may be obtained, gratis, 
Mr. Herring’s Illustrated Pamphlet, ““ Why Hair becomes Grey, and its Remedy.” 
Sold by all Chemists and Perfumers of repute. 
Orders to be sent through Messrs. Surry, Taytor & Co. Bombay. 


Wholesale and Retail Agents wanted. 


CE MACHINES, to be used without the Aid of Ice. 
: KEITH’S WINE FREEZERS FOR ICING WINES, &c., with KEITH’S 
FREEZING POWDERS. Price, for one bottle, 30s.; for two bottles, 50s.; for 
three hottless, 60s. Cost of Icing Champagne by this process, 3d. per bottle. 
Time of operation, ten minutes. 

KEITH’S AUSTRALIAN ICE-MAKER, for making a Pint of Dessert Ice 
with the Freezing Powders. Price of Machines, 32s. each. Freezing Powder, 
32s. per cwt. 

Gzorce Kern, Ice-Machinist, Patentee, and General Merchant, 55, Great Russell 
Street, Bloomsbury ; or, through Messrs. Surru, Taytor & Co. Bombay. 


SLER’S TABLE GLASS, CHANDELIERS, LUSTRES, 
&c. 44, Oxford Street, Léndon, conducted in connexion with their Manu- 
factory, Broad Street, Birmingham. Established 1807. An extensive Stock in 
every variety of Wine Glasses, Decanters, Water Jugs, Goblets, Dessert Services, 
and all kinds of Table Glass, at exceedingly moderate prices. 
In inviting the attention of merchants, shippers, and parties furnishing, to 
their London house for the sale of glass, Mzssrs. Oster beg to state that, having 
for many years had an extensive Manufactory at Birmingham, they are enabled to 
offer these and all other articles of their workmanship, on exceedingly advan- 
tageous terms. 
Ornamental glass (English and Foreign) in the greatest variety. Export Mess, 
and general furnishing orders in Glass, properly executed. 


TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


H. C. Sorsy, Esq. F.R.S. F.G.S. Ete.—On the Structures produced as the 
Currents present during the deposition of Stratified Rocks. . . 137 


Huon Mirenett, of Craig. —On the Flagstones of Forfarshire . . . . . 147 
Joun Anperson, D.D. F.G.S. Ete—On the Tilestones of Forfarshire . . . 149 
S. J. Macxis, F.G.S. F.S.A. Ete.—The common Fossils of the British Rocks 153 
Gems From Private CoLLEcTIONs. Sea Caudatus; from the Dudley 
TAMeSLONG 2 ys 66) wes : ree are rs Ss tay yeheur L 
Dr. T. L. Purpson, Paris. Tue omens Me ts heh Why rl 
Sir R. I. Murcuison.— Note on Stagonolepis of Elgin. . . ... .. 164 
Procrepines or GroLoaicaL SocIETIES . . . 2. 2 «© = © «©. « « « « 168 
Nores Anp QUERIES 20 500) 6 wis cl) eee RSD ee eee 
BRRVIEWS et a ree ec 


Now ready, Vol. I. of “ The Geologist,” handsomely bound in cloth, price 14s. 6d. 
Ornamental Covers for binding can be obtained at the Office of “ The Geologist,” 
154, Strand, price 1s. 3d. 


Maes: PLANS, SECTIONS, and DRAWINGS on STONE 

and WOOD, ENGRAVINGS on METAL, WOOD, and STONE, LEC- 
TURE-DIAGRAMS, and all kinds of Scientific Illustrations, and Chemical 
and Microscopic Analyses, are executed at the Office of “The Geologist,” 
154, Strand. 


LECTURE-DIAGRAMS. 


Now ready, No. I. of a Series of Original Geological Diagrams for Lectures; to 
be continued on the First of ¢ every Month. 


' THESE DIAGRAMS will be of LARGE SIZE, on CANVAS, 
and will be accompanied at intervals by Sets of Smaller Diagrams Illustrative 
of the Works of Lyretu, Mantett, De ta Becue, Paes, and AnsTED, as also by Skele- 
ton-lectures for Provincial or Amateur Lecturers. 
Special Sets of Lecture-diagrams, illustrative of Popular Geological Subjects 
may be had on hire. 


No. L—A GEOLOGICAL MAP OF THE BRITISH ISLES, with Part of the 
CONTINENT OF EUROPE. Size 9ft. Gin. by 11 ft. 6in. Price 3/. 3s. 


On the Ist of next Month, Nos. II. III. IV. Cuaracteristic Fosstis oF THE 
Cretaceous Rocks. 


“ Gronoeist” Office, 154, Strand, W.C. 


OWERBY’S ILLUSTRATED INDEX of BRITISH 


SHELLS will be ready in June, containing the Name, Synonyms, Locality, 
principal Distinctive Characters, and one or more Figures. of every recognized 
species, in one volume 8vo. royal, with figures coloured, 30s., plain, 24s.; a few 
copies will be prepared on imperial paper, to correspond with Sowerby’s Thesaurus, 
without extra charge, for any who may express their wishes to that effect directly 
to the Author before the 10th of May, 9, Pembroke Square, Kensington. 


SOWERBY’S THESAURUS CONCHYLIORUM, 


Part IX. contains the Genera Ancillaria, Eburna, Pseudoliver, Terebellum, 
Erato, Nassaria, Cyllene, and Phos. 9, Pembroke Square, Kensington. 


PRICE ONE SHILLING. 


MAY, 1859. 


THE GEOLOGIST: 


A POPULAR 


MONTHLY MAGAZINE 


SeHOnhOG Y. 


EDITED BY S. J. MACKIE, F.GS. F.S.A. 


“ Geology, in the magnitude and sublimity of the objects of which it treats, 
undoubtedly ranks in the scale of the sciences next to Astronomy.”’— Herschel : 
Discourse on Study of Natwral Philosophy. 


LONDON: 
PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE OF THE GEOLOGIST, 154, STRAND; 


_ AND SOLD BY 
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO. STATIONERS’ * ALL COURT. 


PRINTED BY R. CLAY, BREAD STREET HILL- 


Tue Editor requests that contributors will bear in mind the POPULAR 
character of THE GEOLOGIST, and endeavour to make their articles explicit 
and intelligible to general readers. 

Students or others wishing for information on particular points of 
Geology, or for explanation of Geological terms and phrases, are requested 
to address their questions to the Editor of THz GroLogist. Answers 
will be given to them in the ensuing number of the Magazine. 

Letters and communicatious by Post, specimens, books for review, and 

arcels for this Magazine, to be addressed to THE EDITOR OF THE GEOLOGIST, 
154, Strand, London, W.C. to whom all advertisements may be addressed. 

The Editor requests subscribers to forward their names and addresses 
direct to himself, to insure correctness of delivery. 

THE GEoLocist is sent by Post free to Subscribers for six months on 
receipt of a Post-Office order for 5s. 9d., or 6s. in Postage Stamps ; Post- 
Office orders are to be made payable to the Editor, at the Strand Post- 
Office. 


GEOLOGIST OFFICE, S. J. MACKIE, 
154, Strand. Editor and Proprietor. 


CORRESPONDENTS. 


Communications received from H. C. Satmon, Esq. Plymouth; A. de M. Port Stewart ; 
Mr. Marx Morman, Ventnor; E. Tucker, Esq. Margate; Mr. Epwarp Trypa.1, 
Bridlington; Mr. J. Pryor, Cambridge; J. Barysripez, Esq. F.G.S. Fishergate 
Villa, York. 


BOOKS RECEIVED. 


“ The Insalubrity of Deep Cornish Mines; and as a Consequence, the Physical 
Degeneracy and Early Deaths of the Mining Population,” by Mr. Jon Rozerron. 

“* Annual Address delivered before the Geological Society of Dublin, February 8, 
1859,” by the Rev. Samvren Havenrton, M.A. F.RS. 

“ Sur le Néocomien dans le Jura et son Role dans la Série Stratigraphique.” Par 
Jutes Marcov. Genéve: Ramboz et Schuchardt. 1858. 

“ Table showing the Vertical Range of the Silurian Fossils of Britain,” by Sir R. I. 
Murcuison, F.R.S. F.G.S. Director-General of the Geological Survey. 

“ Map of Hereford, with Geological Sections,” by J. E. Curry, Esq. C.E. 

« The Canadian Journal.” No. XIX. New Series. 

“ The Canadian Naturalist and Geologist.” Vol. IV. Nos. 5 and 6. 


Preparing for publication, in post 8vo. price to Subscribers, 5s. 


TOHE CHALK CLIFFS OF DOVER; a Geological and 


Paleontological Description of the typical section of the English Upper Cretaceous beds.—By 
S.J. Macxiz, F.G.S. F.S.A. 

Of the beautiful and instructive section of the Chalk Strata at Dover, there exists no other descrip- 
tion than the original and admirable paper by William Phillips in the Geological Transactions of 1818. 
The author’s long and intimate acquaintance with this locality gives him peculiar facilities for pre- 
senting in a light and readable form a concise and accurate account of the White Cliffs of this 
celebrated shore, and which he trusts will be thought worthy of being regarded as a text-book 
generally for the chalk districts of England. 

The proposed work will be illustrated by first-class woodcuts, and will be issued to Subscribers at the 
price of Five Shillings. Subscriptions will be received by the Author, 154, Strand. 


London: J. VAN Voorst, Paternoster-row. 


SUBSCRIBERS’ NAMES ALREADY RECEIVED. 
Additional Names received :— 


LoxsDALE, BRADLEY, Esq. F.G.S. Prior House, Richmond, Yorkshire. 2 Copies. 
JoHN McLanpssorovuGu, Esq. F.G.S. 23, Queensgate, Bradford, Yorkshire. 
CoLONEL TwWENLOW, Poyle House, Guildford. 

S. H. NEEDHAM, Esq. 28, Balsall Heath Road, Birmingham. 

Joun Exxiort, Esq. West Croft, Stanhope. 

Tuos. INGALL, Esq. Consol] Office, Bank of England. 

The Rey. AtFRED Deck, Royal Military College, Sandhurst. 

JoHN Gray, Esa. Hayley, Worcestershire. 

J. W. SALTER, Esq. F.G.S. Palzontologist of the Geological Survey. 

Epw. Tucker, Esq. The Grove, Margate. 


*,* 4 few Copies will be Printed on Tinted Paper, and Bound in Superior Style, at 10s. 6d. 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


LECTURE-DIAGRAMS. 


Now ready, No. I. of a Series of Original Geological Diagrams for Lectures; to 
be continued on the First of every Month. 


(THESE DIAGRAMS will be of LARGE SIZE, on CANVAS, 


and will be accompanied at intervals by Sets of Smaller Diagrams IIlustrative 
of the Works of Lyzui, Mantext, De 1a Becue, Pace, and Anstep, as also by Skele- 
ton-lectures for Provincial or Amateur Lecturers. 
Special Sets of Lecture-diagrams, illustrative of Popular Geological Subjects, 
may be had on hire. 


No. L—A GEOLOGICAL MAP OF THE BRITISH ISLES, with Part of the 
CONTINENT OF EUROPE. Size 9 ft. 6 in. by 11 ft. 6in. Price 37. 3s. 


On the ist of next Month, Nos. II. III. IV. Cuaracreristic Fosstts oF THE 
Cretaceous Rocks. 


“ Grotocist” Office, 154, Strand, W.C. 


REMOVED FROM 59, FRITH STREET, SOHO. 


FOSSILS 


From all Localities to be had as Single Specimens, or in Series, &c. 

Some Fine Specimens of Scottish, Devonian, and other Fishes and Fossils just 
received. 

A Large Collection of Minerals, containing some of the Newest and Rarest 
Species, for selection of Single Specimens, 

Collections of Fragments of Minerals, for Blowpipe and other analysis, amongst 
which are some very Rare Substances, in Series of 50 in each Box, price 3s. 


Five Series are now ready, 3s. each, Lists of which will be sent on application to 


JAMES R. GREGORY, 
3, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, LONDON, W.C. 


AIR DYE.—248, HIGH HOLBORN,.—ALEX. ROSS’S 

LIQUID DYE produces, with little trouble, light or dark colours to grey 

hair. 3s. 6d. free, in plain covers, per post, for 54 stamps. Private Rooms for 
Hair Dyeing. 


GRICULTURAL AND CHEMICAL COLLEGE, 


38 and 39, Lower Kennington-lane, London. 
Principal—J. C. NESBITy F.GS. F.C.S. &e. 


In this Institution unusual facilities are afforded for acquiring a thorough know- 
ledge of Agricultural, General, and Analytical Chemistry, and also of Surveying 
and Mathematics. 

The Terms for Students, resident or non-resident, may be known on application. 

Analyses and Assays of every description are promptly and accurately executed 
at the College. 


TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


PAGE 
Ss. J. Macxiz, F.G.S. F.S.A. Ete.— The Common Fossils of the British Rocks 181 
N. T. Wernerett, Esq. M.R.C.S—Notice of the occurrence in Flints of 
Small Siliceous Nodular Concretions, containing different Species of 
Foraminifera,.« 6 ¢ SS <é-peus la Soe Wehe gies ete cat nc One En nIOOoeS 
G. D. Gres, M.D. M.A. F.G.S. Ete.—A Chapter on Fossil Lightning. . . 195 
Dr. T. L. Putpson, Paris—Foreign Correspondence. . ..«.. « « . 205 
Proceepines or GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES . 9. 1. ew He we we ee ee OF 
Novres anp Queries 0.0. Se Oe oh Pe ert cet eee an ne 


Now ready, Vol. I. of “ The Geologist,” handsomely bound in cloth, price 14s. 6d. 
Ornamental Covers for binding can be obtained at the Oifice of “ The Geologist,” 
154, Strand, price ls. 3d. 


Ne PLANS, SECTIONS, and DRAWINGS on STONE 
. and WOOD, ENGRAVINGS on METAL, WOOD, and STONE, LEC- 
TURE-DIAGRAMS, and all kinds of Scientific Illustrations, and Chemical 
and Microscopic Analyses, are executed at the Office of “The Geologist,” 
154, Strand. 


This day is published, in Three Volumes Royal Quarto, and Portfolio of Maps, &. 
price 8/. 8s. 


THE 


GEOLOGY OF PENNSYLVANIA, 


A GOVERNMENT SURVEY; 
With a General View of the 
GEOLOGY OF THE UNITED STATES, 
Essays on the Coal-Yormation and its Fossils, 


AND A DESCRIPTION OF THE COAL-FIELDS OF NORTH AMERICA AND GREAT BRITAIN, 


BY HENRY DARWIN ROGERS, 


State Geologist, Professor of Natural History in the University of Glasgow; 
F.R.S., Hon. F.R.S.E., F.G.S. 


With Seven Lance Maps, and numerous InuustRations engraved on Copprr and 
on Weop. Price 8. 8s. 


WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, Edinburgh and London. 


RACTICAL GEHEOLOGY.—KINGS COLLEGE, 

LONDON.—PROFESSOR TENNANT, F.G.S. will give a COURSE 

of TWELVE LECTURES on GEOLOGY, having especial reference to the 

application of the Science to ENGINEERING, MINING, ARCHITECTURE, 

and AGRICULTURE. The Lectures will commence on Wednesday Morning, 

May 4th, at 9 o'clock. They will be continued on each succeeding Friday and 
Wednesday at the same hour. Fee lJ, 11s. 6d. 


R. W. Jzur, D.D. Principal. 


PRICE ONE SHILLING. 


Sa a — 


JUNE, 1859. 


THE GEOLOGIST: 


A POPULAR 


MONTHLY MAGAZINE 


- OL O G Y. 


EDITED BY S. J. MACKIE, F.G.S. F.S.A. 


“ Geology, in the magnitude and sublimity of the objects of which it treats, 
undoubtedly ranks in the scale of the sciences next to Astronomy.”—AHerschel : 
Discourse on Study of Natural Philosophy. 


PII POI DAO 


LONDON: 
PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE OF THE GEOLOGIST, 154, STRAND; 


AND SOLD BY 
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO. STATIONERS’ HALL COURT. 


FRINTED BY R. CLAY, BREAD STREET HILL. 


Tue Editor requests that contributors will bear in mind the POPULAR 
character of Tar Groxocist, and endeavour to make their articles explicit 
and intelligible to general readers. 

Students or others wishing for information on particular points of 
Geology, or for explanation of Geological terms and phrases, are requested 
to address their questions to the Editor of THe GroLocist. Answers 
will be given to them in the ensuing number of the Magazine. 

Letters and communications by Post, specimens, books for review, and 
parcels for this Magazine, to be addressed to Tur EDITOR OF THE GEOLOGIST, 
154, Strand, London, W.C. to whom all advertisements may be addressed. 

The Editor requests subscribers to forward their names and addresses 
direct to himself, to insure correctness of delivery. | 

Tun GroLocist is sent by Post free to Subscribers for six months on 
receipt of a Post-Office order for 5s. 9d., or 6s. in Postage Stamps ; Post- 
Office orders are to be made payable to the Editor, at the Strand Post- 
Office. 


GEOLOGIST OFFICE, S. J. MACKIE, 
154, Strand. Editor and Proprietor. 


The Editor and Proprietor of THE GEOLOGIST respectfully informs 
the Subscribers to this Magazine that the SUBSCRIPTIONS FOR 
THE ENSUING HALF-YEAR WILL BECOME DUE AFTER THE ISSUE 
OF THE PRESENT NUMBER. 


NOTICE TO OUR READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 


From the necessity of including the two valuable articles of Mr. 
SaLmon and Dr. Watson in this Number, the Editor regrets he has been 
obliged, for want of space, to omit the report of Proceedings of Geo- 
logical Societies, and the Notes and Queries. Of the latter, those 
requiring immediate attention will be replied to by Post to the commu- 
nicators. 


CORRESPONDENTS. 


Communications received from Count MarsHatt, Vienna; Dr. Hornus, Vienna; 
J. Barnsriper, Esq. F.G.S. York; the Rev. E. G. Bonney, M.A. Westminster; 
Dr. Bevan, F.G.S, Beaufort, Monmouth; Mr. Epw. Tinpauu, Bridlington; 
Mr. Marx Norman, Ventnor; “A Worxine Geonogist”; D. C. Davis, Esq. 
Oswestry ; J. Musnen, Esq. Birmingham, 


BOOKS RECEIVED. 

“ Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers,” by Mempers or tHE Aupine Cuius. London: 
Longman & Co. 1859. 

“ On Lavas of Mount Etna formed on Steep Slopes, and on Craters of Elevation,” 
by Srr Cuartss Lyset, F.R.S. 

“ Reply to the Criticisms of James D. Dana,” by Junzs Marcov. 

“ Supplemental Note on the Priority of the Tyneside Catalogue,” by RrcHarp Howsr. 

“ Abstract of Proceedings of the Geological Society.” 

** Abstract of Proceedings of Royal Institution.” 

“ Biographie et Dictionnaire des Littérateurs et des Savants Francais Contempo- 
rains.” (Notice of Dr. Phipson.) Amiens; Caron et Lambert. 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


Preparing for publication, in post 8vo. price to Subscribers, 5s. 


‘HE CHALK CLIFFS OF DOVER; a Geological and 


Paleontological Description of the typical section of the English Upper Cretaceous beds.— 
By S.J. Macxik, F.G.S. F.S.A. 

Of the beautiful and instructive section of the Chalk Strata at Dover, there exists no other 
description than the original and admirable paper by William Phillips in the Geological Transac- 
tions of 1818. The author’s long and intimate acquaintance with this locality gives him peculiar 
facilities for presenting in a light and readable form a concise and accurate account of the 
White Cliffs of this celebrated shore, and which he trusts will be thought worthy of being 
regarded as a text-book generally for the chalk districts of England. 

The proposed work will be illustrated by first-class woodcuts, and will be issued to Subscribers 
at the price of Five Shillings. Subscriptions will be received by the Author, 154, Strand. 


London: J. VAN Voorsv, Paternoster-row. 


SUBSCRIBERS’ NAMES ALREADY RECEIVED. 
Additional Names received :— 


Epwarp Kwnocxker, Esq. Castle Hill, Dover. 

W.N. Lawson, Esq. 28, Chancery Lane. 

Henry Tuomas, Esq. The Terrace, Kennington Park. 
Gxo. SumMERsS, Esq. Houghton, near Blandford. 


*,* A few Copies will be Printed on Tintea Paper, and Bound in Superior Style, at 10s. 6d. 


Now ready, 


PEAKS, PASSES, AND GLACIERS, 


BY MEMBERS OF THE ALPINE CLUB. 


London: Loneman & Co. Paternoster Row. 


REMOVED FROM 59, FRITH STREET, SOHO. 
FOSSILS 


From all Formations for selection of Single Specimens, &c. 
Fine Specimens of Old Red Fishes from Banffshire, Caithness, &c. 


A Large Collection of Minerals for selection of Single Specimens, &c. from a 
stock of about 6,000 choice specimens, and 700 distinct varieties, all with names 
and localities, many of which are newly discovered and very rare. 


Collections of Fragments of Minerals, for Blowpipe and other Analysis, in series 
of 50, in box, price 3s. Five Series are now ready, 3s. each. Printed Lists of 
Contents will be sent on application to 


JAMES R. GREGORY, 
3, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, LONDON, W.C. 


TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
PAGE 


H. C. Satmoy, Esq. Plymouth—0On Rocks; their Chemical and cana’ 
Composition, and Physical Characteristics . . . PPA 


Dr. J. J. Watson, F.G.S. F.S.A. Ete.—The Hera Deposits of f Glamorgan 
SHIN * iene thane 241 


Dr. T. L. Pureson, See ces ieceeee a i\,'de op etal Ales Pee blk ef mane aN 


Now ready, Vol. I. of “‘ The Geologist,” handsomely bound in cloth, price 14s. 6d. 


Ornamental Covers for binding can be obtained at the Office of “‘ The Geologist,” 
154, Strand, price ls. 3d. 


APS, PLANS, SECTIONS, and DRAWINGS on STONE 
| and WOOD, ENGRAVINGS on METAL, WOOD, and STONE, LEC- 

TURE-DIAGRAMS, and all kinds of Scientific Illustrations, and Chemical 
and pier oscupie Analyses, are executed at the Office of “The Geologist,” 
154, Strand, 


LECTURE-DIAGRAMS. 


Now ready, No, Il. of a Series of Original Geological Diagrams for Lectures; to 
be continued on the First of every Month. 


4 seo SE DIAGRAMS will be of LARGE SIZE, on CANVAS, 


and will be accompanied at intervals by Sets of Smaller Diagrams Illustrative 
of the Works of Lyzti, Manreit, De ta Becue, Pagan, and Anstsp, as also by Skele- 
ton-lectures for Provincial or Amateur Lecturers. 
Special Sets of Lecture-diagrams, illustrative of Popular Geological Subjects, 
may be had on hire. 


No. 1—A GEOLOGICAL MAP OF THE BRITISH ISLES, with Part of the 
CONTINENT OF EUROPE. Size 9 ft. Gin. by 11 ft. Gin. Price 3/. 3s. 


No, 11.—CHARACTERISTIC FOSSILS OF THE CRETACEOUS ROCKS. 


“ Guotogist” Office, 154, Strand, W.C. 


RACTICAL GEOLOGY.—KING’S COLLEGE, 

LONDON.—PROFESSOR TENNANT, F.G.8. will give a COURSE 

of TWELVE LECTURES on GEOLOGY, having especial reference to the 

application of the Science to EN GINEERING, MINING, ARCHITECTURE, 

and AGRICULTURE. The Lectures will commence on Wednesday Morning, 

May 4th, at 9 o’clock. They will be continued on each succeeding Friday and 
Wednesday at the same hour. Fee 1. 11s. 6d. 


R. W. Jutr, D.D. Principal. 


PRICE ONE SHILLING. 


VOL. II. JULY, 1859. NO. 19. 


THE GEOLOGIST: 


A POPULAR 


MONTHLY MAGAZINE 


_ OF 


GwOLOG Y, 


EDITED BY S&S. J. MACKIE, F.G.S. F.S.A. 


eA 


& 


“ Geology, in the magnitude and sublimity of the objects of which it treats, 
undoubtedly ranks in the scale of the sciences next to Astronomy.”—fferschel : 


Inscowrse on Study of Natural Philosophy. 


PLD PANINI L IPS INL ILL OL AL AL ALL ! 


LONDON: 
PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE OF THE GEOLOGIST, 154, STRAND; 


AND SOLD BY 
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO. STATIONERS’ HALL COURT. 


Tur Editor requests that contributors will bear in mind the 
POPULAR character of Taz GEotoeist, and endeavour to make their 
articles explicit and intelligible to general readers. 

Students or others wishing for information on particular points 
of Geology, or for explanation of Geological terms and phrases, are 
requested to address their questions to the Editor of Tam GzoLoaist. 
Answers will be given to them in the ensuing number of the Magazine. 

Letters and communications by Post, specimens, books for review, 
and parcels for this Magazine, to be addressed to THE EDITOR OF THE 
Gnonocist, 154, Strand, London, W.C. to whom all advertisements 
may be addressed. 

The Editor requests subscribers to forward their names and 
addresses direct to himself, to insure correctness of delivery. 

Tur Groxogist is sent by Post free to Subscribers for six months 
on receipt of a Post-Office order for 5s. 9d., or 6s. in Postage Stamps ; 
Post-Office orders are to be made payable to the Editor, at the Strand 
Post-Office. ) 


GroLocist OFFICE, S. J. MACKIE, 
154, Strand. Editor and Proprietor. 


NOTICE TO OUR READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 


We regret being again obliged to omit a considerable quantity of 
matter which we should have wished to print. Amongst other notices 
which we have been obliged to postpone, is one on Sir Caaruus LYELL’s 
recent admirable Papers and Lectures on the Crater of Elevation 
Theory. Our Readers will, however, benefit by this delay in the new 
communications which are about to be made to the public by various 
Authors. : 


CORRESPONDENTS. 


Communications received from Epw. Bowzr, Esq. Closeworth, Sherborne ; 
J. Barratt, Esq. Coniston Mines, near Windermere; W. Gorpon, Esq. Fleet 
View, Gatehouse ; J. Leckrnsy, Esq. Scarborough; Miss Maonnr, Port Stuart, 
Coleraine; Mr. A. B. M. Wetwoop, Meadow Bank House, Kirkverston. 


BOOKS RECEIVED. 

“ Hsquisse Geologique et Paléontologique des Couches erétacées du Limbourg, 
et plus spécialement de la Craie Tuffeau,” par J. T. Binxkaorst. Maastricht : 
Van Osch—America & Cil. 1859, 

“ A Week’s Walk in Gower.” London: Longman & Co. 1859. 


Preparing for publication, in post 8vo. price to Subscribers, 5s. 


THE CHALK CLIFFS OF DOVER; a Geological and 


Paleontological Description of the typical section of the English Upper Cretaceous beds.— 
By S.J. Mackig, F.G.S. F.S.A. 

Of the beautiful and instructive section of the Chalk Strata at Dover, there exists no other 
description than the original and admirable paper by William Phillips in the Geological Transac- 
tions of 1818. The author’s long and intimate acquaintance with this locality gives him peculiar 
facilities for presenting in a light and readable form a concise and accurate account of the 
White Cliffs of this celebrated shore, and which he trusts will be thought worthy of being 
regarded as a text-book generally for the chalk districts of England. 

The proposed work will be illustrated by first-class woodcuts, and will be issued to Subscribers 
at the price of Five Shillings. Subscriptions will be received by the Author, 154, Strand. 


London: J. VAN Voorst, Paternoster-row. 


SUBSCRIBERS’ NAMES ALREADY RECEIVED. 
Additional Names received :-— 


JAMES T. HILLIER, Esq. 20, High Street, Ramsgate. 
G. M. Pirrocx, Esq. Margate. 


*~* A few Copies will be Printed on Tinted Paper, and Bound in Superior Style, at 10s. 6d. 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


MR. TENNANT, 


MINERALOGIST BY APPOINTMENT TO HER MAJESTY, 
: 149, STRAND, LONDON, 


Gives practical Instruction in Mineralogy and Geology. He can also supply 
elementary Collections of Minerals, Rocks, and Fossils on the following 
terms ;— EURO ETT 
100 Small Specimens, in cabinet with three trays . . . . 2 2 O 
*200 Specimens, larger, in cabinet with five trays sh AO TOE. 
300 Specimens, larger, in cabinet with eight drawers . . . 1010 0 
400 Specimens, larger, in cabinet with twelve drawers. . . 21 0 0 


More extensive Collections, either to illustrate Mineralogy or Geology, at 50 to 
100 Guineas each, with every requisite to assist those commencing the study of 
these interesting branches of Science, a knowledge of which affords so much pleasure 
to the traveller in all parts of the world. 

* A Collection for Five Guineas, which will illustrate the recent works on 
Geology by Lyell, Mantel, Ansted, Page, and others, contains 200 specimens, in a 
Mahogany Cabinet, with five trays, comprising the following specimens, viz :— 

MINERALS which are either the components of Rocks, or occasionally im- 
bedded in them :—Quartz, Agate, Chalcedony, Jasper, Garnet, Zeolite, Hornblende, 
Augite, Asbestus, Felspar, Mica, Talc, Tourmaline, Caleareous Spar, Fluor; 
Selenite, Baryta, Strontia, Salt, Sulphur, Plambago, Bitumen, &c. 

NATIVE METALS, or METALLIFEROUS MINERALS: these are found 
in masses, in beds, or in veins, and occasionally in the beds of rivers. Specimens 
of the following Metallic Ores are contained in the Cabinet :—Iron, Manganese, 
Lead, Tin, Zine, Copper, Antimony, Silver, Gold, Platina, &c. 

ROCKS :—Granite, Gneiss, Mica-slate, Clay-slate, Porphyry, Serpentine, Sand- 
stones, Limestones, Basalt, Lavas, &c. 

PALMOZOIC FOSSILS, from the Llandeilo, Wenlock, Ludlow, Devonian, 
and Carboniferous Rocks. 

SECONDARY FOSSILS, from the Lias, Oolite, Wealden, and Cretaceous Groups. 

TERTIARY FOSSILS, from the Woolwich, Barton, and Bracklesham Beds, 
London-clay, Crag, &c. 

In the more expensive Collections some of the specimens are rare, and all more 
select. 


EXTENSIVE AND VALUABLE COLLECTION OF MINERALS. 


Mr. Tennant bought at the Stowe Sale the Duke of Buckingham’s Collection of 
Minerals, which he has greatly enriched by a Collection of Coloured Diamonds, 
Australian Gold, and many other specimens of great value and interest. The 
Collection, consisting of 3,200 specimens, is in two cabinets, each containing thirty 
drawers, with a glass case on the top for large specimens, and is offered at £2,000. 

Such a Collection is well adapted for any public institution. 


OUBLE REFRACTING SPAR.—Mr. Tennant, Geologist, 


149, Strand, has just received from Iceland some unusually large and fine 
specimens of this interesting mineral. Mr. Tennant arranges Elementary Collec- 
tions of Shells, Minerals, Rocks, and Fossils, to illustrate Conchology, Mineralogy, 
and Geology. He also gives Practical Instruction in Geology and Mineralogy. 


Nearly ready, Price One Guinea, to Subscribers. 


ECTIONS OF THE MOUNTAIN LIMESTONE, 
SWALEDALE, YORKSHIRE, showing Forty Dislocations or Veins of 
| Lead Ore, varying in- Throws from One to Forty Fathoms, with the most pro- 
ductive and unproductive portions of each Vein. By LONSDALE BRADLEY, 
M.R.A.C., F.G.S. 
Subscribers’ names received at the Office of Tur Gxozoaist, 154, Strand, 
London, W.C. 


TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
PAGE 


Rev. Tuomas Wiutsurre, M.A. F.G.S. Etc-—On the Red Chalk of England. 261 
Forrran CorRESPONDENCE—Count MarscHatt, of Vienna; Dr. T. L. Purpson, 


of Paris: 2. eS es ae ip ke eee ee Swe eS 
Procerpines oF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES . . 2. . 6 « sw et ew we tw ew we B89 
WNores anp Quen... o.905 <0 See ie ee) oe oe et 
ReVinWS- (0 ie oe ee ea See ce elec 


Now ready, Vol. I. of “‘ The Geologist,” handsomely bound in cloth, price 14s. 6d. 


Ornamental Covers for binding can be obtained at the Office of “ The Geologist,” 
154, Strand, price 1s. 3d. ; 


LECTURE-DIAGRAMS. 


Now ready, No. III. of a Series of Original Geological Diagrams for Lectures; te 
be continued on the First of every Month. 


MY HESE DIAGRAMS will be of LARGE SIZE, on CANVAS, 

or PAPER, and will be accompanied at intervals by’Sets of Smaller Diagrams 
Tilustrative of the Works of Lyzni, Manreit, Dr ta Baucus, Pacs, and AnstED, as 
also by Skeleton-Lectures for Provincial or Amateur Lecturers. 

No. L—A GEOLOGICAL MAP OF THE BRITISH ISLES, with Part of the 
CONTINENT OF EUROPE. Size 9ft. 6in. by 11 ft. 6in. Price 3/. 38. 
No. I1—FORMS OF CHALK FLINTS, derived from VENTRICULITES with 
Examples of the Structure of those Fossils. 

No. I1L—FUSUS CONTRARIUS, and MUREX ALVEOLATUS, from the Crag. 

Special Sets of Lecture-diagrams, illustrative of Popular Geological Subjects, 
may be had on hire. 
“ Grotogist” Office, 154, Strand, W.C. 


APS, PLANS, SECTIONS, and DRAWINGS on STONE 

and WOOD, ENGRAVINGS on METAL, WOOD, and STONE, LEC- 

TURE-DIAGRAMS, and all kinds of Scientific Illustrations, and Chemical 
and Microscopical Analyses, are executed at the Office of 
“Tre Grotoatst,” 154, Strand. 


Letter-Press, Lithographic. and Copper-Plate Printing. 


REMOVED FROM 59, FRITH STREET, SOHO. 
FOSSILS 


From all Formations for selection of Single Specimens, &c. 

Fine Specimens of Old Red Fishes from Banffshire, Caithness, &c. : 

A Large Collection of Minerals for selection of Single Specimens, &. froma 
stock of about 6,000 choice specimens, and 700 distinct varieties, all with names 
and localities, many of which are newly discovered and very rare: 

Fragments of Minerals for Analysis by Blowpipe, &c., in boxes containing 
50 Specimens each. 

Six Series are now ready, to be had singly, price 3s. each; or the Six Series, 
300 Specimens, in box, 18s. 

Lists of Contents sent on application, 


JAMES R. GREGORY, 
8, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, LONDON, W.C. 


GROUP OF FOSSIL FISH FOR SALE. 
(Holoptychius Andersonii), from Yeilow Sandstone of Dura Den. Apply to 


A. Wetpor, “ Geologist” Office, 154, Strand. ~ 


PRICE ONE SHILLING. 


VOL. II. AUGUST, 1859. No. 20. 


THE GEOLOGIST; 


AN ILLUSTRATED 


POPULAR MONTHLY MAGAZINE 


OF 


GEOLOGY. 


EDITED BY §. J. MACKIE, F.GS., F.S.A. 


“Geology, in the magnitude and sublimity of the objects of which it treats, 
undoubtedly ranks in the scale of the sciences next to Astronomy.’—Herschell; 
Discourse on Study of Natural Philosophy. 


“LONDON: 


PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE OF THE GEOLOGIST, 155, STRAND. 
AND SOLD BY 
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO., STATIONERS’ HALL COURT. 


PRINTED AT THE ‘*‘ GEOLOGIST” OFFICE, 155, STRAND, LONDON. 


Tue Editor requests that Contributors will bear in mind the > 
POPULAR character of THE GEOLOGIST, and endeavour to make 
their articles explicit and intelligible to general readers. 

Students or others wishing for information on particular points of 
Geology, or for explanation of Geological terms and phrases, are re- 
quested to address their questions to the Editor of THE GEOLOGIST. 
Answers will be given to them in the ensuing number of the Magazine. 

Letters and communications by Post, specimens, books for review, 
and parcels for this Magazine, to be addressed to Tun EpiToR OF THE 
Grotoaist, 155, Strand, London, W.C., to whom all advertisements 
may be addressed. 

The Editor requests subscribers to forward their names and ad- 
dresses direct to himself, to insure correctness of delivery. 

Tue GEOLOGIST is sent by Post free to Subscribers for six months 
on receipt of a Post-Office or 5s. 9d., or 6s. in Postage Stamps ; Post- 
Office orders are to be made payable to the Editor, at the Strand 
Post-Office. 


GEOLOGIST OFFICE, S. J. MACKIE, 
155, Strand. Editor and Proprietor. 


NOTICE.—After this date the “Guotocist” will be published only at the Office, 
155, Strand. Orders can be given as hitherto through all Booksellers, or dvrect to 


the Office. 


CORRESPONDENTS. 


Communications received from Lapy L. C. Kenyon, Shrewsbury; W. M. B. of 
Mid-Lothian; J. BAINBRIDGE, Esq., F.G.S., York; the Rev. E.G. Bonney, M.A., 
Westminster; Dr. Bryan, F.G.S., Beaufort, Monmouth; Mr. Epw. TINDALL, 
Bridlington; Mr. Mark Norman, Ventnor; D. C. Daviss, Esq., Oswestry; 
J. MusHEN, Esq., Birmingham; Epw. Woon, Esq., Richmond. 


BOOKS RECEIVED. 


Pacr’s “Advanced Text Book.” 

SowerBy's “Genera of British Shells.” 

“Canadian Naturalist.” Vol. IV., Nos. 1 and 2. 

“Geological Survey of Canada.” Report of Progress for the year 1857. 
Toronto, 1858. 


In the Press, price to Subscribers, 5s. 


HE CHALK CLIFFS OF DOVER; A Geological and Palzon- 
tological Description of the typical section of the English Upper Cretaceous beds.—By 
S. J. Macaig, F.G.S8., F.S.A. 

Of the beautiful and instructive section of the Chalk Strata at Dover, there exists no other 
description than the original and admirable paper by William Phillips in the Geological Trans- 
actions of 1818. The author’s long and intimate acquaintance with this locality gives him 
peculiar facilities for presenting in a light and readable form a concise and accurate account of 
the White Cliffs of this celebrated shore, and which he trusts will be thought worthy of being 
regarded as a text-book generally for the chalk-districts of England. : : 

The proposed work will be illustrated by first-class woodcuts, and will be issued to Subscribers 
at the price of Five Shillings. Subscriptions will be received by the Author, 155, Strand. 


London: J. VAN Voorst, Paternoster-row. 


ADDITIONAL SUBSCRIBERS’ NAMES RECEIVED :— 


EpMonpD JONES, Esq., 11, Exeter Hall, Strand. 

Dr. S. P. BevAN, Beaufort. 

EDWARD TINDALL, Esq., 1, Old Guildhall, Bridlington. 
Mr. MARK NorMAN, Ventnor, Isle of Wight. 

E. F. StRATTON READER, Esq., Sandwich, Kent. 


“," A few Copies will be Printed on Tinted Paper, and Bound in Superior Style, at 10s. 6d. 
THE SUBSCRIPTIONS TO THIS WORK ARE NOW DUE. 


201 


202. 
¥ 208. 
204. 


| 205. 

206. 
207. 
| 208. 


209. 
210. 


211. 
212. 
213, 


214, 
215. 
216. 
217. 


218. 
219. 


240, 
241. 
242. 
243. 
244, 
245, 
246. 
247, 
248. 
249, 


250. 
251. 
252. 
253. 


254. 


269, 
270. 


271. 
272. 


MiCROGEOLOGY AND MICROM!INERALOGY. 


SERIES OF MICROSCOPICAL SPECIMENS. 


Illustrative, 1st, of the numerous Microzoa that have aided in forming many of the 
Strata of the Globe; and, 2ndly, of the minute Structure of the Rocks themselves. 


The former comprise the FoRAMINIFERA, ENToMOsTRACA, Bryozoa, &c.; and the latter 
illustrate the Oolitic, Coralline, and other Limestones. 


FORAMINIFERA, 


PLIOCENE. 


runcatulina lobatula, Crag, Suffolk 
Nonionina communis, Crag, Suffolk, 
Miliola (Triloculina, &c.),Crag, Suffolk 
Textularia sagittula, Crag, Suffolk 


EOCENE. 


Alveolina Boscii, Brackelsham 

Rotalia obscura, Brackelsham 

Ovulites margaritatus, Grignon,France 

Miliola (Quinqueloculina, &c.), Grig- 
non, France 

Miliola (Quinqueloculina, &c.), White- 


220. 


221. 
222. 
223. 


224, 
225. 


226. 


Marginulina Wetherellii, London Clay, 
Copenhagen Fields. 


CHALK, 
Bulimina variabilis, Chalk, Essex 
Cristellaria rotulata, Chalk, Essex 
Nodosaria Zippei, Chalk, Wilts 


CHALKMARL. 
Cristellaria rotulata, Chalkmarl, Kent 
Vaginulina costulata, and var., Chalk- 
marl, Kent 
FrondiculariaCordai, Chalkmarl, Kent 


226a Flabellina ovata, Chalkmarl, Kent 


: : 227. Verneuilina tricarinata, Chalkm., Kent 
wee 4 See ae tecliffB 228. Rosalina ammonoides, Chalkmrl, Kent 
Isle of Wieht a m?ayY> | 229. Bulimina obtusa, Chalkmarl, Kent 
een), 3 230. Textularia trochus, Chalkmarl, Kent 
Nummiulina variolaria, Brackelsham 931. Textularia prelonga, Chalkmarl, Kent 
ee ae am Pletal ) 232. Placopsilina irregularis, Chalkm., Kent 
Parton. Hants SSCS | 888 Placopsilina irregularis (nautiloid va- 
Nu ie aa Ghent Bale: riety), Chalkmarl, Kent ; 
fae ee ene, Melero. | 98d. Placopsilina irregularis (attached), 
Nummulina planulata, Courtray, Belg. Chalkmarl, Kent [marl, Kent 
Nummulina leevigata, Brackelsham 235. Dentalina aculeata (D’Orb.), Chalk- 
ee en” London Clay, | 936, Dentalina communis, Chalkmarl, Kent 
Dentalina spinulosa, London Clay, GAULT, 
Copenhagen Fields 237. Vaginulina costulata, Gault, Kent 
Cristellaria cultrata, London Clay, | 238, Cristellaria rotulata, Gault, Kent 
Copenhagen Fields 239. Bulimina obtusa, Gault, Kent 
ENTOMOSTRACA. 
PLIOCENE. CHALKMARL, 
Cythere torosa, Grays, Essex 255. Bairdia subdeltoidea, Chalkm., Kent 
Cythere torosa, Chislet, Kent 256. Bairdia siliqua, Chalkmarl, Kent 
Cythere torosa, Wearfarm, Kent 257. Cythereis ciliata, Chalkmarl, Kent 
Cythere Woodiana, Crag, Suffolk 258. Cythereis quadrilatera, Chalkm., Kent 
Cythere flavida, Crag, Suffolk 259. Cythereis triplicata, Chalkmarl, Kent 
Cythere punctata, Crag, Suffolk 260. Cytheridea perforata, Chalkmarl, Kent 
Cythere trigonula, Crag, Suffolk 261. Cytherella ovata, Chalkmarl, Kent 
Cythere laqueata, Crag, Suffolk 262. CytherellaWilliamsoniana,Chalkm, Kt 
eters pinguis, Crag, Suffolk 263. Cytherella Munsteri, Chalkmarl, Kent 
airdia subdeltoidea, Crag, Suffolk GAULT. 
EOCENE. 264. Cythereis quadrilatera, Gault, Kent 
Cythere plicata, Colwell, Isle of Wight | 265. Cythereis ciliata, Gault, Kent 
Cythere Mulleri, Barton 266. Cytheridea perforata, Gault, Kent 
Cythere striatopunctata, Barton 267. Cytherella Munsteri, Gault, Kent 
Cythere striatopunctata, Highcliff 268. Cytherella ovata, Gault, Kent 


CERALK, 
Bairdia subdeltoidea, Chalk, Kent 
BRYOZOA, 
Pustulopora, &c., Chalk, Kent 
Pustulopora, &c., Chalkmarl, Kent 
MISCELLANEOUS MICROZOA. 


Coscinopora pileolus, Chalk, Wilts 
Terebratule, Chalkmarl, Kent 


272a Crinoidal joints, Chalkmarl, Kent 


273. 


Serpule, Chalkmarl, Kent 


273a Ostree, Chalkmarl, Kent 


Sold by Mr, JAMES TENNANT, 149, STRAND, LONDON, W.C. 
Price One Shilling each, or 10s. 6d. per dozen. 


WEALDEN. 


268a Cypridea Valdensis, Kent 


~ 274, 
275. 


276. 
277. 
278. 


MICROMINERALOGY. 


Sections of Coal from Cardiff 

Sections of Corals from the Mountain 
Limestone of Clifton 

Sections of Bone from the Mountain 
Limestone of Clifton. 

Sections of Oolitic Rock from the 
Mountain Limestone of Clifton 

Sections of Bath Oolite. 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


MR.: TENNAWNE, 


MINERALOGIST BY APPOINTMENT TO HER MAJESTY, 
149, STRAND, LONDON, 


Gives practical Instruction in Mineralogy and Geology. He can also supply 
elementary Collections of Minerals, Rocks, and Fossils on the following terms :— 
a ae 
100 Small Specimens, in cabinet with three trays. . . . a) 
*200 Specimens, larger, in cabinet with five trays . . . . Dice. Ur 
300 Specimens, larger, in cabinet with eight drawers. . . 1010 0 
400 Specimens, larger, in cabinet with twelve drawers . . 21 0 0 


More extensive collections, either to illustrate Mineralogy or Geology, at 50 to 
100 Guineas each, with every requisite to assist those commencing the study of 
theseinteresting branches of science, a knowledge of which affords so much pleasure 
to the traveller in all parts of the world. 


* A Collection for Five Guineas, which will illustrate the recent works on 
Geology by Lyell, Mantel, Ansted, Page, and others, contains 200 specimens, in a 
Mahogany Cabinet, with five trays, comprising the following specimens, viz :— 

MINERALS, which are either the components of Rocks, or occasionally im- 
bedded in them : --Quartz, Agate, Chalcedony, Jasper, Garnet, Zeolite, Hornblende, 
Augite, Asbestus, Felspar, Mica, Tale, Tourmaline, Calcareous Spar, Fluor, 
Selenite, Baryta, Strontia, Salt, Sulphur, Plumbago, Bitumen, &c. 


NATIVE METALS, or METALLIFEROUS MINERALS; these are found 
in masses, in beds, or in veins, and occasionally in the bedsof rivers. Specimens 
of the following Metallic Ores are contained in the Cabinet :—Iron, Manganese, 
Lead, Tin, Zine, Copper, Antimony, Silver, Gold, Platina, &c. © 

ROCKS :—Granite, Gneiss, Mica-slate, Clay-slate, Porphyry, Serpentine, Sand- 
stones, Limestones, Basalt, Lavas, &c. 


PAL/ZOZOIC FOSSILS, from the Llandeilo, Wenlock, Ludlow, Devonian, 
and Carboniferous Rocks. 


SECONDARY FOSSILS, from the Lias, Oolite, Wealden, and Cretaceous Groups. 


TERTIARY FOSSILS, from the Woolwich, Barton, and Bracklesham Beds, 
London Clay, Crag, &c. 


In the more expensive Collections some of the specimens are rare, and all more 
select. 


EXTENSIVE AND VALUABLE COLLECTION OF MINERALS. 


Mr. TENNANT bought at the Stowe Sale the Duke of Buckingham’s Collection of 
Minerals, which he has greatly enriched by a Collection of Coloured Diamonds, 
Australian Gold, and many other specimens of great value and interest. The 
Collection, consisting of 3,200 specimens, is in two cabinets, each containing thirty 
drawers, with a glass case on the top for large specimens, and is offered at £2,000. 

Such a Collection is well adapted for any public institution. 


All the recent Works relating to Mineralogy, Geology, Conchology, and Che- 
mistry, also Geological Maps, Models, Diagrams, Hammers, Blowpipes, Magnifying 
Glasses, Acid Bottles, &c., can be supplied to the Student in these interesting 
branches of Science, by J. TENNANT, Mryeratogist py APPOINTMENT TO HER 
Magrsry, 149, Strand, London (W.C.) 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


Nearly ready, Price One Guinea, to Subscribers. 


ECTIONS or tHE MOUNTAIN LIMESTONE, SWALEDALE, 
. YORKSHIRE, showing Forty Dislocations or Veins of Lead Ore, varying 
in Throws from One to Forty Fathoms, with the most productive and unpro- 
ductive portions of each Vein. By LonspaLe Braptzy, M.R.A.C., F.G.S. 

Subscribers’ names received at the Office of ‘‘The Geologist,” 155, Strand, 
London, W.C. 


SUBSCRIBERS NAMES RECEIVED. 


George Robinson, Esq., Richmond, Yorkshire. 

Sir G. W. Denys, Bart., Draycott-hall, Swaledale. 2 copies. 
The Right Hon. Lord Bolton, Bolton-hall, Wensleydale. 
James Pulleine, Esq., Crakehall, Bedale. 

Robert Hunt, Esq., F.R.S., Mining Record Office, London. 
Thomas Sopwith, Esq., F.R.S., London. 

J. R. Tomlin, Esq., Richmond, Yorkshire. 

The Wet Grooves Mining Company, Wensleydale. 
William Lister, Esq., Dunsa Bank, Richmond, Yorkshire. 
John Knowles, Esq., Gorton Lodge, Swaledale. 

John Darlington, Esq., London. 

George Smurthwaite, Jun., Esq., Richmond, Yorkshire. 
John Ord, Esq., Richmond, Yorkshire. 

Joshua Byers, Esq., Stockton. 

Mr. R. Milner, Keeth, Swaledale. 

Mr. F. Sanderson, Richmond, Yorkshire. 

Mr. J. F. Dent, Leyburn, Wensleydale. 

Mr. J. T. Coates, Ingleton, Lancaster. 

Mr. John Tattersal, West Witton, Wensleydale. 

Mr. James Harker, 1, North-terrace, Darlington. 

The Richmond Scientific Society. 


ALPINE EXPLORATIONS BY MEMBERS OF THE ALPINE OLUB. 


Second Edition —in square crown 8-vo, with 8 Illustrations in Chromo-lithography, 
8 maps illustrative of the Mountain-Explorations described in the volume, a 
map illustrative of the ancient glaciers of part of Csenarvonshire, various En- 
gravings on Wood, and several Diagrams, price 21s. cloth. 


JEAKS, PASSES, and GLACIERS: A Series of Excursions 


by— 

E. L. Ames, M.A. T. W. Hincuuirr, M.A. 

E. ANDERSON, E. S. Kennepy, B.A. 

J. Batt, M.R.LA. W. Maruews, Jun., M.A. : 
C. H. Bunsury, M.A. A. C. Ramsay, F.R.S., and G.S. 
Rey. J. Lu. Davizs, M.A. A. Wits, of the Middle Temple, 
R. W. E. Forster, Barrister-at-Law, and 

Rey. J. F. Harpy, B.D. J. TYNDALL, F.R.S. 


F, V. Hawxtns, M.A. 
Rdited by Joun Batt, M.R.LA., F.L.S.. President of the Alpine Club. 


*_* The Eiaut Swiss Maps, accompanied bya Table of the Huicuts or Moun- 
TAINS, may be had separately, price 3s. 6d. 


London: Loneman, Brown, GREEN, AND Co., Paternoster Row. 


ROVINCIAL INSTITUTIONS desirous of making arrange- 


ments for the delivery, during the ensuing season, of popular Lectures on 
Geology, are requested to communicate with the Editor of ‘‘ The Geologist,” 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


Now Ready. 


A WEEK’S WALK IN GOWER, 


Glamorgansiure. 


BY G. Be BEVAN, M.Day PatGeS. 
Tenby, Mason; London, Loneman AND Co, 
Price 1s. 


MONOGRAPH 
DURA DEN AND ITS REMARKABLE FOSSIL FISHES, 


JOHN ANDERSON, D.D., F.G.S., Erc., 
NEWBURGH. 


Price 10s. 6d. 


The Work will be illustrated by Engravings, and will be published early in 
Autumn, or as soon as a List of ONE HUNDRED SUBSCRIBERS has been 
completed. 

Subscribers’ Names received at the Office of ‘‘ The Geologist,” 155, Strand. 


GEOLOGY. | 
OR SALE, a Valuable Collection of British Fossils, the collecting 


of which has been the amusement of the Proprietor for five and twenty years. 
There are upwards of 4000; nearly all labelled and arranged in Drawers, from the 
Crag to the Silurian (very rich in Dudley and Wenlock). The Proprietor wishes 
to see them deposited in some public institution during his lifetime. From the 
care and perseverance required in forming such collections, this is an opportunity 
that rarely offers. : 
For further particulars address X. Y. Z., Post Office, Birmingham. 


Now published, with Illustrations, Part I., price Hightpence. 


RECREATIVE SCIENCE: 


RECORD AND REMEMBRANCER 


OF 


INTELLECTUAL OBSERVATION. 
(To be continued Monthly. ) 


“RECREATIVE SCIENCE” is intended as a medium of intereommunication among 
Students of every department of Physical Science, and it is intended also to teach 
the chief branches of human knowledge as far as concerns the earth we inhabit, 
and the universe around us. Its endeavour will be to engender and foster a love 
of all that is beautiful and true, and to lead the contemplative mind to the know- 
ledge and appreciation of the works of the Creator. 


London : GROOMBRIDGE AND Sons, 5, Paternoster Row; and sold by 
all Booksellers, 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


LECTURE-DIAGRAMS. 


Now ready, No. IV. of a series of Original Geological Diagrams for Lectures; to 
be continued on the First of every month. 


HESE DIAGRAMS will be of LARGE SIZE on CANVAS, 


and. will be accompanied at intervals by smaller Diagrams, on Cloth or Paper, 
price 2s. 6d.each, Illustrative of the Works of LYELL, MANTELL,'DE LA BECHE, PaGE, 
and ANSTED, as also by Skeleton-lectures for Provincial or Amateur Lecturers. 
Special Sets of Lecture-Diagrams, illustrative of popular Geological Subjects 
may be had on hire. ee 
No. L—A GEOLOGICAL MAP OF THE BRITISH ISLES, with part of the 
CONTINENT OF EUROPE. Size 9-ft. 6-in. by 11-ft. 6-in. Price, £3 3s. 


No. 11—FORMS OF FLINTS DERIVED FROM VENTRICULITES; 
CRETACEOUS FOSSILS. 


No. I1J.—FUSUS CONTRARIUS ; MUREX ALVEOLATUS; CRAG SHELLS. 
No. IV.—Parti. GENERIC FORMS OF FORAMINIFERA. 


Preparing for publication :—CHARACTERISTIC FORMS OF THE MOLAR- 
TEETH OF FOSSIL ELEPHANTS. 


“ GroLocist” Office, 155, Strand, W.C. 


CIRCULATING LIBRARY OF SCIENTIFIC WORKS. 


Suggestions having been made to the Editor of “The Geologist” for the 
formation of a Circulating Library, of new Geological and Scientific Works and 
Publications, both Foreign and British, he is willing to receive the names of those 
who may be desirous of its establishment. 

The terms proposed are, for the issue of one Work ata time, £1 1s. per annum; 
for three Works at a time, £2 2s. per annum. 

The circulation of Books will be commenced as soon as 50 names are received, 
and the Subscriptions will be payable in advance. 


ahead from all Formations for selection of Single Specimens, 
&c. Fine Specimens of Old Red Fishes from Banffshire, Caithness, &c. 

A Large Collection of Minerals for selection of Single Specimens, &c. from a 
stock of about 6000 choice specimens, and 700 distinct varieties, all with names, 
and localities, many of which are newly discovered and very rare. 

Collections of Fragments of Minerals, for Blowpipe and other Analysis, in series 
of 50, in box, price 3s. Five series are now ready, 3s. each. Printed lists of 
Contents will be sent on application to 


J. R. GREGORY, 


3, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, LONDON, W.C. 


TAOSSILS from the RED and WHITE CHALKS of the EAST 
RIDING of YORKSHIRE, and from the SPEETON CLAY and GAULT. 
On sale at EpwarD TINDALL’S, Old Guildhall, Bridlington. 


TO STUDENTS AND GENTLEMEN FORMING COLLECTIONS. 


OSSILS from the CHALK MARL and GREENSAND 
DEPOSITS, can be obtained at moderate prices of 


Mark Wm. Norman, Ventnor, Isle of Wight, 


TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


PAGE 
T. Rupert Jonss, Esq., F.G.S.—On the Weathering of Granite. . . . . 301 
T. Davipson, Esq., F.G.S.—On Spirifera Convoluta. . . ..... . 3818 


Sprrit oF Goop Booxs.—Sir Charles Lyell’s Paper on Craters of Elevation 315 


Forriagn CORRESPONDENCE. (6525) 2 Pe ae ee eee 
Norms AWD QUERIES ©. 2+ 5° 2. 6 ee, 
REVIEWS rT ° e e . . e . e . . . ° * . . . . . . . . ° . BEA 


Now ready, Vol. I. of “The Geologist,” handsomely bound in cloth, price 
14s. 6d. 

Ornamental Covers for binding can be obtained at the office of “The Geologist,” 
155, Strand, price 1s. 3d. 


APS, PLANS, SECTIONS, and DRAWINGS on STONE 
and WOOD, ENGRAVINGS on METAL, WOOD, and STONE, LEC- 
TURE-DIAGRAMS, and all kinds of Scientific Illustrations, LITHOGRAPHIC, 
COPPER-PLATE, WOOD-CUT, and GENERAL PRINTING are executed at 
the Office of ‘‘The Geologist,’ 155, Strand. 


Authors’ manuscripts revised and prepared for the press. 


A New Edition, revised and enlarged. 


ADVANCED TEXT BOOK OF GEOLOGY. 
by DAVID PAGE, F.C. 


Second Edition, with numerous Illustrations, Glossary of Scientific Terms, and 
Index. Crown Octavo, price 6s. 


WILLIAM BLAcKwooD anD Sons, Edinburgh and London. 
Of whom may be had, 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR, 
INTRODUCTORY TEXT BOOK OF GEOLOGY. 


With Illustrations and Glossarial Index. Third Edition, price 1s. 6d. 


RITISH SHELLS. SOWERBY’S ILLUSTRATED INDEX, 

Price 30s. coloured ; 24s. plain; contains every known species. 700 figures 

of 600 species, of which 50 are newly introduced, with names, synonyms, 

localities, introductory, and general information. Sinipkin and Co.; and from the 
author direct, post free, &c., 9, Pembroke Square, Kensington. 


PRICE ONE SHILLING. 


GE, AT. SEPTEMBER, 1859. ~ No. 21, 


THE GEOLOGIST: 


AN ILLUSTRATED 


POPULAR MONTHLY MAGAZINE 


OF 


GHOLOGY. 


EDITED BY 8. J. MACKIE, F.GS., FSA. 


“Geology, in the magnitude and sublimity of the objects of which it treats, 
undoubtedly ranks in the scale of the sciences next to Astronomy.”—Herschell: 
Discourse on Study of Natural Philosophy. 


uae LONDON: 
PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE OF THE GEOLOGIST, 154, STRAND. 


CS: 


PRINTED AT THR ‘‘ GEOLOGIST” OFFICE, 154, STRAND, LONDON. 


Tue Editor requests that Contributors will bear in mind the 
POPULAR character of THE GEOLOGIST, and endeavour to make 
their articles explicit and intelligible to general readers. | 

Students or others wishing for information on particular points of 
Geology, or for explanation of Geological terms and phrases, are re- 
quested to address their questions to the Editor of THE GxoLoerst. 
Answers will be given to them in the ensuing number of the Magazine. 

Letters and communications by Post, specimens, books for review, 
and parcels for this Magazine, to be addressed to THE EpIToR OF THE 
Grotocist, 154, Strand, London, W.C., to whom all advertisements 
may be addressed. 

The Editor requests subscribers to forward their names and ad- 
dresses direct to himself, to insure correctness of delivery. 

THE GEOLOGIST is sent by Post free to Subscribers for six months 
on receipt of a Post-Office order for 5s. 9d., or 6s. in Postage Stamps ; 
Post-Office orders are to be made payable to the Hditor, at the Strand 
Post-Office. 


GEOLOGIST OFFICE, Ss. J. MACKIE, 
154, Strand. Editor and Proprietor. 


CORRESPONDENTS. 


Communications received from J. BAINBRIDGE, Esq., York; EHpw. Jonss, Esq., 
Islington; Dr. Grips F.G.8.; Mr. Gro. Witson, of Wakefield; W. M., B.A.; 
Mr. Ep, Trnpatt, Bridlington; Mr. Fostrr, Dorchester; Mr. Dowi1E, Liverpool; 
J. JonESs, Esq., Chardstock; F. Drakes, Esq., Leicester; H.C. Salmon, Esq., 
Plymouth; Mr. C. Werks, Torquay; E. H., Hackney—There is a geological 
class in connection with the Geologists’ Association, 


BOOKS RECEIVED. 


“Canadian Journal,’ No. XXII., July, 1859. 

“ Abstract of a Paper on the occurrence of Flint Implements associated with 
the Remains of Extinct Mammalia in Undisturbed Beds of a late Geological 
Period.” Read before the Royal Society, by Joseph Prestwich, Esq., F.R.S., 
Geren Goo nee 

“ Antiquités Anté-diluviens récemment trouvées en France et en Angleterre. 
Extrait du Proces-Verbal de la Société Impériale d’Emulation d’ Abbeville.” 1859. 


In the Press, price to Subscribers, 5s. 


HE CHALK CLIFFS OF DOVER; A Geological and Paleon- 
tological Description of the typical section of the English Upper Cretaceous beds.—By 
S. J. Macnts, F.G.S., F.S.A. 

Of the beautiful and instructive section of the Chalk Strata at Dover, there exists no other 
description than the original and admirable paper by William Phillips in the Geological Trans- 
actions of 1818. The author’s long and intimate acquaintance with this locality gives him 
peculiar facilities for presenting in a light and readable form a concise and accurate account of 
the White Cliffs of this celebrated shore, and which he trusts will be thought worthy of being 
regarded as a text-book generally for the chalk-districts of England. 

The proposed work will be illustrated by first-class woodcuts, and will be issued to Subscribers 
at the price of Five Shillings. Subscriptions will be received by the Author, 154, Strand. 


London: J. Van Voorst, Paternoster-row. 


ADDITIONAL SUBSCRIBERS’ NAMES RECEIVED :— 


EpMoND JONES, Esq., 11, Exeter Hall, Strand. 

Dr. S. P. BEvan, Beaufort. 

EpWARD TINDALL, Esq., 1, Old Guildhall, Bridlington. 
Mr. Mark Norman, Ventnor, Isle of Wight. 

E. F. STRATTON READER, Esq., Sandwich, Kent. 


*,“ A few Copies will be Printed on Tinted Paper, and Bound in Superior Style, at 10s. 6d. 
THE SUBSCRIPTIONS TO THIS WORK ARE NOW DUE. 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


MR. TENNANT, 


MINERALOGIST BY APPOINTMENT TO HER MAJESTY, 
149, STRAND, LONDON, 


Gives practical Instruction in Mineralogy and Geology. He can also supply 
elementary Collections of Minerals, Rocks, and Fossils on the following terms :— 


ese 

100 Small Specimens, in cabinet with three trays. . . . Wee 0) 
*200 Specimens, larger, in cabinet with five trays . . . . Doe) 
300 Specimens, larger,.in cabinet with eight drawers. . . 1010 0 
400 Specimens, larger, in cabinet with twelve drawers . . 21 0 0 


More extensive collections, either to illustrate Mineralogy or Geology, at 50 to 
100 Guineas each, with every requisite to assist those commencing the study of 
theseinteresting branches of science, a knowledge of which affords so much pleasure 
to the traveller in all parts of the world. 

* A Collection for Five Guineas, which will illustrate the recent works on 
Geology by Lyell, Mantel, Phillips, Ansted, Page, and others, contains 200 specimens, 
in a Mahogany Cabinet, with five trays, comprising the following specimens, viz :— 

MINERALS, which are either the components of Rocks, or occasionally im- 
bedded in them : --Quartz, Agate, Chalcedony, Jasper, Garnet, Zeolite, Hornblende, 
Augite, Asbestus, Felspar, Mica, Tale, Tourmaline, Calcareous Spar, Fluor, 
Selenite, Baryta, Strontia, Salt, Sulphur, Plumbago, Bitumen, &c. 

NATIVE METALS, or METALLIFEROUS MINERALS; these are found 
in masses, in beds, or in veins, and occasionally in the bedsof rivers. Specimens 
of the following Metallic Ores are contained in the Cabinet :—Iron, Manganese, 
Lead, Tin, Zinc, Copper, Antimony, Silver, Gold, Platina, &c. 

ROCKS :—Granite, Gneiss, Mica-slate, Clay-slate, Porphyry, Serpentine, Sand- 
stones, Limestones, Basalt, Lavas, &c. 

PALAOZOIC FOSSILS, from the Llandeilo, Wenlock, Ludlow, Devonian, 
and Carboniferous Rocks. 

SECONDARY FOSSILS, from the Lias, Oolite, Wealden, and Cretaceous Groups. 

TERTIARY FOSSILS, from the Woolwich, Barton, and Bracklesham Beds, 
London Clay, Crag, &c. 

In the more expensive Collections some of the specimens are rare, and all more 
select. 


EXTENSIVE AND VALUABLE COLLECTION OF MINERALS. 


Mr. TENNANT bought at the Stowe Sale the Duke of Buckingham’s Collection of 
Minerals, which he has greatly enriched by a Collection of Coloured Diamonds, 
Australian Gold, and many other specimens of great value and interest. The 
Collection, consisting of 3,200 specimens, is in two cabinets, each containing thirty 
drawers, with a glass case on the top for large specimens, and is offered at £2,000. 

Such a Collection is well adapted for any public institution. 


All the recent Works relating to Mineralogy, Geology, Conchology, and Che- 
mistry, also Geological Maps, Models, Diagrams, Hammers, Blowpipes, Forceps, 
Magnifying Glasses, Acid Bottles, &., can be supplied to the Student in these 
interesting branches of Science, by J. TENNANT, Mineratocist By APPoINT- 
MENT TO Her Masusty, 149, Strand, London (W.C.) 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


Now published, with Ilustrations, Part IL, price Hightpence. 


RECREATIVE SCIENCE: 


RECORD AND REMEMBRANCER 


OF 


INTELLECTUAL OBSERVATION. 
(To be continued Monthly. ) 


“ RECREATIVE SCIENCE” is intended as a medium of intercommunication among 
Students of every department of Physical Science, and it is intended also to teach 
the chief branches of human knowledge as far as concerns the earth we inhabit, 
and the universe around us. Its endeavour will be to engender and foster a love 
of all that is beautiful and true, and to lead the contemplative mind to the know- 
ledge and appreciation of the works of the Creator. 


London : GROOMBRIDGE AND Sons, 5, Paternoster Row; and sold by 
all Booksellers. 


GEOLOGY. 
oe SALE, a Valuable Collection of British Fossils, the collecting 


of which has been the amusement of the Proprietor for five and twenty years. 
There are upwards of 4000; nearly all labelled and arranged in Drawers, from the 
Crag to the Silurian (very rich in Dudley and Wenlock). The Proprietor wishes 
to see them deposited in some public institution during his lifetime. From the 
care and perseverance required in forming such collections, this is an opportunity 
that rarely offers. 
For further particulars address X. Y. Z., Post Office, Birmingham. 


PNHE ELEVATOR GUN.—In the Times of June the Ist, 1859, 
Captain Norton, of Liquid Fire Shell celebrity, drew public attention to a 
new principle proposed to be introduced by Mr. Charlesworth, in the construc- 
tion of Guns, that of the substitution of an Elevator for the Stock: the saving in 
cost and bulk thereby obtained being attended with decreased risk of injury to 
the Shooter in the event of his Gun bursting. 
A Gun constructed on this principle is peculiarly adapted for the following 
purposes :— 
1. For House-protection against Burglars. 
2, For shooting Birds by Ornithologists. 
3. For Rabbit or Pheasant Shooting in very thick covers. 


4. For Pedestrian Excursionists, and especially for Emigrants. 


A full account of the ELEVATOR GUN, with Lithographic Plates, will be for- 
warded (post free) on receipt of 12 stamps, or it may be obtained through any 
Bookseller by giving the Publisher's address—James Gregory, 3, King William- 
street, Strand. 

August, 1859. 


p OVINCIAL INSTITUTIONS desirous of making arrange- 


1. ments for the delivery, during the ensuing season, of popular Lectures on 
Geology, are requested to communicate with the Editor of ‘The Geologist.” 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


TO GEOLOGISTS. 


The Characteristic and Rare Fossils from the Red Chalk of Speeton, and from 
the White Chalk of East Yorkshire, on sale at EDwarD TINDALL’s, Old Guildhall, 
Bridlington, 

N.B. A Fine Collection of Sponges, from the latter formation in stock. Prices 
moderate. All applications made to the above address promptly attended to. 
Guides supplied to Tourists visiting the places of Geological interest ut Flam- 
borough, Danes’ Dykes, Speeton, the Red Chalk Bed, &c. 


4YOSSILS from all Formations for selection of Single Specimens, 
&c. Fine Specimens of Old Red Fishes from Banffshire, Caithness, &c. 

A Large Collection of Minerals for selection of Single Specimens, &c. from a 
stock of about 6000 choice specimens, and 700 distinct varieties, all with names, 
and localities, many of which are newly discovered and very rare. 

Collections of Fragments of Minerals, for Blowpipe and other Analysis, in series 
of 50, in box, price 3s. Five series are now ready, 3s, each. Printed lists of 
Contents will be sent on application to 


J. R. GREGORY, 


3, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, LONDON, W.C. 


TO STUDENTS AND GENTLEMEN FORMING COLLECTIONS. 


OSSILS from the CHALK MARL and GREENSAND 
DEPOSITS, can be obtained at moderate prices of 


Marx Wm. Norman, Ventnor, Isle of Wight. 


LASS-CAPPED CIRCULAR BOXES, of various diameters and 
depths for preserving and displaying in Cabinets delicate Fossils, Minerals, 
Recent Shells, Eggs, &c., can now be purchased of 


JAMES GREGORY, 3, King William-street, Strand. 

JOHN GRAY, 13, Upper King-street, Holborn. 

GEORGE KNIGHT, 2, Foster-lane, Cheapside. 

JOHN HENSON, 1184, Strand. 

PROFESSOR TENNANT, 149, Strand. 

BRICE M. WRIGHT, 36, Great Russell-street, Bloomsbury. 


The application of these boxes to Natural History purposes may be seen in 
the Museums of Edinburgh, Newcastle, York, and Liverpool. 
A lithographed sheet, shewing sizes and prices, may be had by post. 


EDWARD CHARLESWORTH. 
British NaturaL History Society, 
York, August, 29, 1859. 


TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


PAGE 
S.J. Maccrz—On Common Fossils: 2 9355s)" a Pere 4 
H. C. Sarmon, Esq.—On the Formation of Ore-Veins . . .. .. . 3855 : 
Norms AND QUERIES ==). 22 oe Pans 0) ale ew euler eo 
BREVIRWS <> ce eww ce eel A as ae eee re 


Now ready, Vol. I. of “The Geologist,” handsomely bound in cloth, price 
14s. 6d. 

Ornamental Covers for binding can be obtained at the office of “The Geologist,” 
154, Strand, price 1s. 3d. 


APS, PLANS, SECTIONS, and DRAWINGS on STONE 
and WOOD, ENGRAVINGS on METAL, WOOD, and STONE, LEC- 
TURE-DIAGRAMS, and all kinds of Scientific Iustrations, LITHOGRAPHIC, 
COPPER-PLATE, WOOD-CUT, and GENERAL PRINTING are executed at 
the Office of “The Geologist,’ 154, Strand. 


Authors’ manuscripts revised and prepared for the press. 


LEC TURE-DIAGRAMS. 


Now ready, No. IV. of a series of Original Geological Diagrams for Lectures; to 
; be continued on the First of every month. 


HESE DIAGRAMS will be of LARGE SIZE on CANVAS, 
and. will be accompanied at intervals by smaller Diagrams, on Cloth or Paper, 
price 2s. 6d. each. Illustrative ofthe Works of LYELL, ManTELL,'DE LA BECHE, PaGE, 
and ANSTED, as also by Skeleton-lectures for Provincial or Amateur Lecturers. 
Special Sets of Lecture-Diagrams, illustrative of popular Geological Subjects 
may be had on hire. », : 

No. L—A GEOLOGICAL MAP OF THE BRITISH ISLES, with part of the 
CONTINENT OF EUROPE. Size 9-ft. 6-in. by 11-ft. 6m. Price, £3 3s. 
No. I.—FORMS OF FLINTS DERIVED FROM VENTRICULITES; 

CRETACEOUS FOSSILS. 
No. I1I].—_FUSUS CONTRARIUS; MUREX ALVEOLATUS; CRAG SHELLS 
No. IV.—Partl. GENERIC FORMS OF FORAMINIFERA. 


Preparing for publication :—CHARACTERISTIC FORMS OF THE MOLAR 
TEETH OF FOSSIL ELEPHANTS. 


“ GEOLOGIST” Office, 154, Strand, W.C. 


(Vy TNERALOGY, King’s College, London.—Professor TENNANT, 
't F.G.S., will commence a COURSE of LECTURES on MINERALOGY, - 
with a view to facilitate the study of Geology, and of the application of Mineral 
substances in the Arts. The Lectures will begin on FRIDAY, October 7th, at 
Nine o'clock a.m. They will be continued on each succeeding Wednesday and 
Friday, at the same hour, Fee, £2 2s. R. W. JELF, D.D., Principal. 


R PRICE ONE SHILLING. 


VOL. I. OCTOBER, 1859. No. 22. 


THE GEOLOGIST; 


; 


AN ILLUSTRATED 


POPULAR MONTHLY MAGAZINE 


OF 


GEOLOGY. 


EDITED BY S. J. MACKIE, F.GS., FSA. 


“Geology, in the magnitude and sublimity of the objects of which it treats, 
undoubtedly ranks in the scale of the sciences next to papa ’"— Heischell: 
Soe on Study of Natural Philosophy. 


LONDON: | 
PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE OF THE GEOLOGIST, 154, STRAND. 


PRINTED AT THR ‘‘GIOLOGIST” OFFICE, 154, STRAND, LONDON. © 


Tut Editor requests that Contributors will bear in mind the 
POPULAR character of THE GEOLOGIST, and endeavour to make 
their articles explicit and intelligible to general readers. 

Students or others wishing for information on particular points of 
Geology, or for explanation of Geological terms and phrases, are re- 
quested to address their questions to the Editor of Tue GEoxoctst. 
Answers will be given to them in the ensuing number of the Magazine. 

All communications and articles are deemed gratuitous unless by 
special arrangement with the Editor and Proprietor. 

Letters and communications by Post, specimens, books for review, 
and parcels for this Magazine, to be addressed to Tur EprToR OF THE 
Grotogist, 154, Strand, London, W.C., to whom all advertisements 
may be addressed. 

The Editor requests subscribers to forward their names and ad- 
dresses direct to himself, to insure correctness of delivery. 

Tur GEOLOGIST is sent by Post free to Subscribers for six months 
on receipt of a Post-Office order for 5s. 9d., or 6s. in Postage Stamps ; 
Post-Office orders are to be made payable to the Editor, at the Strand 


Post-Office. 


GEOLOGIST OFFICE, Ss. J. MACKIE, 
154, Strand. Editor and Proprietor. 


CORRESPONDENTS. 


Communications received from W. M., B.A.; Mr. Ep. Tinpauu, Bridlington; 
J. JONES, Fisq., Chardstock; H. C. Satmon, Esq., Plymouth; W. D. Guypg, Esq., 
Chard; Rev. P. B. Bropiz, Rowington; W. Apams, Esq., Newport, Mon- 
mouthshire; J. Curry, Esq., Boltsburn, Darlington; J. R. Mortimer, Esq., 
Fimber, Yorkshire; C. E., Canterbury; J. A. C., Exeter; E. Burns, Dundee ; 
InquiRER, York; F.S. A., London; W. B., Darlington. 


BOOKS RECHIVED. 
“Monograph of Dura Den and and its Remarkable Fossil Fishes.” By JoHn 
AnpeErson, D.D., F.G.S., &c. 
“Mining Review.” 
“The Natural History of the European Seas.” By the late Professor EDWARD 
Forsgs, F.R.S. Continued and edited by RoBEert Gopwin-AvstTEN, F.R.S. Lon- 
don, J. Van Voorst, 1859. Pane Ng 


In the Press, price to Subscribers, 5s. 


HE CHALK CLIFFS OF DOVER; A Geological and Palzon- 


tological Description of the typical section of the English Upper Cretaceous beds.—By 
S. J. Macntig, F.G.S., F.S.A. 

Of the beautiful and instructive section of the Chalk Strata at Dover, there exists no other 
description than the original and admirable paper by William Phillips in the Geological Trans- 
actions of 1818. The author’s long and intimate acquaintance with this locality gives him 
peculiar facilities for presenting in a light and readable form a concise and accurate account of 
the White Cliffs of this celebrated shore, and which he trusts will be thought worthy of being 
regarded as a text-book generally for the chalk-districts of England. 

The proposed work will be illustrated by first-class woodcuts, and will be issued to Subscribers 
at the price of Five Shillings. Subscriptions will be received by the Author, 154, Strand. . 


London: J. VAN Voorst, Paternoster-row. 


ADDITIONAL SUBSCRIBERS’ NAMES RECEIVED :— ’ 
Geological Department of Queen’s College, Galway, per Professor Wm. King. 
Dr. Robert Mortimer, Fimber, Yorkshire. ' 
H. W. Dashwood, Esq., Dun’s Tew, Deddington, Yorkshire. 

S. H. Needham, Esq., of 28, Balsall Heath Road, Birmingham. 
Rey. W. E. Light, Rector of St. James, Dover. 

Wm. Adams, Esq., Ebbw Vale Works, Newport, Monmouthshire. 
Henry Laxton, Esq., Newport, Monmouthshire. 


*." A few Copies will be Printed on Tinted Paper, and Bound in Superior Style, at 10s. 6d. 
THE SUBSCRIPTIONS TO THIS WORK ARE NOW DUE. 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


WATERHOUSE HAWKINS’ 
RESTORATIONS 


Oo 


eeiiNCl ANIMALS. 


—_— 


Will be published by Subscription, price One Guinea, 


A life-like Group of the Mammals of the Post-Tertiary Period, 
shewing the relative size and proportion of their external forms, 


entitled 
Dirnggles ot ihite 


AMONG THE 


ANCIENT BRITONS IN ANTE-DILUVIAN TIMES. 
(Size of Print, 34-in. by 28-in.) 


PUBLISHED BY 


Mr. PARRY, No. 6, CECIL STREET, STRAND. 


Also will be @ iiishal in October next (Size, Imperral 4to), 
WATERHOUSE HAWKINS’ 
COMPARATIVE VIEW 


HUMAN AND ANIMAL FRAME. 


PUBLISHED BY 


Messrs. CHAPMAN & HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


pee SCHOOL OF MINES and of SCIENCE AP- 
PLIED to the ARTS. 
Director— 
Sir RODERICK IMPEY MURCHISON, D.C.L., M.A., F.R.S., &e. 

During the Session 1859-60, which will commence on the 3rd October, the fol- 

lowing COURSES of LECTURES and PRACTICAL DEMONSTRATIONS will be 
ven :— 

a . Chemistry. By A. W. Hofmann, LLD., F.R.S., &c. 
. Metallurgy. By John Percy, M.D., F.R.S. 
. Natural History. By T. H. Huxley, F.R.S. 
ae : By Warrington W. Smyth, M.A., ERS. 
. Geology. By A. C. Ramsay, F.R.S. 
. Applied Mechanics. By Robert Willis, M.A., F.R.S. 
. Physics. By G. G. Stokes, M.A., F.R.S. 
Instruction in Mechanical Drawing, by Mr. Binns. 


The Fee for Matriculated Students (exclusive of the laboratories) is £30 in one 
sum, on entrance, or two annual payments of £20. 

Pupils are received in the Royal College of Chemistry (the laboratory of the 
School), under the direction of Dr. Hofmann, at a Fee of £10 for the Term of Three 
Months. The same Fee is charged in the Metallurgical Laboratory, under the 
direction of Dr. Percy. Tickets to separate Courses of Lectures are issued at £1, 
£1 10s., and £2 each. Officers in the Queen’s Service, Her Majesty’s Consuls, 
acting Mining Agents and Managers, may obtain Tickets at reduced charges. 

Certificated Schoolmasters, Pupil-Teachers, and others engaged in Education, 
are also admitted to the Lectures at reduced Fees. 

His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales has granted two Exhibitions, and 
others have also been established. 

For a Prospectus and information, apply at the Museum of Practical Geology, 
Jermyn Street, London. TRENHAM REEKS, Registrar. 


ONDA Beowr 


LECTURE-DIAGRAMS. 


Now ready, No. IV., Part 2, of a series of Original Geological Diagrams for 
Lectures; to be continued on the First of every month, 


HESE DIAGRAMS will be of LARGE SIZE on CANVAS, 
and will be accompanied at intervals by smaller Diagrams, on Cloth or Paper, 
price 2s. 6d.each, Illustrative of the Works of LYELL, MANTELL, DE LA BECHE, PAGE, 
and ANSTED, as also by Skeleton-lectures for Provincial or Amateur Lecturers. 
Special Sets of Lecture-Diagrams, illustrative of popular Geological Subjects 
may be had on hire. 


No. l—A GEOLOGICAL MAP OF THE BRITISH ISLES, with part of the 
CONTINENT OF EUROPE. Size 9-ft. 6-in. by 11-ft. 6-in. Price, £3 3s. 


No. 11.—FORMS OF FLINTS DERIVED FROM VENTRICULITES; 
CRETACEOUS FOSSILS. Size 3-ft. by 2-ft. Price 2s. 6d. 


No. I1]—FUSUS CONTRARIUS; MUREX ALVEOLATUS; CRAG SHELLS. 
Size 3-ft. by 2ft. Price 2s, 6d. 


No. IV.—Partl. GENERIC FORMS OF FORAMINIFERA. Size 3-ft. by 2-ft. 
Price 2s. 6d. 


Preparing for publication :—CHARACTERISTIC FORMS OF THE MOLAR 
TEETH OF FOSSIL ELEPHANTS. Size Price 2s. 6d. 


“ GEOLOGIST” Office, 154, Strand, W.C. 


Gees ae choice of 200 New and Second-hand of all sizes 
for Shells, Minerals, and Fossils, &c., at the 


NaturRA.ist’s AssocratTion, 17, Dean-street, Soho. 
Glass-top Boxes, Tubes, and Trays, at manufacturing prices. 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


GEOLOGISTS’ ASSOCIATION. 


HE MEETINGS for the ensuing Session will commence on the 

3rd of OCTOBER next, at the Society’s Rooms, 5, CAVENDISH SQUARE, W.C. 

Mr. Macxte’s Class-Lectures on PALAZXONTOLOGY will commence on the 
10th of October. 


INERALOGY, King’s College, London.—Professor TENNANT, 

F.G.8., will commence a COURSE of LECTURES on MINERALOGY, 

with a view to facilitate the study of Geology, and of the application of Mineral 

substances in the Arts. The Lectures will begin on FRIDAY, October 7th, at 

Nine o’clock a.m. They will be continued on each succeeding Wednesday and 
Friday, at the same hour. Fee, £2 Qs. R. W. JELF, D.D., Principal. 


ATURAL HISTORY AGENCY OFFICES, for the registering, 

exhibition, purchase, sale, and exchange of Books,Collections, and Objects, con- 
ducted by G. B. SOWERBY, F.L.S. Also for the publication of SOWERBY’S 
ILLUSTRATED INDEX OF BRITISH SHELLS :—all the Species, 30s.; THE- 
SAURUS CONCHYLIORUM, 25s. each part; BRITISH FLOWERING PLANTS, 
in numbers at 3s. - 390, Strand, W.C. 


Just published, 
OUTLINES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 


THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE 
EUROPEAN SEAS. 


By THE LATE Proressorn EDWARD FORBES, F.R.S. 


CONTINUED AND EDITED 


By ROBERT GODWIN-AUSTEN, F.RS. 


London: J. VAN Voorst; 1, Paternoster-row. 


TO THE MEMBERS OF THE PALZONTOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY AND OTHERS, 
Now ready, 


Uniform, for binding, with the Author’s “Monograph of the Permian Fossils of 
England,” to which, in some respects, it is supplemental. 


N HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF THE INVERTEBRATA 

OCCURRING IN THE PERMIAN ROCKS OF THE NORTH OF 

ENGLAND. Price 1s. Also a Sequel to the same, price 6d. By Professor 
W. Kine. Both publications may be had by post for nineteen stamps. 


ErsineHam WIuson, 11, Royal Exchange, London. 


eo oeeys COLLECTION OF MINERALS, just published, 

cantaining 90 choice Specimens, named and classified. In 2 vols., price 15s. 
Collections of Fossils, Minerals, Foreign and British Shells, in great variety. 
61, Great Russell-street, opposite the British Museum. 


MINERALS, FOSSILS, AND SHELLS on Sale by 
BRICE M. WRIGHT, ) 
36, GREAT RUSSELL STREET, RLOOMSBURY, LONDON. 


MINERALS. 

The general stock of Minerals consists of 10,000 specimens, including nearly 
all the more important of the known species, as well as many that are of very rare 
occurrence, from which single specimens may be selected, at prices varying from 
sixpence to five pounds and upwards. 

Among the recent additions to the stock, there may be mentioned, as worthy 
of the notice of Mineralogists, a fine new meteoric Iron, from Zacatecas, Mexico 
(desezvibed by Dr. Hugo Miiller, in Quarterly Journal of the Chemical Society of 1858), 
which will be cut up into polished slices of various sizes and prices to suit customers. 
‘A number of fine specimens of Datholite, from Bergeman Hill, New York. Also an 
extensive assortment of Carbonates, Sulphates, Cupreous Sulphates, Phosphates and 
Arseniates of Lead, and Cupreous Silicates of Zinc from Cumberland and Lead-hills. 
To facilitate the study of Mineralogy, a series of collections may be had as under :— 
A general Collection of Minerals containing 1000 specimens, 3-in. by 

2-in., named and arranged according to the best authors, and 
suitable for a Museum or Public Institution fi : sr ce0 0: 278 
500 specimens of British Minerals, 3-in. by 2-in., named and arranged 
according to the new Manual by Lettsom and Gr ; : See OF 
200 Ditto, of the same size 23-in. by 14-in.. : s : : oor kO? 0-50 
200 Ditto, of smaller size . : : : : i aman ‘ DB 020 
150 Ditto, still smaller size ; ; : : i 3 - : 210 0 
Similar collections containing Foreign as well as British Minerals, may be had at the 
same scale of prices. 
200 specimens in neat Mahogany Cabinet, with five drawers, named 
and arranged, consisting of both earthy and metallic minerals, 
or either separately if required . : : shee : : 5 
432 specimens in Mahogany Case, with 10 trays, named and arranged 10 
ROCK-SPECIMENS, 
Collections of British Rocks, named and arranged, and containing 100 
specimens, varying in price, according tothe size . F from £1 to £3 
Ditto of Scotch Rocks : from £1 to £3 


oo 
oo 


FOSSILS. 

The collection of Fossils consists of several thousand specimens, many of which 
are fine and rare, from which selections may be made. 

A collection of British Fossils, carefully selected from each geological 

formation, containing 200 species, named and stratigraphically 

arranged according to the works of the best Authors . : ea OB 
Illustrative Map to ditto, 6s, extra. The same may be had separately. 
A series of Fossils from each formation separately, may be had, each 010 0 
100 species of well-preserved Fossils from the Paris Basin, named 

after Deshayes Seis ; 5 : - . O38 
SHELLS. 

The general stock of Shells contains many hundred genera, and of upwards of 
10,000 specimens, from which selections may be made. Among them are to be 
found many rare species too numerous to mention in detail. 

A collection of 800 species, comprising several hundred genera and f 

sub-genera, in all 2000 shells : : : : Re Ne . £40 
100 species of fine cones, all named . s : : 4 é ‘ 5 
100 Ditto of Helix : es ee : : : : 3 
And other genera at similar prices. 
200 established genera, figured in Woodward’s Manual. F . 3 
100 Ditto . : ; , : 3 p : : Sere ) 

Collections of British Shells, carefully named from Forbes and Hanley’s British 
Mollusca, at the undermentioned prices :— 

200 specimens of 75 species , : : : : ; : A 010 0 
300 Ditto 100 __,, Die eS ee ta 
400 Ditto LEO ort, : 4. 020 


Standard Works on Natural History, Conchology, and Mineralogy. Geological Maps, 
Diagrams, Hammers, Glass-capped Boxes and Tubes are also kept on hand. 


oo ooo 
— =) oom 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


Now published, with Illustrations, Part II., price Eightpence. 


RECREATIVE SCIENCE: 


RECORD AND REMEMBRANCER 


OF 


INTELLECTUAL OBSERVATION. 
(To be continued Monthly. ) 


* RECREATIVE SCIENCE” is intended as a medium of intercommunication among 
Students of every department of Physical Science, and it is intended also to teach 
the chief branches of human knowledge as far as concerns the earth we inhabit, 
and the universe around us. Its endeavour will be te engender and foster a love 
of all that is beautiful and true, and to lead the contemplative mind to the know- 
ledge and appreciation of the works of the Creator. 


London : GROOMBRIDGE AND Sons, 5, Paternoster Row; and sold by 
all Booksellers. 


OSSILS from all Formations for selection of Single Specimens, 
&c. Fine Specimens of Old Red Fishes from Banffshire, Caithness, &c. 

A Large Collection of Minerals for selection of Single Specimens, &c. from a 
stock of about 6000 choice specimens, and 700 distinct varieties, all with names, 
and localities, many of which are newly discovered and very rare. 

_ Collections of Fragments of Minerals, for Blowpipe and other Analysis, in series 
of 50, in box, price 3s. Five series are now ready, 3s. each. Printed lists of 
Contents will be sent on application to 


J. R. GREGORY, 


8, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, LONDON, W.C. 


TO STUDENTS AND GENTLEMEN FORMING COLLECTIONS. 


OSSILS from the CHALK MARL and GREENSAND 
DEPOSITS, can be obtained at moderate prices of 


Mark Wm. Normay, Ventnor, Isle of Wight. 


LASS-CAPPED CIRCULAR BOXES, of various diameters and 


depths for preserving and displaying in Cabinets delicate Fossils, Minerals, 
Recent Shells, Eggs, &c., can now be purchased of 


JAMES GREGORY, 3, King William-street, Strand. 

JOHN GRAY, 13, Upper King-street, Holborn. 

GEORGE KNIGHT, 2, Foster-lane, Cheapside. 

JOHN HENSON, 113a, Strand. 

CAROLINE SOWERBY, 61, Great Russell-street, Bloomsbury. 
PROFESSOR TENNANT, 149, Strand. 

BRICE M. WRIGHT, 36, Great Russell-street, Bloomsbury. 


The application Me these boxes to Natural History purposes may be seen in 
the Museums of Edinburgh, Newcastle, York, and Liverpool. 
A lithographed sheet, shewing sizes and prices, may be had by post. 
EDWARD CHARLESWORTH. 
Baitish NatuRAL History SOCIETY, 
York, August, 29, 1859. 


TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


S. J. Macxte—The Common Fossils of the British Rocks (continued) . . 381 
H. C. Satmon, Esq.—On the Formation of Ore-Veings . ... ~~. « 889 
MEETING OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION . « «© 6 «© «© © «© «© © @ eo 397 
Wores AND QUERIES . 2%. 0%. SS eE& oe ie te eee 404 


REVIEWS 2s ee we ee 


Now ready, Vol. I. of “The Geologist,” handsomely bound in cloth, price 
14s. 6d. 

Ornamental Covers for binding can be obtained at the office of “ The Geologist,” 
154, Strand, price 1s. 3d. 


APS, PLANS, SECTIONS, and DRAWINGS on STONE 

and WOOD, ENGRAVINGS on METAL, WOOD, and STONE, LEC- 

TURE-DIAGRAMS, and all kinds of SCIENTIFIC ILLUSTRATIONS. LITHO- 

GRAPHIC, COPPER-PLATE, WOOD-CUT, and GENERAL PRINTING, and 
BINDING are executed at the Office of = 

“THE Grotocist” 154, Strand. 
Authors’ manuscripts revised and prepared for the press, and estimates given 
for complete works. 


TO PROFESSORS OF COLLEGES, AND HEADS OF LOCAL INSTITU- 
TUTIONS, AND OF SCHOOLS. 


ORIGINAL DIAGRAMS FOR LECTURES. 


PeESE DIAGRAMS are on cloth (or on paper at the option of 


purchasers) and of the average size of 3-ft. by 2-ft. Price 2s. 6d. each; or to 
Subscribers paying in advance, 24s. per dozen. 


Now ready, No. IV., Part 2, Price 2s. 6d—GENERIC FORMS OF FORA- 
MINIFERA. Size 3-ft. by 2-ft. 
Preparing for publication, No. IV., Parts 3 to 6 of the GENERIC FORMS OF 
e FORAMINIFERA. Size 3-ft. by 2-ft. Price 2s. 6d. each. 
No. V.—CHARACTERISTIC FORMS OF THE MOLAR TEETH OF FOSSIL 
ELEPHANTS. Size 3-ft. by 2-ft. Price 2s. 6d. - 


For further particulars see Wrapper, page 6. 


Specimen-Diagrams on cloth, sent by Post, free, on receipt of a Post Ofice Order 
or Stamps. 


ABLES OF THE DIVISIONS AND SUB-DIVISIONS OF 
THE ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE KINGDOMS, adapted (with the latest 


emendations) for the use of Geologists and Naturalists. By S. J. Macktx, F.G.S. 
In wrapper, price 6d. ; 


“GEOLOGIST” Office, 154, Strand, and of all Booksellers; or by post, free on 
receipt of stamps. 


ee ee INSTITUTIONS desirous of making arrange- 
ments for the delivery, during the ensuing season, of popular Lectures on 
Geology, are requested to communicate with the Editor of “The Geologist.” 


PRICE ONE SHILLING. on 


VOL. II. NOVEMBER, 1859. | No. 23. 


THE GEOLOGIST: 


AN ILLUSTRATED 


POPULAR MONTHLY MAGAZINE 


GHOLOG Y. 


fa 
Dp V7, 


Po {4,7 Ny 
‘fj : (LEER WN 


EDITED BY 8. J. MACKIE, F.GS, FSA. 


“Geology, in the magnitude and sublimity of the objects of which it treats, 
undoubtedly ranks in the scale of the sciences next to Astronomy.”—Herschell: 
Discourse on Study of Natural Philosophy. 


LONDON: 
PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE OF THE GEOLOGIST, 154, STRAND. 


PRINTED AT THE GEOLOGIST OFFICE, 154, STRAND, LONDON. 


Tur Editor requests that Contributors will bear in mind the 
POPULAR character of THE GEOLOGIST, and endeavour to make 
their articles explicit and intelligible to general readers. 

Students or others wishing for information on particular points of 
Geology, or for explanation of Geological terms and phrases, are re- 
quested to address their questions to the Editor of THe Groxocist. 
Answers will be given to them in the ensuing number of the Magazine. 

All communications and articles are deemed gratuitous unless by 
special arrangement with the Editor and Proprietor. 

Letters and communications by Post, specimens, books for review, 
and parcels for this Magazine, to be addressed to THE EDITOR OF THE 
Grotocist, 154, Strand, London, W.C., to whom all advertisements 
may be addressed. 

The Editor requests subscribers to forward their names and ad- 
dresses direct to himself, to insure correctness of delivery. 

- Tur Groxocist is sent by Post free to Subscribers for six months 
on receipt of a Post-Office order for 5s. 9d., or 6s. in Postage Stamps 5 
Post-Office orders are to be made payable to the Editor, at the Strand 
Post-Office. 


GEOLOGIsT OFFICE, S. J. MACKIE, 
154, Strand. Editor and Proprietor. 


CORRESPONDENTS. 

Communications received from CO. C., Folkestone; Epw. Woop, Esq., F.G.S.» 
Richmond; H. C. Satmon, Plymouth; G. V. Du Noysr, Esq., F.G.S., Geo- 
logical Survey, Dublin; Mr. Epw. Trnpau., Bridlington; H. C. Sorsy, Esq.; 
Bromfield; Rev. W. S. Symonps, F.G.S., Pendock; J. C. Moorz, Esq., F.G.S. ; 
T. Davipson, Esq., F.G.S., Brighton; M. B. A. W., Mid-Lothian ; R. M. Brr- 
NARD, Esq., Clifton; J. B, BarnBriper, Esq., F.G.S., York; Rev. P. B. Broprz, 
Rowington; Rev. Freprerick Smytue, M.A., F.G.S., Churchdown; JoHN 


JONES, Esqg., Chard. —. 
BOOKS RECEIVED. 


“Canadian Naturalist and Geologist,” for October. 

‘‘ A Letter on the rapid choking up and impending destruction of Poole Har- 
bour.” By P. Branpon, C.E. Poole, R. Sydenham, 1859. __ 
' “Handbook of Geological Terms and Geology.” By Davin Pagz, F.G.S. 
London and Edinburgh, Blackwoods, 1859. 

“Essay on the Origin, Organisation, and Decomposition of the Solar System.” 
By Wm. Gatsz, Senr. Aberdeen, Bennett, 42, Castle Street, 1859. 

Cabinets for Fossils or Minerals, No. 10. 

Collection of Minerals, No. 47. 

Geological Collection of Rocks and Fossils, stratigraphically arranged, No. 15. 

Issued by the Natural History Collecting Association, 17, Dean-street, Soho. 


In the Press, price to Subscribers, 5s. 


ae CHALK CLIFFS OF DOVER; A Geological and Paleon- 
tological Description of the typical section of the English Upper Cretaceous beds.—By 
S. J. MAcnig£, F.G.S8., F.S.A. : 

Of the beautiful and instructive section of the Chalk Strata at Dover, there exists no other 
description than the original and admirable paper by William Phillips in the Geological Trans- 
actions of 1818. The author’s long and intimate acquaintance with this locality gives him 
peculiar facilities for presenting in a light and readable form a concise and accurate account of 
the White Cliffs of this celebrated shore, and which he trusts will be thought worthy of being 
regarded as a text-book generally for the chalk-districts of England. 

The proposed work will be illustrated by first-class woodcuts, and will be issued to Subscribers 
at the price of Five Shillings. Subscriptions will be received by the Author, 154, Strand. 


London: J. VAN Voorst, Paternoster-row. 


ADDITIONAL SUBSCRIBER’S NAME RECEIVED :— 
Lady Elizabeth Cust, 13, Ecclestone-square, London. 
*«* A few Copies will be Printed on Tinted Paper, and Bound in Superior Style, at 10s. 6d. 


THE SUBSCRIPTIONS TO THIS WORK ARE NOW DUE. 


eer 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


7 ris day is published, 


HANDBOOK OF GEOLOGICAL TERMS AND 
GEOLOGY. 


By DAVID PAGE, Esq, 


In Crown 8vo, price 6s. 


By the same Author. 
Ee 
Third Edition, price 1s. 6d. 
INTRODUCTORY TEXT-BOOK OF GEOLOGY. 
With Engravings on Wood, and Glossarial Index. 


It, 


ADVANGED TEXT-BOOK OF GEOLOGY, 
DESCRIPTIVE AND INDUSTRIAL, 
With Engravings, and Glossary of Scientific Terms. 


WILLIAM BLacKwoop & Sons, Edinburgh and London. 


Just published, 
OUTLINES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 


THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE 
EUROPEAN SEAS. 


By THE LATE Professor EDWARD FORBES, FE.BS. 
CONTINUED AND EDITED 
By ROBERT GODWIN-AUSTEN, F.R.S. 


London: J. VAN Voorst; 1, Paternoster-row. 


R. J. OC. STEVENS will Sell by Auction at his Great Room, 
‘38, Kine Street, Covent GARDEN, on FRipAy, NOVEMBER 18th, at Half- 
past Twelve precisely, an extensive 


COLLECTION OF SELECTED LIAS FOSSILS, 
From Bridlington and Whitby, including a 
VALUABLE SPECIMEN OF !CHTHYOSAURUS, 
From the former locality. 


May be viewed on the day prior, and morning of Sale, and Catalogues had of 
Mr, J, C. Stevens, 38, King-street, Covent-garden, W.C. 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 
(2 na 


NOTES AND MEMOIRS ON METALLIFEROUS 
DEPOSITS. 


SELECTED AND EDITED BY 


HENRY CURWEN SALMON. 
No. I. 
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE FORMATION OF ORE-VEINS. 
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF DR. BERNHARD COTTA, OF FREIBERG. 


Price One Shilling. 


Gxronocist OFFICE, 154, Strand. 


URA DEN; a Monograph of the Yellow Sandstone and its 


remarkable Fossil Remains. By the Rev. Dr. ANDERSON. Price 10s. 6d. 
Edinburgh: T. Constable, 1859. 


LECTURE-DIAGRAMS. 


Now ready, No. IV., Part 8, of a series of Original Geological Diagrams for 
Lectures ; to be continued on the First of every month. 


HESE DIAGRAMS will be of LARGE SIZE on CANVAS, 
and. will be accompanied at intervals by smaller Diagrams, on Cloth or Paper, 
price 2s. 6d. each, Illustrative ofthe Works of LYELL, Manrret, DE LA Becue, Pace, 
and ANSTED, as also by Skeleton-lectures for Provincial or Amateur Lecturers. 
Special Sets of Lecture-Diagrams, illustrative of popular Geological Subjects 
may be had on hire. — . 
No. L—A GEOLOGICAL MAP OF THE BRITISH ISLES, with part of the 
CONTINENT OF EUROPE. Size 9-ft. 6-in. by 11-ft. 6-m. Price £3 138s. 6d. 
No. I1.—FORMS OF FLINTS DERIVED FROM. VENTRICULITES ; 
CRETACEOUS FOSSILS. Size 3-ft. by 2-ft. Price 2s.6d. — 
No. III.—FUSUS CONTRARIUS; MUREX ALVEOLATUS; CRAG SHELLS. 
Size 3-ft. by 2ft. Price 2s. 6d. 
No. [V.—Parts 1 and 2. GENERIC FORMS OF FORAMINIFERA. Size 3-ft. 
by 2-ft. Price 2s, 6d. each. cae VS hae 
Preparing for publication :—No. IV.—Parts 3 to 6. GENERIC FORMS OF 
FORAMINIFERA. With a Table and Explanation of their improved Group- 
ing, by Messrs. Rupzrt Jonzs and PARKER. ¥ / . 
No. 5.—CHARACTERISTIC FORMS OF THE MOLAR. TEETH OF FOSSIL 
ELEPHANTS. Size 3-ft. by 2-ft. Price 2s. 6d. 


“ Gnonocist” Office, 154, Strand, W.C. 


NATURAL HISTORY AGENCY OFFICES, for the registering, 
exhibition, purchase, sale, and exchange of Books,Collections, and Objects, con- 
ducted by G. B. SOWERBY, F.L.S.. Also for the publication of SOWERBY’S 
ILLUSTRATED INDEX OF BRITISH SHELLS :—all the Species, 30s.; THE- 
SAURUS CONCHYLIORUM, 25s. each part; BRITISH FLOWERING PLANTS, 
in numbers at 3s. 390, Strand, W.C. aay 


MINERALS, FOSSILS, AND SHELLS on Sale by 
BRICE M. WRIGHT, 
36, GREAT RUSSELL STREET, RLOOMSBURY, LONDON. 


MINERALS. 


The general stock of Minerals consists of 10,000 specimens, including nearly 
all the more important of the known species, as well as many that are of very rare 
occurrence, from which single specimens may be selected, at prices varying from 
sixpence to fiye pounds and upwards, 

Among the recent additions to the stock, there may be mentioned, as worthy 
of the notice of Mineralogists, a fine new meteoric Tron, from Zacatecas, Mexico 
(described by Dr. Hugo Miiller, in Quarterly Journal of the Chemical Society of 1858), 
which will be cut up into polished slices of various sizes and prices to suit customers. 
A number of fine specimens of Datholite, from Bergeman Hill, New York, Also an 
extensive assortment of Carbonates, Sulphates, Cupreous Sulphates, Phosphates and 
Arseniates of Lead, and Cupreous Silicates of Zinc from Cumberland and Lead- hills, 
To facilitate the study of Mineralogy, a series of collections may be had as under :-— 
A general Collection of Minerals containing 1000 specimens, 3-in. by 

2-in., named and arranged according to the best authors, and 

suitable for a Museum or Public Institution : . £50 0 0 
500 specimens of British Minerals, 3-in. by 2-in., named and arranged 

according to the new Manual by Lettsom and Greg .. , <. ao OO 
200 Ditto, of the same size 23-in. ee 14-in, : s 5 ° « 1&0 "0 
200 Ditto, of smaller size. . : : : : 5 : “ 5 0 0 
150 Ditto, still smaller size ; 210 0 
Similar collections containing Foreign as well as British M inerals, may / be had at the 

same scale of prices. 

200 specimens in neat Mahogany Cabinet, with five drawers, named 

and arranged, consisting of both earthy and metallic minerals, 


or either separately if required . 5 0 0 
432 specimens in Mahogany Case, with 10 trays, named and arranged 10 0. 0 
; ROCK-SPECIMENS. 
Collections of British Rocks, named and arranged, and containing 100 
specimens, varying in price, according tothe size ° from £1 to £3 
Ditto of Scotch Rocks . : : ; 3 - ‘ ; from £1 to £3 
FOSSILS. ‘ 


The collection of Fossils consists of several thousand specimens, many of which 
are fine and rare, from which selections may be made. 
A collection of British Fossils, carefully selected from each geological. 
formation, containing 200 species, named and stratigraphically 
arranged according to the works of the best Authors . . - £3 0 0 
Illustrative Map to ditto, 6s. extra. The same may be had separately. 
A series of Fossils from each formation separately, may be had, each 010 0 
100 species of well-preserved Fossils from the Paris Basin, named 
after Deshayes . : : : ; : ~ 1 0 0 
SHELLS, 

The general stock of Shells contains many hundred genera, and of upwards of 
10,000 specimens, from which selections may be made. Among them are to be 
found many rare species too numerous to mention in detail. 

A collection of 800 species, comprising several hundred genera and 


‘sub- ‘genera, in all 2000 shells. oc) nibs fae aaee ; ; 0.0 6 

100 species of -fine cones, all named . 5 . yeas atts . 5.0 0 

100 Ditto of Helix. Haiti oie lites |e ° » Sy O80 
And other genera at similar prices. 

200 established genera, figured in Woodward's Manual. : . 3 0 0 

100 Ditto . 0 


1 
~ Collections of British Shells, carefully named from Forbes and Hanley’ s British. 
Mollusca, at the undermentioned prices :— 


200 specimens of 75 species 4 : ; . : , 2 : 010 0 
300. Ditto. ..100 ~ ,, ; : ; ' “| : ; : 1.607, 0 
4004. 1b. +) L5Qini53) 4 2 - 2) 0%. OL 


Standard Works on Natural ere Egdeholaey, and Menemaloes, Geological Maps, 
Diagrams, Hammers, Glass-capped Boxes and Tubes are also kept on hand. 


*" ADVERTISEMENTS. 


ME... TENNADS. 


MINERALOGIST BY APPOINTMENT TO HER MAJESTY, 
149, STRAND, LONDON, 


Gives practical Instruction in Mineralogy and Geology. He can also supply 
elementary collections of Minerals, Rocks, and Fossils on the following terms :— 
£ 8s. d. 
100 Small Specimens, in cabinet with three trays... . ater) 
*200 Specimens, larger, in cabinet with fivetrays . .. . Do.0.00 
300 Specimens, larger, in cabinet with eight drawers. . . 1010 0 
400 Specimens, larger, in cabinet with twelve drawers . . 21 0 0 


More extensive collections, either to illustrate Mineralogy or Geology, at 50 to 
100 Guineas each, with every requisite to assist those commencing the study of 
these interesting branches of science, a knowledge of which affords so much 
pleasure to the traveller in all parts of the world. 


* A collection for Five Guineas, which will illustrate the recent works on 
Geology by Lyell, Mantell, Phillips, Ansted, Page, and others, contains 200 speci- 
mens, in a mahogany cabinet with five trays, comprising the following specimens, 
Viz. :— : ; 

MINERALS, which are either the components of Rocks, or occasionally im- 
bedded in them :—Quartz, Agate, Chalcedony, Jasper, Garnet, Zeolite, Hornblende, 
Augite, Asbestus, Felspar, Mica, Tale, Tourmaline, Calcareous Spar, Fluor, Sele- 
nite, Baryta, Strontia, Cryolite, Salt, Sulphur, Plumbago, Bitumen, Jet, Amber, &c. — 

NATIVE METALS, or METALLIFEROUS MINERALS; these are found 
in masses, in beds, or in veins, and occasionally in the beds of rivers. Specimens 
of the following Metallic Ores are contained in the cabinet :—Iron, Manganese, 
Lead, Tin, Zinc, Copper, Antimony, Silver, Gold, Platina, &c. 

ROCKS :—Granite, Gneiss, Mica-slate, Clay-slate, Porphyry, Serpentine, Sand- 
stones,*Limestones, Basalt, Lavas, &c. 


PALAOZOIC FOSSILS, from the Llandeilo, Wenlock, Ludlow, Devonian, 
and Carboniferous Rocks. 


SECONDARY FOSSILS, from the Lias, Oolite, Wealden, and Cretaceous Groups. 


TERTIARY FOSSILS, from the Woolwich, Barton, and Bracklesham Beds, 
London Clay, Crag, &c. 


2 the more expensive Collections some of the specimens are rare, andall more 
select. 


EXTENSIVE AND VALUABLE COLLECTION OF MINERALS. 


Mr. TENNANT bought at the Stowe Sale the Duke of Buckingham’s Collection of 
Minerals, which he has greatly enriched by a Collection of Coloured Diamonds, 
Australian Gold, and many other specimens of great value and interest. The 
Collection, consisting of 3,200 specimens, is in two cabinets, each containing thirty 
drawers, with a glass case on the top for large specimens, and is offered at £2,000. 

Such a Collection is well adapted for any public institution. 


_ All the recent Works relating to Mineralogy, Geology, Conchology, Chemistry, 
and Botany; also Geological Maps, Models, Diagrams, Hammers, Blowpipes, Magni- 
fying Glasses, Platina Spoons, Electrometer and Magnetic Needle, Glass-top Boxes, 
Brass and Steel Forceps, Acid Bottles, Microscopic Objects, &c., can be supplied 
to the Student in these interesting branches of Science, by J. TENNANT, 


MINERALOGIST BY APPOINTMENT TO HER Magusry, 149, Strand, London (W.C.) 
November, 1859, ? 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


——$ 


INERALOGY, King’s College, London.—Professor TENNANT, 
F.G.8., has commenced a COURSE of LECTURES on MINERALOGY, 
with a view to facilitate the study of Geology, and of the application of Mineral 
substances in the Arts. The Lectures began on FRIDAY, October 7th, at 
Nine o’clock am. They will be continued on each succeeding Wednesday and 
Friday, at the same hour. Fee, £2 2s, 

N.B.—The Lectures on Geology will commence on Fripay, JANUARY 27, 1860, 

at Nine a.m. R. W. JELF, D.D., Principal. 


TO GEOLOGISTS. 
ae AND WHITE CHALK of Speeton and East Yorkshire. 


The characteristic and rarer Fossils of the above formations constantly on 
sale at Bridington. Address as under, 


EDwaRrD TINDALL, Old Guildhall, Bridlington. 


(}LP RED SANDSTONE FISHES from Cromarty, Gowrie, Banff, 


Caithness, Elgin, Fifeshire, &c.; also Scottish Carboniferous Fishes and 
Fossils from all other formations, for selection of single specimens, and in 
collections. 

A large and fine collection of Minerals, for selection of single specimens, and 
in collections, containing all the new and rare substances. 

Fragments of Minerals for analysis, in collection of 300 specimens, price 18s. ; 
also in series of 50, price 3s.; 40 specimens of rare and new mineral fragments, 
price 10s, Lists of Contents on application to 


J. R. GREGORY, 


3, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, LONDON, W.C. 


ABINETS.—The choice of 200 New and Second-hand of all sizes 
for Shells, Minerals, and Fossils, &., at the 


NaTURALIst’s AssocraTIONn, 17, Dean-street, Soho. 


Glass-top Boxes, Tubes, and Trays, at manufacturing prices. 


LASS-CAPPED CIRCULAR BOXES, of various diameters and 


depths for preserving and displaying in Cabinets delicate Fossils, Minerals, 
Recent Shells, Eggs, &c., can now be purchased of 


JAMES GREGORY, 3, King William-street, Strand. 

JOHN GRAY, 13, Upper King-street, Holborn. 

GEORGE KNIGHT, 2, Foster-lane, Cheapside. 

JOHN HENSON, 118, Strand. 

CAROLINE SOWERBY, 61, Great Russell-street, Bloomsbury. 
PROFESSOR TENNANT, 149, Strand. 

BRICE M. WRIGHT, 36, Great Russell-street, Bloomsbury. 


The application of these boxes to Natural History purposes may be seen in 
the Museums of Edinburgh, Newcastle, York, and Liverpool. 
A lithographed sheet, shewing sizes and prices, may be had by post. 
EDWARD CHARLESWORTH. 
British Natura History Society, 
York, August, 29, 1859. 


TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


PAGE 
«J. Macxrr—The Common Fossils of the British Rocks (continwed) Lingula- a 
H. C. Satmon, Esq.—On the Formation of Ore-Veins ore sear | 


GroLoGcicaL TOoPICs. ; 
First Traces of Man on the Earth. . . . «. « 2 s © © « s 408 


MEETING OF THE BriTIsH ASSOCIATION. 
The Ossiferous Fissures of Oreston. By W. PENGELLY, Esq., F.G.S. 


Nowtes AND QUERIES. 2 00 2 se ee ~ « 445 
Geology of Wharfedale. By Epw. Woop, Esq., F.G.8. . . . . 445 
REVIEWS . re re sy ee 


Now ready, Vol. I. of ‘The Geologist,” handsomely bound in cloth, price 
14s. 6d. 

Ornamental Covers for binding can be obtained at the office of “The Geologist,” 
154, Strand, price 1s. 3d. 


APS, PLANS, SECTIONS, and DRAWINGS on STONE 
and WOOD, ENGRAVINGS on METAL, WOOD, and STONE, LEC- 
TURE-DIAGRAMS, and all kinds of SCIENTIFIC ILLUSTRATIONS. LITHO- 
GRAPHIC, COPPER-PLATE, WOOD-CUT, and GENERAL PRINTING, and 
BINDING are executed at the Office of 


ihe “ GEOLOGIST,” 154, Strand. 


Authors’ manuscripts revised and prepared for the press, and estimates given 
for complete works. 


TO PROFESSORS OF COLLEGES, AND HEADS OF LOCAL INSTITU- 
TUTIONS, AND OF SCHOOLS. 


ORIGINAL DIAGRAMS FOR LECTURES. 


pease DIAGRAMS are on cloth (or on paper at the option of © 

purchasers) and of the average size of 3-ft. by 2-ft. Price 2s. 6d. each; or to 

Subscribers paying in advance, 24s. per dozen. 

Now ready, No. IV., Part 3, Price 2s. 6d.—GENERIC FORMS OF FORA- 
MINIFERA. Size 3-ft. by 2-ft. 

Preparing for publication, No. IV., Parts 4 to 6 of the GENERIC FORMS, OF 
FORAMINIFERA. Size 3-ft. by 2-ft. Price 2s. 6d. each. 

No. V.—CHARACTERISTIC FORMS OF THE MOLAR TEETH OF FOSSIL 
ELEPHANTS. Size 3-ft. by 2-ft. Price 2s. 6d. 


For further particulars see Wrapper, page 4. 


Specimen-Diagrams on cloth, sent by Post, free, on receipt of a Post Office Order 
or Stamps. 


ABLES OF THE DIVISIONS AND SUB-DIVISIONS OF 
THE ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE KINGDOMS, adapted (with the latest 
emendations), for the use of Geologists and Naturalists. By S. J. Macxtn, F.G.S. 
In wrapper, price 6d. 
“GEOLOGIST” Office, 154, Strand, and of all Booksellers; or by post, free on 
receipt of stamps. 


ROVINCIAL INSTITUTIONS desirous of making arrange- 


ments for the delivery, during the ensuing season, of popular Lectures on 
Geology, are requested to communicate with the Editor of “The Geologist.” 


PRICE ONE SHILLING. 


DECEMBER, 1859. 


THE GEOLOGIST; 


AN ILLUSTRATED 


POPULAR MONTHLY MAGAZINE 


GEOLOGY. 


EDITED BY 8. J. MACKIE, F.GS., FSA. 


“Geology, in the magnitude and sublimity of the objects of which it treats, 
undoubtedly ranks in the scale of the sciences next to Astronomy.’—Herschell: 
Discourse on Study of Natural Philosophy. 


LONDON: 
PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE OF THE GEOLOGIST, 154, STRAND. 


PRINTED AT THE GEOLOGIST OFFICE, 154, STRAND, LONDON, 


Tur Editor requests that Contributors will bear in mind the 
POPULAR character of THE Gronocist, and endeavour to make 
their articles explicit and intelligible to general readers. 

Students or others wishing for information on particular points of 
Geology, or for explanation of Geological terms and phrases, are re- 
quested to address their questions to the Editor of THE GEOLoaIsr. 
Answers will be given to them in the ensuing number of the Magazine. 

All communications and articles are deemed gratuitous unless by 
special arrangement with the Editor and Proprietor. 

Letters and communications by Post, specimens, books for review, 
and parcels for this Magazine, to be addressed to Tur Epiror oF THE 
Grotocist, 154, Strand, London, W.C., to whom all advertisements 
may be addressed. : 

The Editor requests subscribers to forward their names and ad- 
dresses direct to himself, to insure correctness of delivery. 

Tur GroLoeist is sent by Post free to Subscribers for six months 
on receipt of a Post-Office order for 5s. 9d., or 6s. in Postage Stamps ; 
Post-Office orders are to be made payable to the Editor, at the Strand 


Post-Office. 
GEOLOGIST OFFICE, S. J. MACKIE, ae 
154, Strand. Editor and Proprietor. 


SUBSCRIPTIONS TO THE GEOLOGIST ARE DUE AFTER THE ISSUE OF THE 
PRESENT NUMBER. 


CORRESPONDENTS. 

Communications received from H. C. Satmon, Esq., Plymouth; the Rev. Paton 
J. Guoae; C. C., Eldon-villas, Folkestone; Mr. W. Harris, F.G.S., Charing ; 
D, T. Awnsrep, Esq., F.G.S.; Tuomas Davinson, Esq., F.G.8.; G. V. Du 
Noyer, Esq., Geological Survey, Dublin; C. W. Croxsr, Esq., Royal Botanical 
Gardens, Kew; — Woopwarb, Esq., British Museum; J. Curry, Esq., Bolton; 
H. C. Hopes, Esq., Plymouth; Dr. G. D. Grips, F.G.S8.; A. B. Wynne, Esq., 
Dublin; HE. F., Lincoln ;. Mr. Lzs. 


BOOKS RECEIVED. : 

“The Primeval World: a Treatise on the Relation of Geology to Theology.” 
By the Rev. Paton J. Guoac. Edinburgh, T. and T. Clarke, 1859. 

“The Mining Review.” ee: 

“Map of the Strike of the Slate Beds in Cornwall and Devonshire.” By 
N. WHITLEY. 1859. 

“Mode of Formation of Volcanic Cones and Craters.” By G. PouLetr Scropr, 
Esq., M.P., F.R.S., F.G.S. 1859. 

“The Canadian Journal.” September, 1859. 

“The Canadian Naturalist and Geologist.” August, 1859. 5 

“Dyas et Trias; ou le Nouveau Grés Rouge en Europe, dans ’ Amérique du 
Nord, et dans l’'Inde,” Par M. Jutus Marcov. Genéve, Ramboz et Schuchardt, 1859. 

“On the Origin of the Caverns and Fissures of the Plymouth Limestone, and 
causes concerned in the Entombment and Preservation of the Animal Remains.” 
By H.C. Hoper. Plymouth, J. W. N. Keys, 1859. 


n the Press, price to Subscribers, 5s. 


I 
HE CHALK CLIFFS OF DOVER; A Geological and Palzon- 
tological Description of the typical section of the English Upper Cretaceous beds.—By 
8. J. Mackin, F.G.S., F.S.A. , 

Of the beautiful and instructive section of the Chalk Strata at Dover, there exists no other 
description than the original and admirable paper by William Phillips in the Geological Trans- 
actions of 1818. The author’s long and intimate acquaintance with this locality gives him 
peculiar facilities for presenting in a light and readable form a concise and accurate account of 
the White Cliffs of this celebrated shore, and which he trusts will be thought worthy of being 
regarded as a text-book generally for the chalk-districts of England. 

The proposed work will be illustrated by first-class woodcuts, and will be issued to Subscribers 
at the price of Five Shillings. Subscriptions will be received by the Author, 154, Strand. 

London: J. Van Voorst, Paternoster-row. 


ADDITIONAL SUBSCRIBERS’ NAMES RECEIVED:— 
Miss Kenrich. 
Rey. — Bonney. 


*“.* A few Copies will be Printed on Tinted Paper, and Bound in Superior Style, at 10s. 6d. 


MINERALS, FOSSILS, AND SHELLS on Sale by 
BRICE M. WRIGHT, 
36, GREAT RUSSELL STREET, RLOOMSBURY, LONDON. 


MINERALS. 


The general stock of Minerals consists of 10,000 specimens, including nearly 
all the more important of the known species, as well as many that are of very rare 
occurrence, from which single specimens may be selected, at prices varying from 
Sixpence to five pounds and upwards. 

Among the recent additions to the stock, there may be mentioned, as worthy 
of the notice of Mineralogists, a fine new meteoric Iron, from Zacatecas, Mexico 
(described by Dr. Hugo Miiller, in Quarterly Journal of the Chemical Society of 1858), 
which will be cut up into polished slices of various sizes and prices to suit customers. 
A number of fine specimens of Datholite, from Bergeman Hill, New York. Also an: 
extensive assortment of Carbonates, Sulphates, Cupreous Sulphates, Phosphates and 
Arseniates of Lead, and Cupreous Silicates of Zinc from Cumberland and Lead-hills. 
To facilitate the study of Mineralogy, a series of collections may be had as under :— 


A general Collection of Minerals containing 1000 specimens, 3-in. by 


2-in., named and arranged according to the best authors, and 


suitable for a Museum or Public Institution : . £50 0 0 
500 specimens of British Minerals, 3-in. by 2-in., named and arranged 

according to the new Manual by Lettsom and Greg. : 2 25°00 
200 Ditto, of the same size 24-in. aS 13-in, : A ° : of hss Ore. O 
200 Ditto, of smaller size . ; ‘ : “ : - 5 5 0 0 
150 Ditto, still smaller size 2 AOS 


Similar collections containing Foreign as well as British M inerals, may 1 be had at the 
same scale of prices. 
200 specimens in neat Mahogany Cabinet, with five drawers, named 
and arranged, consisting of both earthy and metallic minerals, 


or either separately if required . 5 0 0 
432 specimens in ey Case, with 10 trays, named and arranged 10 0 0 
ROCK-SPECIMENS. 
Collections of British Rocks, named and arranged, and containing 100 
specimens, varying in price, according tothe size . : from £1 to £3 


| Ditto of Scotch Rocks . : : : A : : from £1 to £3 


FOSSILS. 

The collection of Fossils consists of several thousand specimens, many of which 

are fine and rare, from which selections may be made. 
A collection of British Fossils, carefully selected from each geological 

formation, containing 200 species, named and stratigraphically 

arranged according to the works of the best Authors . : £3 0 0 
Illustrative Map to ditto, 6s. extra. The same may be had separately. 
A series of Fossils from each formation separately, may be had, each 010 0 
100 species of well-preserved Fossils from the Paris Basin, named 

after Deshayes . 4 : - : ° : 5 : : E2020 

SHELLS, 

The general stock of Shells contains many hundred genera, and of upwards of 
10,000 specimens, from which selections may be made. Among them are to be 
found many rare species too numerous to mention in detail. 

A collection of 800 species, comprising several hundred genera and 
sub-genera, in all 2000 shells Sees ees Bas ap . £40 
100 species of fine cones, all named . : : ° : : 5 5 
100 Ditto of Helix .. . : a 5 : : : : . 3 
And other genera at similar prices. 
200 established genera, figured in Woodward’s Manual . : ; 3 
100 Ditto . ‘ 1 

Collections of British Shells, carefully named from Forbes and Hanley’ s British 

Mollusca, at the undermentioned prices :— 
200 specimens O& 7D Species’ ova. é : : ° Gee Q..10:: 0 
300 Ditto 100 ,, : : : . ° ° : : 1 0 0 
400 Ditto LOS, ‘ 2 0 0 
Standard Works on Natural eee Gonchi igen: and iineralocy, Geological Maps, 
Diagrams, Hammers, Glass-capped Boxes and Tubes are also kept on hand. 


== o°o.co 
oO ooo 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


WATERHOUSE HAWKINS’ 
RESTORATIONS 


EXTINOT ANIMALS. 


Will be published by Subscription, price One Guinea, 


A life-like Group of the Mammals of the Post-Tertiary Period, 
shewing the relative size and proportion of their external forms, 


As fe DSirnggles ot shite | 


- AMONG THE 


ANCIENT BRITONS IN ANTE-DILUVIAN TIMES. 
(Size of Print, 34-im. by 28-in. ) 


Mr, PARRY, No. 6, CECIL STREET, STRAND. 


NOTES AND MEMOIRS ON METALLIFEROUS 
DEPOSITS. 


SELECTED AND EDITED BY 
* HENRY CURWEN SALMON. 
| | No. 2 3 ; 
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE FORMATION OF ORE-VEIN S. 
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF DR, BERNHARD COTTA, OF FREIBERG. 
Price One Shilling. 


_Gxzonocist OFFIcE, 154, Strand. | 


ABLES OF THE DIVISIONS AND SUB-DIVISIONS OF 
THE ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE KINGDOMS, adapted (with the latest 
emendations), for the use of Geologists and Naturalists, By S. J. Macxtz, F.G.S. 
In wrapper, price 6d. ; 
“GEOLOGIST” Office, 154, Strand, and of all Booksellers; or by post, free on 
receipt of stamps. 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


VALUABLE AND IMPORTANT COLLECTION OF SHELLS. 
Mr J. C STEVENS 


Has been favoured with instructions from the Executors to Sell by Auction, at his 
GREAT ROOM, 38, KING STREET, COVENT GARDEN, 

On WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 14, and three following days, at half-past 12 precisely, 
The very important and magnificent 
COLLECTION OF SHELLS, 
BELONGING TO THE 


Late H. VERNEDE, Ese., of West End, Hampstead, and formed by hie during 
a long residence in the East. 


Amongst the Specimens will be found many of great rarity and beauty, in the 


finest possible condition, and very rich in species from the Moluccas, Japanese, 
and other parts of the Indian Seas. 


Also, the Seven Mahogany and other Cabinets in which they are contained. 


On view the day prior and mornings of Sale, and Catalogues had at the Rooms, 
or by sending two postage stamps. 


THE PRIMEVAL WORLD: 
A TREATISE : 
ON THE RELATION OF GEOLOGY TO THEOLOGY. 
By THE Rey. PATON J. GLOAG. 


Edinburgh: T. and T. CLARKE, 


“ This book constitutes a noble dissertation on a theme of growing interest.” — 
British Standard. 
“A well-studied and well-reasoned work.”—Nonconformist. 


Will be published on the 21st December, 


FIRST TRACES OF LIFE ON THE GLOBE, 


OR, THE 
FOSSILS OF THE BOTTOM ROCKS. 
By 8. J. MACKIE, F.G8, FS.A. 


London: GRooMBRIDGE and Sons, 1859. Sold also at THE Gronoaist Office, 
154, Strand, 


ADVERTISEMENTS. wit 


INERALOGY, King’s College, London.—Professor TENNANT, 
F.G.8., has commenced a COURSE of LECTURES on MINERALOGY, 
with a view to facilitate the study of Geology, and of the application of Mineral 
substances in the Arts. The Lectures began on FRIDAY, October 7th, at 
Nine o’clock a.m. They will be continued on each succeeding Wednesday and 
Friday, at the same hour, Fee, £2 2s. 
N.B.—The Lectures on Geology will commence on FripAy, JANUARY 27, 1860, 
at Nine a.m. R. W. JELF, D.D., Principal. 


THE NATURALISTS ASSOCIATION, 
17, DEAN STREET, SOHO. 


Tus Association was established in 1853 for the purpose of encouraging col- 
lections and scientific research in all parts of the world, for facilitating the exchange 
of specimens, and otherwise advancing the various branches of Natural History. 

Arrangements have been made for removing the Society's property to 17..Dean 
Street, Soho (recently the residence of the late Dr. Brown, and formerl;; the 
Museum of Sir Joseph Banks), where, after the completion of the repairs, all the 
Meetings and Conversaziones of the Society will be held. 

The Sale and Exchange Department, although distinct from the Library and 
Reference Collection, will be carried on.in the same premises, under the superin- 
tendence of Mr. JoHN CALVERT, C.E, : 

The Collections at present issued are 87 in number comprising Shells, Minerals, 
and Fossils. The Geological Specimens for exchange at present amount to about 
17,000 ; the Mineral Specimens to about 32,000. Thirteen cases have just arrived 
from India containing superb specimens of Apophyllite, Stylbite, Ponolyte, and 
aud some very fine specimens of Rhomboidal Quartz. This Rhomboidal Quartz 
is one of the greatest curiosities of the day, as silica is extremely rarely crystal- 
lized in this form. 

Another curiosity is a beautiful crystal of quartz containing several globules of 
water. 


ENTOMOLOGY.—One case of Mantis from Australia. 


ORNITHOLOGY.—Two cases of Birds from Bogatta, chiefly Finches; one case 
from Bahia, chiefly Oreils and Tanagras. 


CONCHOLOGY,—Comprising many thousand specimens, and nearly all the 
genera according to Sowerby, Grey, Woodward, and Adams. Just received — 
Britis. Thracia pubescens, from Devon ; Amphipeplea involutus, from 
Killarney, new? Rissoa, from Cumberland. 
Forzricn. Halia priamus, from Peru; Voluta fulgetrum, from Anstralia ; 
New Species—Large Pandora, three specimens, reversed, from Peru ; 
Bulimus, from Isle of Pines; Borsonia, from Torres Straits, this 
genus has never been found recently until the discovery of this 
species. 
CABINETS.—It has been determined by the Society to sell their Stock of 
of Cabinets in use as the new ones adapted to the Museum are now being fitted. 
A select Stock of new and cheap Cabinets, Glass-top Boxes, Tubes, Trays, 
Tablets, and other Natural History requisites. 


Persons generally are invited to send specimens for exchange. 


NATURAL HISTORY AGENCY OFFICES, for the registering, 

exhibition, purchase, sale, and exchange of Books, Collections, and Objects, con- 
ducted by G. B. SOWERBY, F.L.S. Also for the publication of SOWERBY’S 
ILLUSTRATED INDEX OF BRITISH SHELLS :—all the Species, 30s.; THE- ~ 
SAURUS CONCHYLIORUM, 25s, each part; BRITISH FLOWERING PLANTS, 
In numbers at 3s. 390, Strand, W.C. 


ADVERTISEMENTS. 


SCHOOL DIAGRAMS, 


AND 


POPULAR EDUCATIONAL WORKS, 


ILLUSTRATIVE OF 


Natural & Phvsical Science, Machinery, Manufactures, 


ETC, 


JAME REYNOLDS, 174, STRAND, LONDON. 


TO GEOLOGISTS. 
| Gea AND WHITE CHALK of Speeton and East Yorkshire. 


The characteristic and rarer Fossils of the above formations constantly on 


Sale at Bridington. Address as under. 


EpwarD TINDALL, Old Guildhall, Bridlington. 


QO LD RED SANDSTONE FISHES from Cromarty, Gowrie, Banff, 


Caithness, Elgin, Fifeshire, &c.; also Scottish Carboniferous Fishes and 
Fossils from all other formations, for selection of single specimens, and in 
collections. 

A large and fine collection of Minerals, for selection of single specimens, and 
in collections, containing all the new and rare substances. 

Fragments of Minerals for analysis, in collection of 300 specimens, price 18s. ; 
also in series of 50, price 3s.; 40 specimens of rare and new mineral fragments, 
price 10s. Lists of Contents on application to 


J. R. GREGORY, 


3, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, LONDON, W.C. 


LASS-CAPPED CIRCULAR BOXES, of various diameters and 


depths for preserving and displaying in Cabinets delicate Fossils, Minerals, 
Recent Shells, Eggs, &c., can now be purchased of 


JAMES GREGORY, 3, King William-street, Strand. 

JOHN GRAY, 13, Upper King-street, Holborn. 

GEORGE KNIGHT, 2, Foster-lane, Cheapside. 

ROBERT HENSON, 1134, Strand. 

CAROLINE SOWERBY, 61, Great Russell-street, Bloomsbury. 
PROFESSOR TENNANT, 149, Strand. 

BRICE M. WRIGHT, 36, Great Russell-street, Bloomsbury. 
G. B. SOWERBY, 391, Strand. 


The application of these boxes to Natural History purposes may be seen in 
the Museums of Edinburgh, Newcastle, York, and Liverpool. 
A lithographed sheet, shewing sizes and prices, may be had by post. 
EDWARD CHARLESWORTH. 
British Natura History Society, 
York, August, 29, 1859. 


ROVINCIAL INSTITUTIONS desirous of making arrange- 


ments for the delivery, during the ensuing season, of popular Lectures on 
Geology, are requested to communicate with the Editor of “ The Geologist.” 


TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


PAGE 
T, Davipson, Esq., F.G.S.—On the Carboniferous System in ier cha- 
racterized by its Brachiopoda . ees 
FoREIGN CORRESPONDENCE, Gommunicated by Count MARSsoHAL . CA ACASEIN UE Uae! oa 
GroLtogicaL TorPics. 
First ‘Traces of Man of the Marth’ &.°.) 4) ena) Wu eee ie a ce 


Mrrrine oF THE British ASSOCIATION. 
Mr. J, Price’s Queries on Slickensides, with Replies by Professor 


D. T. ANSTED ... 482, 
Rev. W. S. Symonps.—On some Fishes and Tracks from the ‘Passage- Rocks, 
and from the Lower Red Sandstone of Herefordshire. . _ 485 


H. C. Sorsy, Esq., F.R.S.—oOn the Origin of the Structure called Cone in Cone 485 
PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 


Geological Society of London . 9... 6s ts. ee Rh se ee 
Geologists’ Association ©. 68 es es eae tet 
NOTES AND QUERIES S000 600. 8 (een ee) Ge vet le lo te terete eta 
REVIEWS 0 ee ye fie falc e: oe ah yess othly ge ue iO m 1 ave Wane Coe ne es Svea er 


Now ready, Vol. II. of “The Geologist,” handsomely bound in cloth, price 
14s. 6d. 

Ornamental Covers for binding can be obtained at the office of “The Geologist,” 
154, Strand, price 1s. 3d. 


‘APS, PLANS, SECTIONS, and DRAWINGS on STONE 

AO WOOD, ENGRAVINGS on METAL, WOOD, and STONE, LEC- 

TURE-DIAGRAMS, and all kinds of SCIENTIFIC ILLUSTRATIONS. LITHO. 

GRAPHIC, COPPER. PLATE, WOOD-CUT, and GENERAL PRINTING, and 
BINDING are executed at the Office of 

The “ GEOLOGIST,” 154, Strand. 
ations eepeeE revised and prepared for the press, and estimates given 
for complete works. 


TO PROFESSORS OF COLLEGES, AND HEADS OF LOCAL INSTITU- 
TUTIONS, AND OF SCHOOLS. 


ORIGINAL DIAGRAMS FOR LECTURES. 


ESE DIAGRAMS are on cloth (or on paper at the option of 


purchasers) and of the average size of 3-ft. by 2-ft. Price 2s. 6d. each; or to 
Subscribers paying in advance, 24s. per dozen. 


Now ready, No. IV., Parts 4, 5, 6—GENERIC FORMS OF FORAMINIFERA. | 


Size 3-ft. by 2-ft, With Explanatory List of the Series. Price 2s. 6d. each. 
No. V.—CHARACTERISTIC FORMS OF THE MOLAR TEETH OF FOSSIL 
HLEPHANTS. Size 3-ft. by 2-ft. Price 2s. 6d. 
No. VI.—FLINT TOOLS AND INSTRUMENTS FROM THE DRIFT GRAVELS. 


SE on cloth, sent by Post, free, on receypt of a Post Office Order 
or Stamps. 


CHEAP DIAGRAMS FOR LECTURES, from One Shilling upwards. Sections 
and Pictorial Views executed to order 


GzEOoLocist OrFicE, 154, Strand. 


FOR CHRISTMAS PRESENTS. 
Now Ready Yo 
WILLY’S BOOK OF BIRDS. 
By Mrs. Macxtz. 
With 16 Illustrations drawn on Stone from Original Specimens, 
Price: plain, 5s. Coloured by hand, 7s. €d, _ 
London: Gzonoaist Orricr, 154, Strand, 1859. 


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