REPORT ON UPPER PALEOZOIC FOSSILS FROM CHINA. 301 



as do the Russians, who thus designate the Gschelian stage of their section, 

 but as our own geologists, so that it would cover the Moskovian as well. 



The fauna obtained in Shan-tung at station 59, while quite different 

 from that which occasioned the foregoing remarks, is nevertheless clearly of 

 Upper Carboniferous age. 



Probably no group of shells is so characteristic of Carboniferous faunas 

 as a whole, none represented by such a variety of species, and none present 

 in such profusion of numbers as the genus Prodnctns. It is therefore one of 

 the most marked peculiarities of these Chinese faunas that shells of this group 

 together with a few Chonetes are practically absent. In the Ssi-chu'an 

 section only one form, doubtfully referred to Productus, has been found, and 

 but a single small species, probably a Marginifera, has come to hand from 

 the province of Shan-tung. With these inconsiderable exceptions the whole 

 family of the Productidae is unrepresented in our collections. 



It is doubtless in part owing to this circumstance that these Chinese 

 faunas present so individual a facies, being, so far as their characters are 

 shown, distinct from any of the faunas with which they would most reason- 

 ably be expected to agree. It is true, however, that with the exception of 

 the fauna obtained from the lower beds of the Wu-shan limestone too few 

 species have been procured, and these too obscure and ill-preserved to afford 

 a practical idea of the faunal facies. Whether they be compared with other 

 Chinese Carboniferous faunas described by Kayser, with the faunas of the 

 Salt Range of India, or with those of eastern Russia, it is clear that they are 

 more or less completely different. The lower fauna of the Wu-shan lime- 

 stone, to which these remarks must especially refer, does, however, show 

 remote affinities with the Indian and Russian faunas, manifested rather in 

 the presence of the same genera than of identical species. Thus, the Wu- 

 shan fauna possesses a stromatoporoid coral, the appearance of which group 

 is such a novel feature in the Salt Range fauna; it has a Geinitzella related to 

 G. columnaris , together with brachiopods of the genera Hemiptychina and 

 Notothyris. On essentially the same grounds a certain affinity is shown with 

 the Russian faunas of the Upper Carboniferous, and both faunas have in 

 common the presence of shells belonging to Schwagerina, a circumstance in 

 some measure suggesting a correlation with Tschernyschew's Schwagerina 

 zone, which, indeed, a few specific resemblances tend to confirm. The faunas 

 in the present collections are less closely allied to those previously known 

 from China than to those from the more remote regions just considered. 

 Aside from the occurrence in both of Schwagerina they have little in common 

 with the Carboniferous faunas described in von Richthofen's volume, which 

 came chiefly from Lo-ping, in the province of Kiang-si. 



The faunas of western North America have, as compared with those of 

 the Mississippi Valley, a distinctly Asiatic facies; but these Chinese faunas 

 are still distinct, the very features which ally them to the faunas of India and 

 China and in which their Asiatic affinities chiefly reside, aiding prominently 



