HAIIDWICKE'S SCIENCE. GOSSIP. 



117 



the Land on the North Wales Border"; and a long 

 and thoroughly exhaustive paper by Mr. W. H. 

 Hudleston, F.G.S., on "The Yorkshire Oolites." 

 The second part of the fourteenth volume of the 

 Manchester Geological Society's Transactions is 

 also to hand, containing articles by Mr. John 

 Aitkin, E.G.S., on the Drift Deposits on the 

 Western Pennine Slopes of the upper Drainage of 

 the rivers Calder and Irwell, with some suggestions 

 as to the cause of the partial absence of drift on the 

 eastern slopes. Mr. John Plant, E.G.S., has a 

 paper describing the submerged forest near Holm- 

 firth. 



Carbonic Acid in the Atmosphere. — I have 

 often met with the assertion that the absence of 

 air-breathing animals from the palaeontology of 

 periods below the Carboniferous, supposing the 

 record to be sufficiently perfect for us to be satis- 

 fied as to the fact, is to be accounted for by the 

 consideration that before the vast amounts of 

 carbon which we find in the coal deposits of the 

 globe were thus fixed (if you will allow me to use a 

 term of the old alchemists which seems aptly to 

 express my meaning), it must have existed, at least 

 in great measure, in the atmosphere in the form of 

 carbonic acid gas, rendering this atmosphere quite 

 unfit for the breathing of animals furnished with 

 lungs. It occurs to me that, however slowly, the 

 agency of man is yet surely deoxidizing this carbon 

 as we consume our supply of coal, sending forth 

 into the air around us vast volumes of carbonic 

 acid gas, besides what we also send forth set free 

 from the various limestones that are continually 

 undergoing decomposition in our various industrial 

 operations ; and I should be glad if some of the 

 readers of Science-Gossip, furnished with the 

 needed experimental and practical knowledge, would 

 inform us whether all these agencies of man are, in 

 any appreciable manner, however minute, altering 

 the average amount of carbonic acid gas found 

 normally in atmospheric air ? Whether with our 

 very limited grasp of the powers of compensation of 

 nature, and of the resources of the Creator, it is 

 safe for us to look back to any geological period, 

 and say that our globe was surrounded by an atmo- 

 sphere materially differing in composition from that 

 which we now breathe ? Whether, looking forward 

 to a time— far distant, I hope, but which some 

 have speculated about— when, having burnt up all 

 our available coal, we shall have rendered the air 

 unfit for the br p athing of animals furnished with 

 lungs ? Because, if so, we need scarcely speculate 

 upon what fuel will be patented to answer man's 

 various necessities now supplied by our " black 

 diamonds."—/. G, Halliday (Colonel). 



"The Occurrence of the Bhaetic Beds 

 near Leicester."— This is the title of a paper 

 read before Jhe Geological Society by Mr. W. J. 



Harrison, F.G.S. The sections described are shown 

 in brick-pits in the Spinney Hills, forming the 

 eastern boundary of the town of Leicester, and in 

 the Crown Hill on the eastern side of a valley exca- 

 vated by the Willow Brook. In the latter locality 

 they are capped by Lower Lias. They have a 

 slight dip to the south-east. The brick-pits show a 

 thickness of about 30 feet of Rhaetic beds above the 

 Triassic red marl, to which their stratification is 

 parallel. The lowest bed is a light-coloured sandy 

 marl about 17 feet thick, traversed by three or four 

 courses of harder, whiter stone, and containing 

 crystals of selenite, pseudomorphs of salt, and 

 numerous small fish-scales. A single insect -wing 

 was obtained from it. This bed extends across the 

 valley of the Willow Brook, and forms the base of 

 Crown Hill. Above it comes the Bone-bed, from 

 2 to 3 inches thick, containing numerous small 

 teeth, bones, and scales of fishes and Saurians, 

 including large vertebra? of Ichthyosaurus, ribs pro- 

 bably of Plesiosaurus, and some bones of Labyrin. 

 thodont character. Two species of Axinus also 

 occur. The Bone-bed is followed by about 2± feet 

 of coarse black shales, overlain by a very thin band 

 of hard reddish sandstone, with casts of Axinus, and 

 this by about 2 feet of finely laminated black shales, 

 containing Cardium rhaticum, Avicula contorta, and 

 a starfish (Ophiolepis Damesii). Above these come 

 about 5 feet of shales with sandy partings, the 

 lower foot rather dark and containing Avicula con~ 

 torta, Cardium rhceticum, Ostrea liassica, and a new 

 Pholidophorus ; the remainder light-coloured, but 

 with the same shells. The topmost bed in the 

 section is a band of nodular limestone 6 inches 

 thick. The same sequence is observed in Crown 

 Hill. There are indications of the existence of a 

 second nodular limestone and of beds of light- 

 coloured clay and sand, but obscured by drift, in 

 which, however, blocks of limestone occur with 

 Monotis decussata and Anoplophora musculoides. 

 The author indicates other localities where traces of 

 the Bhaetic beds are to be seen, and states that 

 wherever the true junction of thej Trias and Lias 

 is exposed the Rhaetics appear to be invariably 

 present. 



Extinct Mammals.— Professor Flower, F.R.S., 

 in a lecture at the Boyal Institution, gave an ac- 

 count of the discoveries recently made of a vast 

 number of fossil remains of animals which lived in 

 North America during the Tertiary period, espe- 

 cially those found in the Eocene strata of Wyoming, 

 Colorado, and New Mexico, only explored since 

 1869, chiefly by the United States geological survey 

 of the territories under Dr. F. V. Hayden. Of the 

 remains particularly selected for description, many 

 are of animals unlike any now existing, or found 

 fossil elsewhere, and many constitute connectiag 

 links between living forms now widely separated 



