PALEONTOLOGICAL NOTES. 



IV.* VIEW OF THE CARBONIFEROUS FAUNA OF THE 

 NARRAGANSETT BASIN. 



By a. S. Packard. 



Rficeived February 21, 1900. Presented March 14, 1900. 



While the flora of the Narragausett coal basin is abundant, remains 

 of about eighty-eight species of plants having been detected in the black 

 carbonaceous shales and lighter sandstones, but few traces of animal life 

 have been found, these being mostly the wings of cockroaches and other 

 net-veined insects. 



The age of these beds was originally supposed by the elder Hitchcock 

 to be Lower Carboniferous, but from a collection from the black shales 

 near the western edge of the Narragausett coal basin, at Providence 

 and Pawtucket, in the Museum of Brown University, sent by us for 

 examination by Lesquereux, he referred the beds to the Upper Carboni- 

 ferous, stating in a letter to us : 



" These specimens, taken together, are interesting, as indicating more 

 than any other lot I have seen of fossil plants of Rhode Island, the strati- 

 graphical relations of your coal strata to those of the upper part of the 

 anthracite measures of Pennsylvania, where, even, I have not observed 

 such a predominance of species of Odontopteris typically allied to 

 those described by Fontaine and White from the Upper Carboniferous 

 of Pennsylvania." f 



Besides the fourteen species of insects and an arachnid described by 

 Scudder t from the plant beds of Rhode Island, we have previously 

 noticed § the discovery of other fossil animals, viz., Spirorbis carbonarius, 



* Paleontological notes I. -III. appeared in Proceedings Boston Society of 

 Natural History, xxiv., 1889, pp. 209-216. See also Recent discoveries in the Car- 

 boniferous flora and fauna of Rliode Island (Amer. Journ. Sci., 3d Series, xxxvii., 

 p. 411, 1889). 



t Proceedings Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., xxiv., 1889, p. 214. 



I Insect fauna of the Rhode Island coal field. Bulletin U. S. Geo!. Survey, 

 No. 101, 1893. 



§ L. c, p. 214. 



