Branner : Geolocv of Alagoas, Brazil. 17 



examined them for diatoms. Mr. Terry writes me in regard to one speci- 

 men sent liim that it contains a small amount of quartz sand, and a little 

 muscovite, but no diatoms. Another lot of this same shale was sent Mr, 

 Terry later and he says of it: "None of these shales contain any diatoms. 

 They differ somewhat from the specimens I examined in 1908 from the 

 same locality, but they are substantially the same. They contain a large 

 amount of iron oxide and of bituminous matter, but the bulk of the rock 

 is a hydrocarbon. . . . It is probably formed from algae." 



Ostracods.- — The bituminous shales, and some of the sandy layers ac- 

 companying them, contain many impressions of ostracods. Some of these 

 have been submitted to Dr. E. O. Ulrich and he writes as follows in 

 regard to them: 



"The specimens are of one or two species of Estheria, but their preserva- 

 tion is so poor that I cannot classify them more exactly. They might 

 be of any age from late Triassic to Pleistocene, but it is my belief that 

 they will finally turn out to be early Cretaceous. Do not rely on this 

 opinion unless it is in accord with other evidence." 



Fishes. — The fossil fishes described in the accompanying paper by Dr. 

 Jordan were first collected by me at Riacho Doce and Barreiro do Bo- 

 queirao in 1899. Later I sent my assistant, Mr. Roderic Crandall, to 

 make a fuller collection, and he brought away several boxes of these 

 bituminous shales from Riacho Doce. Those thinly laminated shales 

 were carefully split up after they reached this country, and all the speci- 

 mens figured and described in Dr. Jordan's paper are from this material. 



The collection made in 1899 contained the remains of a single species 

 which was identified by Professor F. A. Lucas, of the U. S. National 

 Museum, as Diplomystus. This genus had already been described by 

 Cope from similar shales at Itacaranha, Plataforma, and Agua Comprida, 

 near the city of Bahia.' 



In addition to the clupeoid fishes from Riacho Doce described by Dr. 

 Jordan, mention should be made of some fossil fishes now in the collections 

 of the Institute Archeologico e Geographico Alagoano at Maceio. These 

 fossils were seen and examined by me in 1899. They are said to have been 

 found at or near the town of Fernao Yelho which stands at the north end 

 of Lagoa de Norte, fourteen kilometers north of the city of Maceio. These 

 fishes arc in concretions of hard cream-colored lime rock that bears a 

 striking resemblance to the limestone nodules in which fossil fishes are 



'E. D. Cope, "A contribution to the vertebrate paleontology of Brazil," Proc. 

 Amer. Phil. Soc, XXIII, 3-4, Jan., 1886. 



