232 ON SOME FISH REMAINS FROM DURHAM 
and occasional mention has been made of the occurrence of the 
scales and teeth of fish; but still no one has taken up the 
subject as a matter for careful and systematic investigation. 
We therefore intend that the present paper shall be the first of 
a series descriptive and illustrative of these fossils. In this 
series of papers, which we hope from time to time to contribute 
to the Transactions of the Society, we propose to describe or 
notice all the fossils belonging to the animal kingdom that we 
have found, or that are known to occur, iu the Durham and 
Northumberland coal measures. We confess that we feel some 
reluctance to engage in so serious an undertaking,—being satis- 
fied that the subject requires for its proper treatment far greater 
ability than we in anywise can pretend to. Had it not, indeed, 
been for the conviction that an account of these fossils is a great 
desideratum in the paleontology of the two counties, and because 
we believe that our collection is the most comprehensive that 
has yet been obtained, we should not have presumed to have 
attempted their description. 
The fossils forming our collection include numerous remains 
of fish belonging to the genera Rhizodus, Megalichthys, Holop- 
tychius, Acrolepis (?), Pleuracanthus, Orthacanthus, Gyracanthus, 
Ctenoptychius, Diplodus, Ceratodus, Platysomus, Calacanthus, 
Paleoniscus, &c., &c.; and of several species of Mollusca, Insecta, 
Entomostraca, and Annulata. Some of these fossils have already 
been incidentally mentioned by other observers as belonging to 
this coal-field, but the majority have not yet been recorded as 
occurring in it; others, again, appear to be new, not only to this 
coal-field but to the rocks of the Carboniferous system generally. 
The great bulk of the fossils have been obtained at Newsham 
Colliery, from a thin stratum of highly carbonaceous black 
shale—commonly called “ black stone’”’—lying immediately over 
the Low Main Coal. The same stratum has been identified in 
several of the adjoining collieries, and has thus been proved to 
extend over an area of many square miles. But whether it is 
coextensive with the well known coal seam which it overlies, or 
whether it is merely a local deposit, peculiar to the region 
immediately surrounding the first named locality, are points 

