ON CERTAIN VERMIFORM FOSSILS. 17 



IL— Remarks on certain Vermiform Fossils found in the Mountain 

 Limestone Districts of the North of England. By Albany 

 Hancock.* 



In 1838, Mr. Dixon Dixon, of Unthank, presented to the New- 

 castle Museum a few slabs of a fine grained, micaceous sandstone, 

 which were procured from a quarry on Haltwhistle common. 

 These slabs exhibited on their surfaces peculiar elevated and 

 depressed markings, supposed, at the time, to be either the fossil 

 remains of worms, or casts of worm-tracks. 



Slabs bearing similar markings were likewise obtained by Mr. 

 Edward Wood, of Richmond, in 1850, from the same formation 

 in Wensleydale, Yorkshire, and were described by that gentle- 

 man in two interesting communications published in the 1st vol. 

 of the " Naturalist," in which the nature of these curious fossils 

 is discussed, and the conclusion arrived at that they are worms, 

 though to what order they belong is not determined. Mr. Wood, 

 however, no longer entertains this opinion. Tn a letter, which 

 I had the pleasure of receiving from him a short time ago, he 

 states that these fossils " are assuredly the track-tube, or burrow, 

 of some creature, and probably, as you say, of a crustacean." 

 And in the same communication Mr. Wood further states, " I 

 sent a specimen to the museum in Jermyn Street, and the 

 lamented Edward Forbes had it marked ' Casts of Annelide 

 tubes,' and it is so marked still." 



Shortly after the appearance of Mr. Wood's communications in 

 the " Naturalist," Mr. John Dixon gave an account, in the same 

 journal, of what he supposed to be another species of fossil worm, 

 procured in the flagstone beds of Pateley Bridge, Yorkshire — "a 

 deposit similar, in general composition, to those of Wensleydale." 



More recently, Mr. Howse has obtained from Weardale similar 

 fossils, and I am indebted to that gentleman for the loan of seve- 

 ral interesting specimens, both from that locality and from Halt- 

 whistle. 



* Read at the meeting of the British Association, held at Leeds on Sept. 22nd, 1858. 

 VOL. IV. PT. I. C 



