OlSr lOlMATOPHYTON AND ALLIES. 31 



strike a similar bed has beeu discovered on the Douglas River, abovit four miles distant. 

 It has not beeu recognised on the north side of the Bay, though we find there beds, 

 probably on very nearly the same horizon, holding Psilophyton in situ. 



" As an illustration of one of the grovips of shaly beds, and of the oceiirrence of roots 

 of Psilophyton, I may give the following section, seen near 'Watering Brook,' on the 

 north shore of the Bay. The order is descending : — 



Ft. In. 



1. Grey sandstones and reddish pebbly sandstone of great thickness 



2. Bright red shale 8 



3. Grey shales with stems of Psilophyton, very abundant but badly preserved 5 



4. Grey incoherent clay, slicken-sided, and with many Rhizomes and roots of Psilophyton . . 3 



5. Hard grey clay or shale with fragments and roots of Psilophyton 4 



6. Red shale 8 



7. Grey and reddish crumbling sandstone 



" Groups of beds, similar to the above, but frequently much more rich in fossils, occur 

 in many parts of the section, and evidently include fossil soils of the nature of nnder- 

 clays, on which little else appears to have grown than a dense herbage of Psilophyton, 

 along with plants of the genus Arfhrontigma. 



" In addition to these shaly groups, there are numerous examples of beds of shale of 

 small thickness, included in coarse sandstones, and these beds often occur in detached 

 fragments, as if the remnants of more continuous layers partially removed by currents of 

 water. It is deserving of notice that nearly all these patches of shale are interlaced with 

 roots or stems of Psilophyton, which sometimes project beyond their limits into the 

 sandstone, as if the vegetable fibres had preserved the clay from removal. In short, these 

 lines of patches of shale seem to be remnants of soils on which Psilophyton has flourished 

 abundantly, and which have been partially swept away by the currents which deposited 

 the sand. Some of the smaller (patches may even be fragments of tough swamp soils 

 interwoven with roots, drifted by the agency of the waves or possibly by ice ; such 

 masses are often moved in this way on the borders of modern swamps on the sea coast. 



" In the sandstones themselves there are great quantities of drifted plants, principally 

 fragments of Psilophyton, which are sometimes matted together, as if they had drifted in 

 peaty sods, in other cases scattered loos^ely over the surfaces, and often in very small 

 fragments. The sandstones also contain large drifted trunks and stumps of Prototaxites. 



" In the coarser sandstones there are numerous bony spines of large fishes {Machœra- 

 cmithus), and in som.e of the finer beds, spines and bony plates of smaller fishes, apparently 

 of the genera Coccosteous, Ctenacanthus and Leptacantlms. In one of these beds my assistant, 

 Mr. Kennedy, was so fortunate as to find a nearly perfect specimen of Cephalaspis, the first 

 found in America, and a new species.' 



"Some of the finer beds also hold shells of Lingula, and lamellibranchiate shells of 

 the genus Modiomorpha of Hall. It is a curious point of coincidence of the Graspé sand- 

 stones with the old red sandstone of Scotland, that there are, in some of the dark shales 

 containing these shells and also fragments of plants, clusters of rounded bodies of the 

 nature of the Parka decipiens of Forfarshire, though of smaller size than the Scottish 

 specimens. "When best preserved, they appear as flattened globes with a depression in 



' Described by Mr. B. Bay Lankester in the Geological Magazine (1870) as Cephalaspis Bawsoni, 



