associated with the Holoptychius, the earliest true carboniferous fish. 



Ascending into the higher beds of the carboniferous system, I 

 fear not so much has been done ; although views have been lately 

 put forth which will ere long change many of the theories of coal 

 vegetation. One of the principal of these views is, that the waters 

 of the coal measure age were all salt, and that there were no fresh- 

 water deposits whatevei". I may mention here that water has 

 frequently been found at the bottom of deep mines, strongly and 

 thoroughly salt : and after all, the supposition that such fishes as 

 the Cselacanth, the Palteoniscus, and the Amblypterus, belonged to 

 fresh water, or that the Unio or Anthracosia was of fresh or 

 brackish water origin, is very gratuitous, for Palaeontologists are 

 much in doubt whether the Uniones, the strongholds of the fresh- 

 water theorists, were not marine inhabitants. The botany of the 

 coal measure flora is still dubious on many points, and there are 

 several plants about which the geologico-botanists seem unwUling to 

 pronounce a decided opinion. The great Stigmarian question seems 

 finally set at rest, principally by the labours of my friend, Mr. 

 BiNNEY, of Manchester, but there are others still waiting to be 

 solved, such as the true place of the Sigillaria, whether Aster- 

 ophyllites is an aquatic plant or not, and several other exclusively 

 botanical points, which it would be out of place to enter upon now. 



As regards our local work, I have, in company with Mb. Adams, 

 one of the Members of the Club, found seven species of fish 

 remains, and upwards of fifty shells ; and what is of more impor- 

 tance, I have succeeded in tracing a very abundant marine shell bed 

 for nearly sixty miles throughout the coal basin. "With Mr. Salter's 

 help in naming and classifying my fossils, some minor discoveries 

 were made, further exemplifying the uselessness of limiting our 

 zones of life too severely — for some 700 feet up in the coal 

 measures, a shell was found, hitherto considered to have perished 

 with the end of the mountain limestone series. 



And now I trust you will not have considered me very tedious in 

 my attempt to review some of the principal points interesting to us 



