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Devonian series, while by others it has been classed as a 
southern extension of the carboniferous limestones of the 
Mendips. The difference between these two opposite views 
involves an important economical problem, for if the latter 
view be the correct one, viz., that these limestones are of 
carboniferous age, it may be regarded as in the highest degree 
probable that coal within a workable distance exists in the 
trough of the “synclinal” between Cannington and the 
Mendips. With a view to the solution of this problem, Mr. 
CossHaM, in company with R. Eruerives, F.R.S., President of 
the Geological Society, and your PresipEnt, visited the locality 
in the autumn of last year, and were successful in finding such 
fossil evidence as satisfied them of the carboniferous character 
of the limestone. The difficulty of assigning to this rock its 
true position has arisen from its highly crystalline structure, 
and from the almost total absence of organic remains, which 
when found, are so crushed and fragmentary as to render their 
determination in the highest degree difficult. Hence it arises 
that so many eminent geologists have differed in their diagnosis 
of the true nature and position of the Cannington Limestone. 
Mr. Erueriper, one of the most competent observers, had, 
in his paper on “ The Physical Structure of West Somerset and 
North Devon,” given it as his opinion that the limestone in 
question was a Devonian outlier, and though later observers 
had come to a different conclusion, he had seen no cause to 
change his opinions. It would seem that his attention had not 
been drawn to a paper by Mr. Tawney, F.G.S., read before the 
Bristol Naturalists’ Club in November, 1875, in which, after 
summing up all the evidence upon the subject, together with 
observations made by himself on the spot, Mr. Tawney came to 
the conclusion that in his opinion the Cannington Limestone 
had been proved to be carboniferous. In like ignorance of Mr. 
Tawney’s paper, Mr. Cossaam hal drawn up a notice of the 
facts, and of the conclusions from those facts, independently 
arrived at by himself and his companions, by which they 
had been led to recognise the carboniferous character of the 
limestones in question; and it was not until after the completion 
