330 PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 1912 



abundant, varied and best preserved fossil plants of Carboni- 

 ferous age found in Britain. Those from the Forest of Dean 

 are a very good second. At the same time, there are differences 

 in detail between these three floras, which are probably to be 

 accounted for as local variations in the distribution of the flora 

 of the period. 



The Forest of Dean is not an outlier of the South Wales 

 coalfield, as has often been supposed. It is more closely 

 related to the Radstock and Bristol coalfields. There are no 

 equivalents in the Forest of Dean of the Middle Coal Measures 

 (White Ash Series) or Transition Coal Measures (Pennant Grit) 

 of South Wales, and the massive Forest of Dean Stone belongs 

 to a higher horizon than the Pennant Grit, with which it has 

 been often correlated. 



I do not propose to discuss here the rocks below the coal 

 bearing series. I have elsewhere shown that there are good 

 reasons for believing that no true equivalents of the Millstone 

 Grits are present in the Forest, and that in all probability the 

 Productive Measures overlie, unconformably, the Carboniferous 

 Limestone series, the higher beds of which, between the White- 

 head Limestone and below the Trenchard Coal, have here, as 

 at Bristol, an arenaceous facies. This is a point on which much 

 further work remains to be done, and a special study of these 

 rocks, wherever exposures can be found, will repay the inves- 

 tigator, and throw additional hght on this important point. 

 The Eastern and Northern, and especially the North Eastern 

 boundaries of the field, from Upper Soudley to Cinderford, 

 Mitcheldean, and then across to Drybrook, will be found to 

 offer the most promising field for such inquiries, and may 

 result in the discovery of a section showing the imconformity, 

 as has been recently discovered in the Clee Hills in Shropshire. 



In conclusion, I may remark that a fuller account of the 

 fossil flora of the Forest, with figures of many other plants, as 

 well as a full bibliography on the geology of the Coal Measures 

 of this coalfield, will be found in my paper " On the Fossil 

 Flora of the Forest of Dean Coalfield (Gloucestershire) and the 

 Relationships of the Coalfields of the West of England and 

 South Wales," which has recently appeared in the Philosophical 



