118 CORRESPONDENCE. 



Comspnbrncc. 



Addkks in Sutton Pakk. — The Adder has for some time been 

 considered scarce at Sutton Park, but on March 19th live larfiie ones 

 were taken on the common, near Streetly Wood, by Mr. F. Shrive, 

 and on March 2(jth another specimen was taken near the same place. 

 Many traces of others were seen. — H. Insley, Birmingham. 



FoKAMiNiFERA IN THE TniAS. — lu the " Quarterly Journal of the 

 Geological Society," vol. xvi., p. 452, Prof essor Rupert Jones, and Mr. 

 "VV. R. Parker, describe a series of foraminifera, which they state wei'e 

 obtained from certain blue clays of Keuper age, associated with the 

 gypsum beds at Chellastou, near Derby. Since the publication of this 

 paper these fossils have been referred to by various authors as being of 

 high importance in connection with the study of the Triassic Rocks. No 

 other observers, however, have confirmed the observations of Messrs. 

 Jones and Parker, although, to my own knowledge, large quantities of 

 clay from the locality and beds referred to have been examined with 

 great care in a similar manner. I have heard it publicly stated, on 

 more than one occasion, that the specimen of clay which was examined 

 by the authors, was not obtained by them from the rock in situ, so that it 

 is possible that some mistake inay have been made in the collection, 

 or during the transfer of the clay. Now I know well that the 

 gentlemen in question stand far too high in the world of Science to wish 

 to perpetuate an error, if such it be, which may have considerable 

 influence on the researches which are now being made into the Triassic 

 Rocks of the Midlands. If Professor Jones can give us any information, 

 cue way or the other, as to the source of the clay he examined, I can 

 assure him that many working geologists of the Midlands will be truly 

 thankful for it.— F. G. S. 



FossiLiFEKous Pebbles IN THE BuNTER. — Some years ago I was 

 looking at a fresh-cut section of Buiiter Pebble Beds, in one of the 

 streets in the heart of Nottingham, when my attention was attracted by 

 a pebble of rather unusual shape and character, not unlike a piece of 

 roofing tile. It proved to be a fragment of indurated greyish- white 

 shale, almost unwaterworn, which, when split open, was found to 

 contain three or four minute impressions of a criuoid, apparently all 

 of the same species, but in different stages of growth. Although very 

 interesting, as being the first pebble containing a fossil that I had ever 

 seen in the Bunter, it lay by in my drawers undetermined and well- 

 nigh forgotten till just lately, when one of my students — Mr. J. 

 Bradley — brought me another fossiliferous pebble, also found in the 

 Bunter Pebble Beds, while excavating a grave in the General 

 Cemetery, about half-a-mile from where the first pebble was found. 

 This pebble was likewise very nearly as angular as it must have been 

 when first broken off the parent rock, and the fossil it contained— 

 one valve of a Styo2}lioi!iena—ha.d not only lost its hinge, but was other- 

 wise sadly mutilated. Imperfect and obscure as the fossils un- 

 doubtedly are, however. Professor Etheridge (of the British Museum 

 of Natural History, South Kensington), who very courteouslj^ undertook 

 to examine them for me, was able to identify them, respectively, as 

 Glyptocrinus basalts and Strophomena graiidis, the latter a Caradoc form 

 — indeed both, as Mr. Etheridge adds, Caradoc species. These pebbles, 

 along with the quartzite containing Orthis redux, found by Mr. I. 

 Jennings in a roadside stone-heap, but presumably derived from the 

 Bunter {Mid. Nat., vol. ii. p. 286), are, I believe, the only fossihferous 

 pebbles yet found in that formation at Nottingham. — J. Hhipman, 

 Nottingham. 



