in the Coal Formation at Wardie. 151 



The Entomostraca which are found in this place, are to be 

 referred to the genera Cypris and Daphnoidea ; the former of 

 which occur in greatest abundance in some of the shelves of the 

 rock, even giving it a greyish tint of colour, and oolitic appear- 

 ance. 



These interesting fossils are always found associated with 

 terrestrial plants ; and in consequence Dr Hibbert has been led 

 to consider the rock in which they occur as of lacustrine origin. 



In concluding his memoir on the so-called lacustrine deposit 

 at Burdiehouse, he says — 



" The circumstantial evidence is to the following effect, that the calcareous 

 deposit of Burdiehouse must have taken place in a depression or basin per- 

 fectlj surrounded with a dense vegetation, which has been washed into inland 

 water. But this circumstance would of itself prove little, as we may easily 

 suppose that an estuary or arm of the sea might have stretched through a 

 tract where a dense vegetation has prevailed ; but when, in connexion with a 

 perfect absence of all acknowledged marine remains whatever, we find plants 

 enclosed in a calcareous deposit in the greatest perfection imaginable, what 

 conclusion remains but that such a deposit is more indicative of a fresh water 

 river or lake, than of a sea or estuary ? 



" That while the inland waters which deposited this limestone were actually 

 unfavourable to the existence in it of acknowledged marine moUusca or con- 

 chifera, they were not unfavourable to countless myriads of Entomostraca, 

 one genus of which, the Cypris, is the recent inhabitant of fresh-water 

 marshes ; and it may be fairly suspected that other genera associated with it 

 were equally so. 



" In short," says he, " the evidence in a general point of view, leads to the 

 following conclusions : There are, it is well known, numerous deposits of 

 limestone belonging to the carboniferous group of rocks, in which, to the eK- 

 clusion of any vegetables of a Tropical (lora, nothing but marine products, 

 such as corallines, or acknowledged shells of genera hitherto found in open 

 seas, only have been discovered. With a calcareous deposit of this kind, the 

 comparison of another destitute of all corallines or marine shells wnatever, 

 yet containing, in an abundance perfectly remarkable, the plants of Tropical 

 marshes along the Entomostraca of marsh waters, can surely lead to no other 

 conclusion but the following : That, while the first formations must have 

 taken place in a pelagic bed analogous to one of recent times, the other must 

 have been the result of a fresh-water deposit, which, while it was no less hos- 

 tile to the growth and increase of marine shells or corallines, must have 

 flowed through marshy tracts wherein grew all the plants observed in our 

 coal-fields." 



Professor Buckland, in his late Bridgewater Treatise, appears 

 to adopt this opinion, for he says, in a note to page 275, — 

 " The limestone (viz. Burdiehouse) in which these fishes and coprolites 



