72 Dr Buckland's Address. 



author lias been enabled to connect certain strata of Orkney and Caith- 

 ness, and determine their relations to the beds of old red sandstone con- 

 taining fossil fishes in the basin of the Tay, and in the border counties of 

 England and Wales, where they had been described by Mr Murchison. 



Mr Williamson, in a notice on the fossil fishes of the coal-fields of York 

 and Lancaster, says that these coal-measures are very rich in ichthyolites, 

 which abound so much at Middleton colliery, near Leeds, that the work- 

 men have given to one bed the name of Fish Coal. They are usually in 

 fine bituminous shale above and below the coal, and most frequent in the 

 roof immediately above it, where, as at Burdiehouse near Edinburgh, 

 there is a thin seam of coprolitic matter ; they are rarely mixed with any 

 great quantity of vegetable remains. In the lower measures of Lanca- 

 shire, they are associated with Goniatites and Pectens ; and in the higher 

 measures of Lancashire and Yorkshire, with fresh-water shells allied to 

 Unio, and with Entomostraca. Exact observations as to facts of this 

 kind are of inestimable importance, for it is only by careful induction 

 from a sufficient number of such like phenomena, and from similar details 

 as to the local distribution and condition of animal and vegetable remains 

 in the marine and fluvio-marine and lacustrine deposits, which compose 

 the carboniferous series, that we shall arrive at a solution of the grand 

 problem of the formation of coal. 



Crustaceans. — The Rev. T. B. Brodic has discovered in the Wealden 

 formation near Dinton, in the vale of Wardour, the remains of coleopte- 

 rous and hymenop>terous insects, and a new genus of isopodous Crusta- 

 cea in the family of Cymothoidse. The Isopods are clustered densely to- 

 gether ; the lenses in their eyes are sometimes preserved ; there are also 

 traces of legs, but of no antennae. With them he has found a large spe- 

 cies of Cypris. The insects are chiefly small coleoptera ; there are seve- 

 ral species of dipterous, and one homopterous insect, and the wing of a 

 Libellula. Mr Brodie's discovery is the first yet made of insects in the 

 Wealden formation, and also the first example in a secondary formation 

 of isopods that approximate in form to the trilobites of the transition 

 series. 



Worms. — An addition has been made to fossil hclmintologj by Mr 

 Atkinson of Newcastle-on-T\ne, who has found in slabs of micaceous 

 slaty sandstone, from the carbonaceous series near Haltwhistle, tortuous 

 casts of vermiform bodies of various sizes, some almost an inch in diame- 

 ter, and several feet in length ; the surface of many of these is thickly 

 marked by transverse rings and a longitudinal groove, similar to those in 

 the largest recent marine sand-worms, e. g. the Leodice gigantea. The in- 

 tegument of some of these worms containing chitine, like the covering of 

 insects, seems to have endured long enough to fix impressions of the 

 transverse rings upon the sand ; and the habit of swallowing large quan- 

 tities of earth and sand, which we observe in many recent worms, may 

 explain the presence of the large portion of sand, now indurated to stone, 

 which occupies the interior of the impression of the skin. Since many 



