Sctemnites are very common extraneozis Fossils. l/S 



that we may expect, either from the initiated or the dupes of a 

 foreign Geognostic faction sprung up amongst us ; and your 

 work, Mr. Editor, is the more vahiable, as a channel of con^- 

 munieation for useful facts, whetlier new or in confirmation or 

 correction of others aheady printed, expressed in the terms and 

 languas^e which mav be famihar to the writers or their infor- 

 mants, accompanied or not by Inferences, of any kind, which they 

 may think deducible from their own communicated information, 

 or that of others. 



I coukl not help thinking this morning that I perceived some- 

 thing of the influence above alluded to, while perusing an account 

 just published in the " Annals of Philosophy," of four species 

 (or \-nricties rather perhaps, some of them) of the remains or 

 alveoli of Belemiiites, found in argillaceous Coal-measures, and 

 of six others found in the Limestone near adjacent to them*, — in 

 Blackburn Collierv in Livingstone, in Linlilligovvshire : — how else 

 could it be doubted (p. 204) that " the concamerated alveolis" 

 belonged to a Belemnite!,or the mistakes have now been printed, 

 that Belemnites are ver}/ rare in Scotland ?, and much more 

 so, that in England we find them in few situations ?: when Mr. 

 James Sovverby in his " Mineral Concliology,"' p. 12S, has men- 

 tioned the proofs that exist, in Woodward's and Bevan's Speci- 

 mens and other*, and alluded to his own and others' specimens, 

 which show this iricontestably. While I was in Scotland, I saw 

 at Brora, very lunnerous Belemnites, in what I believe to be the 

 very same Coal-shale, as that from whence Mr. Fleming took 

 his specimens : they were well knov/n there, by the name of " pe- 

 trified Tangles" (a tulmlar sea-weed) as mentioned by another 

 Scotcli observer in the same number of the Annals, p. 235, and 

 were considered as far from micommon in Scotland. In Eng- 

 land we have at least 20 strata (far separated from each other, 

 bv intervening strata without Belemnites) which produce them, 

 ))robably of a distinct species in euchBelemnitic stratum, and even 

 that more than one sj)ecies are found, in some of these places in 

 the British scries; so that excepting anomia Shells, we have per- 

 haps no extraneous Fossil near so common in England as t.^ 

 Bv'lcmnite, and in nearly all of wliich, when in situ, vestiges at 

 least of their alveoli may be seen. 



Tlie Gentleman alluded to, furnished Mr. Sowerby with five 

 species of shells of the genus Product/is, from either the same or 

 a near adjoining Limestone Rock as his six Belemnites (or " Or- 

 thoccra," as it seems now agreed to call them) were taken, and 

 which arc pulilished in No. 13, of .Min. Conch. I presume to 

 hope therefore, that cither he, or some kind friends to Geological 



* See Kirwaii'j "Geological Essays," {). 3M- 



Investigation, 



