GENERAL INFERENCES. 75 



Tlie question has been raised with regard to vegetable fossils, 

 and some interesting results have been brought out. Sir H. de 

 la Beche relates'"' that it has for "some time been held by conti- 

 nental geologists, that plants similar to those in the coal-mea- 

 sures are discovered in the Silurian strata. M. Burat asserted, 

 in 1834, that fossil vegetables, consisting of reeds and ferns, 

 found in the upper grauwake (Silurian) are analogous to those 

 found in the coal-measures. M. Omalius de Hallej also men- 

 tions the remains of carboniferous plants as occurring among 

 the transition slates of Ardennes. Professor Lindley noticed 

 a Stigmaria ficoidas, one of the commonest of our coal-field 

 organisms, in the upper grauwak^ of Brittany, at St. George's, 

 Chatellaison, and Montrelais, as well as at Bitchweiler in the 

 department of the Upper Rhine. In a very recent memoir on 

 the nature of the plants wdiich have existed on the surface of 

 the earth at different epochs, M. Adolphe Brongniartf observes 

 that there does not appear to him more difference in the fossil 

 plants of the rocks earlier than the coal-measures, as compared 

 with those of the latter epoch, than there occurs between the 

 plants in the upper and lower beds of the coal formation itself. 



Nor do animal fossil remains appear to be more restricted 

 in their range up and down among the rocks. Thus, it is 

 asserted t that fossils belonging to the mountain limestone are 

 got in red sandstone in the river at Kildress in Tyrone, in the 

 middle, as well as near the bottom, of the Old Red Sandstone 

 system of that county. After a tabular statement of " the 

 North Devon, Silurian, and the Irish carboniferous localities," 

 Mr. Kelly in the same paper records,§ "as may be seen by this 

 little table, many of the fossils are common to the grauwake 

 and to the carboniferous systems. Out of the sixty-three species 

 i^ecorded in the Silmian rocks of North Devon, thirty occur also 

 in the Carboniferous limestone of Ireland, and its underlying 



* Geo. Be. on Cornwall, p. 132. 



t M. A. Brong. 3Iem. de VAcad. Boy. des Sc, lltli Sept. 1839. 

 t John Kelly on the Carboniferous Rocks of Irelanil, p. 27, 1859. 

 'i Rage 53. 



