168 Review of the New York Geological Reports. 
it bears to the figures of the so-called “ Cophinus dubius” or 
“wicker basket” fossil, discovered in a vertical position in the 
Upper Ludlow rocks of England, and figured in Murchison’s 
Silurian Researches.* The English fossil is believed to originate 
from some organic form, but to what order is not yet decided, as 
appears from the following extract from that work :— 
“ Cophinus dubwus. (Pl. 26, fig. 12.) This is a nondescript 
fossil, concerning the origin of which no naturalist has yet 
given a decisive opinion. It has been referred with doubts to 
the family of soft Zoophytes, Crinoidea, and to Mollusca, so 
orde r. All that we can say with certainty is, that it has the 
shape of an inverted four-sided pyramid, with a column-like 
rounding off at each corner, and four intercolumniations or sides, 
transversely situated, producing the appearance of a basket- 
work; whence, whatever it may prove to be, the fossil is provis- 
ionally named, at the a of Mr. Kénig, Cophinus, 
(wicker baske et.) This curious body has been adverted to in the 
text (p. 181) as occurring in peae more or less vertical in the 
uppermost strata of the Ludlow rock, from which I infer that the 
animal was attached by the end of the inverted cone, while the 
finely levigated muddy sediment accumulated around the columns 
or stems.” 
The chief difference observable between the figures of “cone 
in cone” and that of Cophinus dubius, is that the former is more 
or less conical, whilst the latter i is pyrami 
The surface of some of the layers of shaly sandstone of the 
Portage group hea an appearance likened to a rivulet of water 
frozen in the act of descending a declivity, or cooled cinder which 
has flowed rs furnace in a molten state. This phenomenon 
is attributed, by He, toa semi-fluid mud moving over a slightly 
descending surface, hich has become consolidated. 
Casts of. ghd ected and strie are likewise described as ap- 
pearing on the under surface of the strata of flagstones 
No minerals of importance have been obtained festa’ this group 
of rocks in the state of New York. Iron pyrites is disseminated 
through them, and the ee eit yield some erystallized carbo- 
nate of lime and sulphate tes. Thin coatings of sulphate 
of lime invest some of ae shales; and carbonaceous matter 
has collected in small quantities so as to produce thin and 
laminze of coal, but not in sufficient quantity to answer any prac- 
tical purpose. 
anic remains are, as already remarked, not abundant in the 
Portage group. The Fucoid figured in Vanuxem’s and Hall’s 
a and here given, is the most characteristic. It occurs in 
“* See weod-cut, page 199, also fig. 12, pl. 26. 
