94 REPORT—1862. 
top of the Devonian system. The Boulogne beds chiefly belong to this series, as 
does the “ Spirifer-Verneuili-schiefer ” of the Prussian geologists. 
It is overlain, along the course of the Barnstaple River, by the representative of 
the Carboniferous slate, and this again by the Mountain-limestone series in a 
greatly altered form. 
The Marwood and Pilton group, at least in part, can be thus proved by fossils to 
be the actual equivalent of the Upper Old Red Sandstone, a formation which has 
been found in some parts of the British Isles to be unconformable on the Lower- 
Old Red Sandstone. 
The identification of this Old Red Sandstone with the Devonian beds has been 
a point hitherto singularly destitute of proof, though its suggestion by Lonsdale, 
and subsequently by Austen, Sedgwick, and Murchison, in memoirs on Devonshire 
and on the Rhine, has been generally approved. 
So little proof existed of this identity, that one of our best observers, whose re- 
search had largely tended tothe establishment of the Devonian series (Mr. Godwin- 
Austen), has recorded his doubts in the Geological Society’s Journal (vol. ix. 
. 231), identifying the Old Red Sandstone only with the wppermost or Marwood 
bred, which Mr. D. Sharpe considered as Carboniferous ; while Mr. Sharpe himself 
placed the Old Red Sandstone at the base of the Devonian system (vol. ix. p. 20, 
&e.). 
The fossil clue has once more unravelled a geological difficulty. Sir R. I. Mur- 
chison, in reclassifying the beds of the Old Red Sandstone of Scotland (Siluria, 
2nd edit. p. 285), has shown good reason for considering the order of superposition 
to be as follows :—from the base,— 
1. Lower Old Red, with Cephalaspis, Pteraspis, Pterygotus. 
2. Middle Old Red, with Coccosteus, Diplopterus, Osteolepis, Pterichthys, &c. 
3. Upper Old Red, with Holoptychius, Glyptopomus, &c. 
The Upper Old Red, then, being identical with the uppermost Devonian, it 
remains to be seen if we can find fossil links between the middle and lower mem- 
‘bers of each respectively. 
It has been repeatedly shown that Coccosteus, a fish characteristic of the middle 
Old Red beds, occurs in the Eifel and the Harz, in strata which belong to the 
Middle Devonian ; and in Russia* it is common to have this and other genera 
(Asterolepis, Dendrodus, &c.) in beds of sandstone intercalated with the marine 
shells. 
There is still the Zowest Devonian zone, viz. the Spirifer-sandstone of the Rhine. 
The lower sandstones and slates of Linton, in N. Devon, and of Fowey and Tor- 
‘quay, in 8. Devon, are its equivalents. In order to prove this zone identical with 
the lowest Old Red—the Cornstone group, it was needful to find some at least of 
the characteristic fish in it. In no Old Red locality have we any marine fossils 
mixed with the Cephalaspis and Pteraspis; but in one of the German localities 
Prof. Reemer has lately discovered, and Prof. Huxley described (Quart. Journ. 
Geol. Soc. 1861), a large species of Pteraspis—a fish so exclusively characteristic 
of the lowest Old Red as to leave no doubt whatever of the true correlation of the 
two deposits. 
Upper, Middle, and Lower Old Red are, therefore, now linked in all their parts 
by fossils with Upper, Middle, and Lower Devonian. 
On a Skull of the Rhinoceros tichorhinus. By 8, P. Savrexe. 
On a Whittled Bone from the Barnwell Gravel. By H. Srrtey, F.G.S. 
This was the proximal end of a dorsal rib of a large mammal, seemingly the 
Elephant, obtained by the Rev. F. J. Blake from the gravel-pit at Barnwell, near 
Cambridge. The specimen shows on the severed end numerous cuts, as though 
made to assist in breaking the bone. The author urged that, as the condition of the 
cut surfaces was like the external surfaces—as they had passed unnoticed till he 
detected them—as similar cuts could not be made on fossil bones without great 
care and chemical preparation, and there was nothing to suggest a doubt as to their 
* Siluria, 2nd edit. p. 382, 421, &,; see also yol, xy. p. 437. 
