3o8 The Correlation of the Yoredale and Pendleside Series. 



The importance of the faunas of the Hardraw Limestone 

 and Middle Limestones is very great, and Mr. Cosmo Johns' 

 case largely depends on them ; but the coral fauna he gives as 

 typical of this portion of his sequence is typically Upper 

 Dibunophyllum and therefore below the lowest Pendleside 

 horizon, and utterly demolishes any import that the presence 

 of P. becheri below it might have had. 



I have long been convinced that the Main Limestone and 

 the Great Limestone of North-West Yorkshire, Durham and 

 Northumberland were probably on the same horizon, a fact 

 supported by the coral, cephalopod, and indeed the whole 

 fauna, and that this was identical with that of portions of the 

 Dibunophyllum zone of Derbyshire, Staffordshire and South- 

 West Yorkshire, i.e., the fauna correlates the Main or Great 

 Limestone with a series always succeeded by P. becheri beds 

 containing the Pendleside fauna, and never below it. 



Mr. Cosmo Johns says, ' Dr. Wheelton Hind brought forward 

 convincing evidence that the Pendleside Limestone was the 

 equivalent of the Whittington Limestone." I presume he 

 refers to the paper by myself and Mr. J. A. Howe.* I cannot 

 see any evidence at all, much less evidence that merits the 

 term ' convincing.' I quote what we said at length : — ' We 

 examined the bed of limestone north of Whittington village, 

 and found an extensive section in the stream and neighbouring 

 quarry. The limestone was yellowish, about twenty-five feet 

 thick, and had shales above and below it. It contained 

 crinoids, a fish tooth [identified subsequently as Pseptodus 

 magnus], and shell fragments, but the shales were more fossili- 

 ferous, yielding crushed Productus and other limestone forms.' 

 We went on to detail a list from a calcareous shale, presumably 

 below this limestone, which contained a fauna which I should 

 certainly piit down as Upper Dibunophyllum in facies. 



Further on Mr. Cosmo Johns says : ' the fauna which 

 characterises the Lower Pendlesides has been obtained from 

 beds unquestionably of Yoredale age.' If this is so, it is new 

 to me, and no details or reference is given. Whatever faunal 

 evidence has occurred to me up to date is decidedly against this 

 statement, and until the peculiar cephalopods which charac- 

 terise the Pendleside Series are found in the Yoredale succession, 

 it will be impossible to accept Mr. Cosmo Johns' dictum that 



* ' Q. J. G. S.', Vol. LVII., p. 364. 



Naturalist, 



