336 Stopes : Coal-balls found in Coal Seatns. 



the rich fossil beds of Cracoe, .Settle, and Clitheroe being" 

 exactly like those of the Derbyshire area and on the same 

 horizon. They are overlaid by Cyathaxonia beds, and these in 

 turn are succeeded by Posidonoviya bcchcri beds. 



In Yorkshire, however, the base of the series is seen in the 

 neighbourhood of Ingleborough. In the Basement conglomerate 

 area Mr. Cosmo Johns has collected a series of corals, which 

 Dr. \. \'aughan refers to a lower horizon than I should have 

 expected to find there. 



Dr. \'aughan thinks the fossils denote the basement beds to 

 be on a horizon at the base of the Lower Seminula beds or 

 Upper Syringothyris zones. If this is so, some interesting 

 details must be worked out. 



The whole Carboniferous Series under Ingleborough is 

 estimated to be 1500 feet, and 1000 feet at least of this is 

 characterised by Giganteid Product! and a fauna which I take 

 to be of Dibunophyllum age. The question to be worked out is 

 to account for the small thickness of the whole of the Seminula 

 beds here, which are about 1000 feet at Bristol ; and in connec- 

 tion with this point it is to be noted that the limestones which 

 rest on the Basement beds west of the Lake District, the .A.skam 

 and Knipe Scar Limestone, contain a definite Dibunophyllum 

 fauna, and even farther north the Lower Limestone Series of 

 Scotland apparently belong to the Lonsdaleia sub-zone. 



COAL=BALLS FOUND IN COAL SEAMS.* 



Miss M. C. STOPES, D.Sc, Ph.D. 



Owing to the variety of concretions and nodules found in 

 the Coal Measures, and the many local names for them, 

 it seems wise to describe those distinct concretions in the 

 actual seam, containing plant structures and now well known 

 to botanists, as 'coal-balls;' and the concretions in the roof 

 above them containing goniatites and a few plants, as ' roof or 

 ' g-oniatite-nodules.' For long it has been generally accepted by 

 those who work among the Lower Coal Measures that the true 

 coal-balls are to be found only in one geological horizon — viz., 

 the ' Bullion ' or ' Upper Foot ' Mine. In the course of our 

 work, however, Mr. Watson and I have satisfied ourselves that 

 (granted the correctness of H. M. Survey of the district, which 



* .Abstract of p.ipor read to Section K of the Meeiiiii^ ot" ttu- Hritish 

 Association, York. 



Naturalist, 



