486 Dr. S. Woodioard — Culm Trilohites from North Devon. 



Trilobites occur,^ and these beds, I strongly suspect, will soon be 

 shown to be of about the same age as the Culm. The number of 

 fossils common to this part of the Culm and Pendleside series is 

 very remarkable : Posidonomya Becheri, Goniatites [Glyphioceras) 

 spharicus, 0. spiralis, G. striatus," etc. 



Mr. Horace B. Woodward, F.K.S. (Geology of England and Wales, 

 2nd ed., 1887, p. 167) writes : — " In Glamorganshire, immediately 

 above the Carboniferous Limestone of Gower, at Penrice, and 

 between Llanrhidian and Oystermouth, there is a considerable 

 development (1,600 feet) of black shales with sandstones, to which 

 the name Gower series has been applied. These beds appear to 

 represent the Upper Limestone shales and perhaps the Millstone 

 Grit. At Tenby they are but a few feet thick, but there they 

 contain beds of dark limestone, and yield Goniatites, reminding one 

 of the Black Limestones of North Devon that occur at the base of 

 the Culm-measures." Further on (p. 172) he adds : " The Millstone 

 Grit is not definitely identified in the Gower peninsula, and it 

 remains to be proved whether the Gower shales should be correlated 

 with it, or whether it be represented by certain sandstones above 

 them and now included with the Coal-measures." 



So far back as 1846, Sir H. T. De la Beche describes this very 

 section at Bishopston, Glamorganshire, and gives a measured 

 section of the beds. He writes (Mem. Geol. Survey, vol. i, pp. 133 

 and 143) :— 



"It is desirable to mention certain beds which occur above the 

 Carboniferous Limestone near Swansea (if, indeed, they may not, 

 in a great measure, be as an upper portion of it), since there is 

 a certain general resemblance between them and the beds in 

 Devonshire immediately above the Pilton Group. When these 

 beds reach the coast in Swansea on the east, the section exposed is 

 not good, and the beds are also concealed where the coastline cuts 

 them towards Caermarthen Bay on the west ; but fortunately they 

 can be well studied along the course of the river near Bishopston " 

 (p. 133). (Here follows the section.) He adds further on : — 



" At Swansea we observe a development of the black shales and 

 cherty grits above noticed, fining off at Tenby, where we see black 

 limestones with Goniatites, the whole of these beds so intervening 

 between the more solid Carboniferous Limestone and Coal-measures 

 appearing as if they were a continuation of the black limestone 

 group of Devonshire, above the Pilton and Petherwin groups, thus 

 extending, locally modified, into South Wales. Under this view 

 the close of the Carboniferous Limestone epoch would, in South- 

 western England and South Wales, be marked by a mixed deposit 

 of limestone in one part, an alternation of sands, mud, and limestone 

 in another, and by sands, black mud, and Carboniferous limestones 

 in a third " (p. 143). 



1 See H. Woodward, " On a Collection of Carboniferous Trilobites from the Banks 

 of the Hodder, near Stonyhurst, Lancashire" : Geol. Mag., 1894, Dec. IV, Vol. I, 

 pp. 481-489, PL XIV. 



