568 Reports and Proceedings — 



Great advances have been made by Prof. Dr. "W. C. Williamson in the knowledge 

 of the lycopodiaceous trees of the coal, which he shows to have partaken of the 

 exogenous structure of modern trees. 



Various more or less artistic representations of ideal coal-forests are to be met 

 with, both in special books treating of the subject and in treatises on geology in 

 general. Eloquent descriptions of such a forest by Ansted and Hugh Miller are 

 quoted by Balfour.' 



Of the flora of the Uplands, which were bordered by the peaty coal-swamps, 

 very little is known ; only that the fern fronds and some other plants in the roof 

 shales, and the occasional either prostrate or snag-like trunks of conifers in the 

 s-mdstones, were probably brought to lower levels by streams or river-floods (Dawson, 

 Lyell, and others). 



11. The fossil animals of the coal are necessarily of very great interest, but we 

 can now refer to only a few. 



1. Of the invertebrates a fair number occur in South "Wales, but none of the 

 insects, myriopods, spiders, scorpions, eurypterids, land shells, and other rare forms 

 known elsewhere have yet been met with. 



In the " Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain," etc., Iron-Ores, 

 etc.. Part III., the late Mr. J. W. Salter very carefully classified and tabulated the 

 fossils found in the ' ironstone bands ' of South Wales, describing and figuring the 

 most characteristic species. He hoped to have taken up the fossils of the coal bands 

 in like manner, but unfortunately the time never came. His observations at p. 220, 

 on the importance of managers of collieries and others making very careful collections 

 of fossils, with notes on their exact beds, should even now command attention. He 

 notes as follows : — 



Black Band ; Anthracomya, Fish remains Brackish. 



Soap Vein; Worm-burrows, Anthracomya, Ferns Brackish. 



Black Pins; Anthracosia, Dadoxylon, Kiioi-ria, and Halonia ... Brackish. 



Ell Balls, above Elled Coal ; Asterophyllites, Lepidodendron, and 



TJlodendron, Ferns Brackish. 



Under Big- vein Coal ; Anthracosia Brackish. 



Over Three-quarter Coal ; Anthracomya Brackish. 



Will Shone, or Pin Will Shone, over the Bydyllog Coal ; Athyris Marine. 



Darran Pins ; Anthracosia, Anthracomya, Myalina Brackish. 



Over Engine Coal ; Spirifer and Productus, Fern Marine. 



Black band, over Old Coal ; Anthracosia, Fish Brackish. 



Spotted Vein ; Spirorbis ; track of Limulus (?) 6 feet below the 



vein Brackish. 



Red Vein; Anthracosia, Modiola, Edmondia (?) Marine? 



Blue or Big Vein ; Myalina, Anthracosia, Spirorbis Marine? 



Bottom Veins; Fish (8 genera) Brackish. 



Eosser Veins ; (under the Farewell Eock and above the Millstone 

 Grit); Brachiopoda (7 genera), Conchifera (8 genera), Gaste- 

 ropoda, Heteropoda, and Cephalopoda (9 genera), Encrinite 



Stems, Fish remains Marine. 



Anthracosia"^ was originally regarded as a Unio by Sowerby, then referred to 

 Curdinia by Agassiz, and to Pachyodon by Stutchbury ; but it was ultimately defined 

 by W. King as related to Unio, but, being distinct from that genus, it was named 

 by him Anthracosia. Mr. Salter noticed that it has a wrinkled epidermis, and 

 considered that it was related to the Myadce, and of brackish, if not marine, habitat. 

 This is the shell composing the so-called ' mussel bands ' and ' Unio bands ' of the 

 Coal-measures. 



Anthracomya, ' Iron-ores,' etc., page 229. Mr. Salter indicates that the shells 

 which he describes under this name have oscillated in catalogues between Avicula, 

 Modiola, and Unio, and that it has a wrinkled epidermis, like the foregoing. 



Anthracopcera^ is a triangular shell, with wrinkled epidermis, and belonging to 

 the same group as the above. 



All the forms of this characteristic group of Coal-measure shells are called 

 Naiadites by Dawson,* and regarded by him as allied to D'Orbigny's Byssoanodonta. 



' "Palifiont. Botany," pp. 70, 71. ^ Iron-Ores South Wales, pp. 226, 227. 



3 Salter, Q.J.G.S. vol. xix. 1863, p. 80. * Acadian GeoL, 1868, pp. 201-203. 



