Prof. E. W. Claypole—Upper Devonian Fishes of Ohio. 448 
part some of the intervening mass in order to bring more complete illustrations of 
both specimens within a small diagram. The felstone (on the left of the figure) 
exhibits micrographic structure sometimes developed around nuclei of kaolinised 
felspar. The diorite (on the right of the figure) shows a greenish altered mineral, 
and felspar erystals in which a clear zone surrounds a kaolinised interior (see p. 438). 
a. Greenish mineral, partly biotite, partly hornblende. 
c. Felspar crystals with kaolinised interior. 
Tron oxide, only some of which is shown. 
(Magnified about 30 diameters.) 
Il].—Tur Urprrer Devonian Fisues or Onto. 
By Prof. E. W. Cuayerotz, B.A., D.Sc. (Lond.), Buchtel College, Akron, 
Ohio, U.S.A. 
NDER the true Carboniferous strata of Ohio, that is below the 
base of the Berea Grit, lies a mass of shale of varying colour 
many hundred feet in thickness. The uppermost fifty or sixty feet 
are often red or reddish, and have been separated with the name of 
the Bedford Shale. The next layer, of about the same thickness, 
is usually black or at least very dark and bears the name of the 
Cleveland Shale. Below this again is a greenish mass 500 feet or 
more in thickness, known as the Hrie Shale. Another dark bed 
follows—the Huron. Shale—beneath which is the great limestone 
base of the Devonian in Ohio, the Corniferous. 
The Upper part of this great shaly mass has been variously classed 
with the Carboniferous and the Devonian, according to the knowledge 
and the opinions of the writers. It is most accordant with fact to 
regard it as the representative of a period of transition between 
these two eras, inasmuch as there is no physical break to be detected 
generally in the field, and, as will presently be shown, no line can 
be drawn in the paleontological record. We have here, as in some 
other places, an uninterrupted series of strata filling the interval 
between the two series, and were the paleontological record as full 
as the stratigraphical, important connecting links would doubtless 
be discovered. 
But unfortunately the story of life is very incomplete. The 
shales are usually barren. The Red Bedford has yielded few traces 
of life except in its lowest bed, and even there they are not abundant. 
Still the few Brachiopods that have been found imply strong 
Carboniferous affinity. Some of them are :— 
Syringothyris typus, Win. Macrodon Hamiltonie, Hall. 
Orthis Michelini, Lev. Chonetes Logani, Hall. 
Spiriferina solidirostris, White. Lingula Cuyahoga, Hall. 
The Black Cleveland Shale next below, with which this paper 
will chiefly deal, was for many years a barren ground to paleon- 
tologists. Nothing at all had been found in it; but recently and 
locally it has proved to be a rich storehouse of fossil fishes of new 
and strange types. But these are all, except now and then, a 
fragment of fossil weed (Dadoxylon) or more rarely still a broken 
and crushed molluscan shell such as Hodon bellistriatus or a closely 
allied form. 
From this shale have come almost all the known species of 
