REVIEWS 
The Fauna of the Moorefield Shale of Arkansas. By GEoRGE H. 
Gini @ UlomGcol. survey Bully A200. Torr. Pps 148; 
pls. 15. 
In 1895 Professor H. S. Williams! called attention to the recurrence 
of certain Devonian types of fossils in beds of Mississippian age in 
Arkansas, the formation containing these recurrent species being that 
which has since come to be called the Moorefield shale. At still an 
earlier date McChesney? described several species from this formation 
near Batesville, Arkansas, referring them to the age of the Hamilton 
group of New York, because of the manifest similarity between these 
species and certain Hamilton forms. Because of this unexpected 
reappearance of Devonian genera of invertebrate fossils in the Moore- 
field shale, this fauna is of especial interest to students of Mississippian 
paleontology, and the full discussion of the fauna, with descriptions and 
illustrations of all the species, is a welcome contribution to our literature. 
The stratigraphic position of the Moorefield shale is between the 
Boone chert below and the Batesville sandstone above, it being sepa- 
rated from the subjacent formation by an unconformity. The com- 
plexion of the fauna is quite different from that of any of the formations 
of the standard Mississippian section of the Mississippi Valley, and con- 
sequently the correlation of Moorefield shale is not a perfectly simple 
matter. Dr. Girty has followed the usual custom of those who have 
given some study to the fauna, in considering it to represent a time about 
equivalent to the St. Louis limestone of the standard section. One of 
the most interesting features of the fauna is its relationship to the early 
Carboniferous faunas of Nevada, a relationship first pointed out by 
Williams. The forms which most clearly suggest this relationship are 
Liorhynchus carboniferum, Productella hirsutiformis, and Moorefieldella 
eurekensis. Another fauna with which that of the Moorefield shale 
is compared by Dr. Girty, is the fauna of the Caney shale of Oklahoma, 
a formation whose age is subject to a wide difference of opinion: Dr. 
Girty is of the opinion that it is Mississippian in age, while others believe 
it to be of Pennsylvanian age on account of the presence of certain plant 
tAm. Jour. Sci., 3d ser., XL, 94-101. 
2 Descriptions of New Species of Paleozoic Fossils (1860). 
373 
