Correspondence — Sir H. H. Koworth. 527 



In 1863 the Abbe L. Bourgeois, with the Abbe Delaunay and 

 M. Bouvet, found some worked flints at the outcrop of some fresh- 

 water beds of the lower part of the Calcaire de Beauce, above the 

 bank of the stream of Thenay, near Pontlevoy (Loir-et-Cher), 

 France; and in 1869, to certify their position, MM. Bourgeois and 

 Delaunay had a pit dug on the top of the hill, at about a hundred 

 metres within the edge of the plateau above the valley, and believed 

 that they discovered several well-characterized flint instruments, at 

 a depth of six metres, in the same marly beds of the Beauce 

 Limestone that crop out on the hill-side below. See Bulletin Soc. 

 Geol. France, ser. 2, vol. xx. 1863, pp. 535-542 ; vol. xxvi. 1869, 

 pp. 901-902; vol. xxvii. 1870, pp. 519-520 (M. Eaulin). Some 

 geologists and archeeologists have not accepted M. Bourgeois' inter- 

 pretation of the facts, and others have ignored it ; but thei'e still 

 remains the possibility of this Miocene occurrence of man-worked 

 flints. This is strengthened by the finding of such relics in the 

 Miocene of Burma ; nor need we hesitate to allow that Man, as well 

 as such Miocene animals as the Hippotlierium (ITipparion), could, 

 within a limited period, spread over the Asiatico-European continent, 

 so as to constitute a real contemporaneity, and not merely a homo- 

 taxis, of the fossiliferous strata in that far-back stage of Geological 

 History. T. Eupert Jones. 



coiaiaiESi^oisriDiBisroE- 



AN ERECT TEEE IN THE COAL-MEASURES. 



Sir, — My brother-in-law, Mr. J. C. Brierley, of Eochdale, has 

 sent me some photographs of a recent discovery there, which I think 

 you might like to record in the Geological Magazine. My friend 

 Mr. Piatt, of Eochdale, may possibly describe it at greater length. 

 It is that of a very perfect internal cast of an erect Sigillarian trunk 

 rooted in the ground and rising to the unusual height of more 

 than six feet, with a circumference at the base of about the same, 

 and of four feet at its present summit. As now exposed there 

 are three main roots from the trunk, each of which bifurcates. 

 Near the base of the trunk the bark has been preserved in a 

 carbonized form. The tree stands in a bed of Carboniferous shale 

 in the Lower Coal-measures, which forms an insular mass in the 

 bottom of the valley of the Eoach and is topped by Boulder-clay. 

 Apart from other interesting circumstances, the trunk is clearly 

 in situ, and it affords good evidence of the very rapid accumulation 

 under certain conditions of some of the primary rocks. It cannot 

 be doubted that the shales which enclose it must have been 

 deposited very rapidly, or else the trunk itself would have weathered 

 away. It is also a proof that whatever deposited the Boulder-clay 

 in the valley of the Eoach, it could not have been an instrument of 

 very active erosion, or such masses of soft shale as this, enclosing 

 a perpendicular tree-trunk, would have been swept away. (See 

 illustration on page 528.) Henry H. Howorth. 



