THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE 



NEW SERIES. DECADE III. VOL. IV. 



No. I.— JANUARY, 1887. 



OS-IC3-IISrJ^Ij J^IiTIGXjEJS. 



I. — On S03IE Spined Mtriapods from the Carboniferous Series 



OF England. 



By Henry Woodward, LL.D., F.R.S., F.G.S. 

 (PLATE I.) 



PALEONTOLOGISTS are largely indebted to Messrs. Meek and 

 Worthen for their very careful researches in the Coal-Measures 

 of Illinois, which have resulted in such large and valuable accessions 

 to the fauna and flora of the Carboniferous formation. Not the least 

 interesting of these has been the discovery of numerous organisms, 

 which were first recognized and correctly described by them in 1868 ^ 

 as the remains of spined Myriapods. 



The earliest record of the discovery of one of these curious terres- 

 trial Arthropods in England will be found in " A History of Fossil 

 Insects," etc., by the Rev. P. B. Brodie, M.A., F.G.S., 8vo. 1845, 

 in the " Introductory Observations " to which Prof. J. 0. Westwood 

 drew attention to a figure (pi. i. fig. 11) in that work, representing 

 a remarkable fossil preserved in a nodule of clay-ironstone from the 

 Coal-measures, Coalbrook-dale, Avhich he believed to be probably the 

 remains " of some large Caterpillar furnished with rows of tubercles" 

 (pp. xvii, 105, and 115, op. cit.). The specimen is preserved in the 

 " Hope Collection," in the University Museum, Oxford (Woodcut 

 Fig. 1). 



The next specimen was figured and described by the late Mr. 

 J. W. Salter, F.G.S., ^ eighteen years later, who named it Eurypterus 

 (Arthropleura) ferox, sp. nov., and referred to it as "one of the 

 most curious Crustacean fragments on record," and as "part of the 

 abdomen of a Eurypterus " (op. cit. p. 87). It was obtained from 

 the clay-ironstone of the Staffordshire Coal-field at Tipton, from the 

 shale over the "Thick-Coal" (Woodcut Fig. 2). Mr. Salter states 

 that " another specimen occurs in the Hope Collection at Oxford." 



So far back as 1859,^ Prof, (now Sir) William Dawson, K.C.M.G., 

 F.E.S., described a Chilognathous Myriapod from the Coal-measures 

 of Nova Scotia, under the name of Xylobius sigillarice. 



1 Geol. Surv. Illinois, vol. iii. pp. 558 — 559. 



^ Quart. Joum. Geol. Soc. 1863, vol. xix. p. 86, fig. 8. 



3 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xvi. p. 268. 



DECADE lU. VOL. IV. NO. I. 1 



