244 
at Burdie House, near Edinburgh, there is a thin seam of coprolitic 
matter ; they are rarely mixed with any great quantity of vegetable 
remains. In the lower measures of Lancashire they are associated 
with Goniatites and Pectens, and in the higher measures of Lan- 
cashire and Yorkshire with freshwater shells allied to Unio, and with 
Entomostraca. Exact observations as to facts of this kind are of 
inestimable importance, for it is only by careful induction from 
a sufficient number of such-like phenomena, and from similar de- 
tails as to the local distribution and condition of animal and vege- — 
table remains in the marine and fluvio-marine and lacustrine depo- 
sits which compose the carboniferous series, that we shall arrive at 
a solution of the grand problem of the formation of coal. 
CRUSTACEANS. 
The Rev. T. B. Brodie has discovered in the Wealden formation 
near Dinton, in the vale of Wardour, the remains of Coleopterous 
and Hymenopterous insects, and anew genus of Jsopodous Crustacea 
in the family Cymothoide. ‘The Isopods are clustered densely to- 
gether ; the lenses in their eyes are sometimes preserved; there are 
also traces of legs, but of no antenne. With them he has found a 
large species of Cypris. The insects are chiefly small Coleoptera ; 
there are several species of Dipterous, and one Homopterous insect, 
and the wing of a Libellula. Mr. Brodie’s discovery is the first yet 
made of insects in the Wealden formation, and also the first example 
in a secondary formation of Isopods that approximate in form to 
the Trilobites of the Transition series. 
WORMS. 
An addition has been made to fossil Helmintology by Mr. Atkin- 
son of Neweastle-on-Tyne, who has found in slabs of micaceous slaty 
sandstone, from the carbonaceous series near Haltwhistle, tortuous 
casts of vermiform bodies of various sizes, some almost an inch in 
diameter, and several feet in length; the surface of many of these 
is thickly marked by transverse rings and a longitudinal groove, 
similar to those in the largest recent marine sand worms, e.g. the 
Leodice gigantea. The integument of some of these worms con- 
taining chitine, like the covering of insects, seems to have endured 
long enough to fix impressions of the transverse rings upon the 
