THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. 



NEW SERIES. DECADE III. VOL. III. 



No. I.— JANUARY, 1886. 



dEaia-insr-A-ii articles. 



I. — On a Eemarkable Ichthyodorulite from the Carboniferous 

 Series, Gascoyne, Western Australia. 



By Henry Woodward, LL.D., F.E.S., F.G.S., etc. 

 (PLATE I.) 

 HMWO years ago, Mr. Eobert H. Scott, F.E.S., Secretary to the 

 I Council of the Meteorological Office, kindly sent me a letter 

 from the Eev. J. G. Nicolay of Fremantle, Western Australia, 

 accompanied by a photograph of a fossil, the original of which had 

 been found by Mr. Davis " in the valley of the Arthur Eiver, an 

 afflueut of the Gascoyne." 1 



I readily identified the fossil photographed as the impression of a 

 fish-spine, similar in form, but more highly curved than those 

 discovered in the Coal-measures of Arkansas, Indiana and Illinois, 

 originally described by Prof. Leidy as a fish-jaw, and named by him 

 Edestus vorax in 1855, and later as a fish-spine by MM. Newberry 

 and Worthen (Geological Survey of Illinois, 1870, vol. iv. pp. 350- 

 353, pi. i.). Having expressed a wish to see the fossil itself, Mr. 

 Scott at once wrote to his sister, Lady Barker, wife of the Governor 

 of Western Australia, at Perth, who most kindly interested herself 

 to obtain the loan of it from Mr. Nicolay. After a protracted corre- 

 spondence, Mr. Edward T. Hardman, F.G.S., of the Government 

 Geological Survey of Ireland (who was at that time engaged upon a 

 Survey of the Kimberley District, Western Australia), was, upon his 

 return to England, entrusted with the charge of this unique specimen, 

 which is now in my hands. 



The fossil (which is represented in our Plate I. of the natural size) 

 consists of the half of a heavy clay-ironstone nodule, having the 

 intaglio impression of a curved organism ; the relievo half of the 

 nodule was not found. It was picked up by Mr. Davis " in 

 the valley of the Arthur Eiver, an affluent of the Gascoyne from 

 the right, i.e. the north, above the confluence of the Lyons with the 

 Gascoyne, and about 130 miles in direct distance from the sea ; both 

 rivers have, as I am informed, cut their channels through a flat- 

 topped range, which stretches beyond the Lyons to the north-west, 

 and on the top of which are found fossils very numerous, bedded in 

 limestone, among which a striated-winged Spirifer " (probably 

 Spirifer vesperlilio, G. Sby. ?) " is prominent. It may be assumed 

 that the limestone bed is superior in position to that of the ferrugi- 

 1 Spelt, in some maps, " Gascoigue." 



DECADE III. VOL. III. — NO. 1. 1 



