564 Notices of Memoirs — Charles Moore's Report. 



limation, others to segregation. In the first instance, it is believed, 

 they are due to the passage upwards, through the veins, of vapours 

 holding the minerals from the heated interior of the earth ; in the 

 latter that they have been extracted from and drawn together from 

 the matrix forming the walls of the veins, and re-deposited therein. 

 The diificulties attending both these popular ideas were then noticed. 

 Keferrtng to Mr. Wallace's theory, that many of the veins had been 

 filled, and the minerals segregated by atmospheric and hydrous agency 

 from the circulation through them of large bodies of water since the 

 Glacial period, he pointed out that in this case the organic remains in 

 the veins would be comparatively recent, and that the remote age of 

 all the fossils was against it. Mr. Moore's view was, that the 

 mineral veins were at first open fissures, in immediate connexion, 

 and filled with the waters of the ocean ; and that there would be 

 necessary for the subsequent deposition of minerals therein, the 

 presence of certain minerals in the ancient seas favourable to 

 electrical conditions, and time for their precipitation ; and it was 

 stated to be an established fact that the minerals now found in veins 

 are known to be present in solution in the waters of the ocean. The 

 organic remains he had discovered were strongly confirmatory of his 

 view, and the age of difi'erent mineral veins could be determined by 

 their presence. Thus, on the Mendips, Liassic fish and testacea in the 

 veins proved the minerals of that district, although enclosed in walls 

 of Carboniferous limestone, to be as young as the Lias, although no 

 Liassic rocks are to be found for several miles ; and, in the North of 

 England, some of the veins were shewn to be subsequent to the coal 

 period. The organic remains which were described at length by Mr. 

 Moore, were of the most varied kinds. Flemingites gracilis, a small 

 Lycopodiaoeous seed of the Coal-measures, had been found in several 

 mines. Conodonts (never before observed above Silurian strata), 

 very minute bodies not unlike fish-jaws and spines, but which were 

 supposed by the author of the paper to be either teeth or spines of 

 Nudibranchiate Mollusca, occurred in the veins in considerable num- 

 bers, presenting a most remarkable series of forms ; and Entomostraca 

 of the genera Bairdia, Beyrichia, Cyihere, CyihereUa, Kirlcbya, and 

 Moorea, of about thirty species. Foraminifera were abundant, 

 representing five genera, the chief interest attaching to Involutina, 

 of which until lately only one species was known, but of which Mr. 

 Moore had found eleven species. Of this class he had also obtained 

 from the lead veins, species of Dentalina, Textularia, and Tinoporus, 

 which had lived on from the Palasozoic age to the present time. 

 Not the least important of his nine explorations had been the dis- 

 covery of a land and fresh- water fauna. Until lately, the only 

 known terrestrial shell below the Secondary beds was the Pupa 

 vetusta, found by Sir Charles Lyell and Dr. Dawson in the Coal- 

 measures of Nova Scotia, but he had now nine genera of land and 

 fresh-water shells from the lead mines of this country, all of them 

 probably of Carboniferous limestone age. These include Helix, 

 Vertigo, and Troserpina land-shells from the Mendip mines, as well 

 as the fresh- water genera of Flanorhis and Valvata, to which, from 



