74 Prof. G. A. Lehonr —Posidonomya Becheri at Budle. 



he wrote : " At Budle tlie basalt is nearly connected with an indu- 

 rated, jointed, red shale (containing Posidonomya Beclieri, etc.), 

 which overlies a limestone ; for the basalt is in the hill a little above 

 the schist, and on the sea-shore to the east ; so that the jointed and 

 indurated condition of the schist is probably due to the action of the 

 Basalt." 1 



As early as 1853, however, Mr. Tate had called attention to the 

 occurrence of the fossil in question. In his Presidential Address to 

 the Berwickshire Club on the 7th of September of that year, he 

 alluded to the "Budle schists . . . filled with rare and beautiful 

 remains of fossil plants and animals belonging to the Carbotiiferous 

 era." ^ In a similar address delivered in 186i, by Mr. Wm. Steven- 

 son of Dunse, the then President of the Club, is the following 

 passage, which I believe was at least inspired by Mr. Tate : " Pro- 

 ceeding onwards to Budle Bay, the well-known Posidonia shales 

 were examined with much interest. These shales of a reddish 

 brown colour, abounding in the shells of the fragile Posidonia, asso- 

 ciated with the remains of a few land plants, have evidently been 

 deposited in the still brackish waters of an ancient lagoon or estuary, 

 little disturbed by tidal action."^ 



The above quotations, which, considering the scarcity of the back 

 volumes of the Berwickshire Transactions, I make no excuse for 

 giving in full, comprise about all that can be said in the way of 

 description as to the Budle Shales, They are red, rather hard, and 

 much jointed ; they contain numerous plant remains in the form of 

 drifted narrow ribbon-shaped leaves, showing little or no structure, 

 and not easy to determine ; but the most interesting fossil is un- 

 doubtedly the Posidonomya, which gives its name to the beds in 

 which it occurs. The specimens are abundant ; but, owing to the 

 way in which the shale breaks up, it is somewhat difficult to obtain 

 good specimens. With this shell are species of Lingida, Spirifer, 

 Chonefes, Ortliis and Etiomphalus ; L. mytiloides, Sp. bisulcatus, 0. 

 Michelini, Eu. pentangulatus being the commonest. Other fossils 

 occur ; among them I have found a Bellerophon, a Phillipsia (tail 

 only) and some Pohjzoa, whilst one Gonatites {G. atratus, Goldf.) is 

 recorded by Mr. Tate ; but with the exception of a Fenestella, these 

 are all rare. Corals and Crinoids are conspicuous by their absence, 

 and after many searches, I have never seen but one specimen of the 

 otherwise ubiquitous genus Productus, and that was Pr. fimbriatus, 

 by no means a common Northumbrian form. 



Mr. Tate placed the horizon of these shales rather low down in 

 his " Calcareous Group " of the Carboniferous Limestone Series of 

 Northumberland, between the two beds of limestone known locally 

 as the Stone Close or Five - Yard a,nd the Hohherlaio or Four -Yard 



^ See G. Tate on " The Basaltic Rocks of Northumberland," Berwickshire Natu- 

 ralists' Transactions, 1872, p. 200. 



^ Berwickshire Transactions, vol. iii. 1857. 



^ Berwickshire Transactions, vol. v. p. 104. See also Baiter and Tate's " New 

 Flora of Northumberland and Durham," 18G8, p. 10 ; and Tate's " History of 

 Alnwick," vol. ii. 1869, pp. 451, 455, and 457. 



