Manchester Memoirs, Vol. xlviti. (1903), No. 3. 



II. Notes on Fossil Plants from the Ardwick Series 

 of Manchester. 



By E. A. Newell Arber, M.A., F.L.S., F.G.S., 



Trinity College Cambridge; University 

 Demonstrator in Palceoboiany. 



Received and read October 6th, igo^. 



The productive beds of the great South Lancashire 

 Coalfield consist, for the most part, of Middle and Lower 

 Coal Measures. The fossil floras of these divisions have 

 been described by Kidston\ Salter^, and others. In the 

 South-East portion of the coalfield other beds occur 

 which have long been known to belong to a higher horizon 

 than the Middle Coal Measures^, and which constitute the 

 highest Carboniferous beds in Lancashire. These are 

 overlain by a considerable thickness of Permian and 

 Triassic rocks, except on the East side of Manchester, 

 where they form an inlier of coal measures, surrounded 

 on all sides by newer beds. This inlier has been often 

 spoken of as the Manchester coalfield, and it presents 

 many points of geological interest. In the upper beds a 

 remarkable series of bands of Spirorbis limestone occurs, 



^ Kidston ('92). 



2 Salter ('62) and ('64). 



* See Brockbank and De Ranee ('91), p. 282. 



The numbers in parentheses after the Authors' names denote the year 

 of publication of the memoir, to which reference will be found in the biblio- 

 graphy at the end of this paper. 



December joth, igoj. 



