1852.] STRICKLAND LUDLOW BONE BED. 11 



Fish have yet been found in them. They contain however numerous 

 vegetable remains, chiefly amorphous fragments of carbon in the state 

 of coal. Among these frequently occur globular seed-like bodies 

 identical with those above described, and exhibiting the same internal 

 structure. 



Proceeding six miles further S. nearly to the southern extremity 

 of the May Hill elevation, there is an interesting section just laid open 

 by the works of the Hereford, Ross, and Gloucester Railway at a 

 place called the Velt-house. A cutting, of about 100 yards long, here 

 exposes the lower beds of the Old Red Sandstone, the yellow sand- 

 stones termed " Downton Sandstones" by Sir R. Murchison (which 

 are here about 20 feet thick), and a considerable extent of the Upper 

 Ludlow Shales. The whole series is conformable, and dips about 

 7o° to the W. Near the base of the Downton Sandstones, and 4 or 

 5 feet above the Ludlow shales, I detected the Bone-bed, not more 

 than two inches thick, containing numerous rolled fragments of black 

 coprolitic matter imbedded in a grey micaceous sandy shale. The 

 scales of Thelodus parvidens are frequent, and I also found a 

 spine of Onchus Murchisoni* . The only other fossils noticed were 

 casts of a depressed spiral shell, which appears to be the Trochus 

 helicites, Sowerby, Sil. Syst. pi. 3. f. 1. e, but whose true generic 

 position is doubtful. This shell has been also found in the Tilestones 

 near Kington and in the Llandeilo district. Its resemblance to some 

 of the commoner forms of recent Helix, such as H. hispida or H. can- 

 tiana, is very striking, though from its collocation it was probably a 

 marine mollusc. The diameter is about ^ an inch, the height -ff-. 



I have thus traced this remarkable deposit of Ichthyic, Mollus- 

 cous, and Vegetable remains from Hagley to the Velt-house, a distance 

 of about seventeen miles. Prof. Phillips speaks of the equivalent of 

 the Ludlow Bone-bed as occurring at Pyrton Passage, about seven 

 miles further S. (Mem. Geol. Survey, vol. ii. part 1. p. 191). From 

 this point to the banks of the Teme near Ludlow, where the Bone- 

 bed was originally detected, is a direct distance of forty-five miles. 

 It is not a little remarkable to find a stratum of such trifling thick- 

 ness thus persistent in character through so wide an area. In this 

 respect, no less than in the nature of its osseous and coprolitic drift, 

 and in the fact that it occurs just at the boundary-line between two 

 great geological systems, its analogies vnth the well-kno^vn Bone-bed 

 at the base of the Lias are deserving of notice. In both cases we 

 have indications of an extensive mortality among the Fish then in 

 being, a phsenomenon not improbably connected with the great phy- 

 sical changes which are proved to have taken place at the periods 

 respectively indicated by these deposits. 



* By Onchus MurcMsoni I mean a genuine Ichthyodorulite, distinct from O. 

 tenuistriatus, and agreeing with figs. 9 & 11 in plate 4 of the ' Silurian System,' 

 but not with fig. 10, which Prof. M'Coy has shown to be a Crustacean. [Jan. 6, 1853,] 



t The genus Helix does not, I believe, make its appearance until the Tertiary 

 period ; otherwise I should be disposed to speculate on the possibility of these 

 Molluscs having been drifted down from the same land whence the seed-like 

 fossils above described were probably derived. [Jan. 6, 1853.] 



