﻿1851.] BUNBURY FOSSIL PLANTS OF SCARBOROUGH. 1/9 



March 12, 1851. 



Charles Johnston, Esq., and Capt. Richard Strachey, Bengal En- 

 gineers, were elected Fellows. 



The following communications were read : — 



1. On some Fossil Plants from the Jurassic Strata of the 

 Yorkshire Coast. By C. J. F. Bunbury, Esq., F.R.S., For. 

 Sec. G.S. 



The sandstones and shales of the Oolitic series, in the neighbourhood 

 of Scarborough and Whitby, have for many years been known to 

 geologists as being singularly rich in fossil remains of plants, equally 

 remarkable for their beautiful state of preservation as for the variety 

 of forms assembled within a small space. It may be said, indeed, 

 that but for the "plant-beds" at Gristhorpe, Cloughton, Kaiburn, 

 and Whitby, we should know little of the ancient vegetation of the 

 Jurassic period. These localities have supplied, in fact, the types of 

 the Jurassic Flora, with which the comparatively few and scattered 

 specimens of this vegetation, found in other places, have been com- 

 pared. The first notice of this remarkable extinct Flora is, I believe, 

 to be found in Messrs. Young and Bird's * Geological Survey of the 

 Yorkshire Coast,' in which a certain number of the most striking 

 forms are very imperfectly represented. Many species are named and 

 figured (but not described) in Professor Phillips's valuable work on 

 the * Geology of Yorkshire ' ; a considerable number are well illus- 

 trated in Lindley and Hutton's ' Fossil Flora/ and in the classical 

 work of Adolphe Brongniart ; and very recently the last-named author 

 has given, in his * Tableau des Genres de Vegetaux Fossiles,' a list 

 of 63 species of fossil plants from the Oolites of Scarborough and 

 Whitby ; in which list, however, he has omitted some previously 

 published by Phillips and Lindley. 



But these various works have not exhausted the subject. The rich 

 collections at Scarborough, especially those of Dr. Murray and Mr. 

 Bean, contain numerous unpublished forms of Jurassic plants, as well 

 as valuable materials for clearing up the history of others hitherto 

 obscure. In a recent visit to Scarborough, I had the advantage of 

 repeatedly examining the collections above mentioned, which were 

 opened to me with the utmost liberality ; and I now lay before the 

 Society some of the results of this examination. To the liberality and 

 kindness of Dr. Murray I am especially indebted for the opportunity 

 of drawing as well as describing the most remarkable of these plants, 

 and I wish publicly to express my obligations to him. 



1. Sphenopteris nephrocarpa, nov. sp. Pl. XII. fig. la, lb. 



The fructification of any kind of Sphenopteris is so great a rarity, 

 that I consider the present specimen very interesting, although it is 

 but a small fragment, too imperfect perhaps to allow the species to 

 be positively determined. It is in the collection of Dr. Murray. 



