﻿1861.] 



HUXLEY PTERASPIS DUNENSIS, 



163 



January 23, 1861. 



"William Weston, Esq., Birkenhead, was elected a Fellow. 



The following communications were read : — 



1. On the Gravel and Boulders of the Punjab. 

 By J. D. Smithe, Esq., E.G.S. 



[Abstract.] 



In the Phimgota Valley (a continuation of the Great Kangra or Palum 

 Valley) the Drift consists of sand and shingle with boulders of gneiss, 

 schist, porphyry, and trap-rock, from 6 inches to 5 feet in diameter. 

 Some of the boulders, having a red vitreous glaze, occur in irregular 

 beds. 



This moraine-like Drift lies on the Tertiary beds, which, here dip- 

 ping gently towards the plains, gradually become vertical, and are 

 succeeded by variegated compact sandstones, gradually inclining 

 away from the plains ; next come various slates, at a high angle ; 

 and gneissic rocks lie immediately over them. 



2. On Pteraspis Dunensis (Archseoteuthis Dunensis, Roemer). By 

 Thomas H. Huxley, E.R.S., Sec.G.S., Professor of Natural History, 

 Government School of Mines. 



The fourth volume* of the ' Palseontographica ' of Dunker and Von 

 Meyer (1856) contains a memoir on " Palceoteuthis, a genus of 

 Naked Cephalopoda from the Devonian rocks of the Eifel," by the 

 well-known paleontologist Dr. Eerd. Eoemer. The fossil upon which 

 this genus is founded is described as an oval, convex, symmetrical, 

 shield-like body, marked by two diverging longitudinal elevations 

 or keels, and exhibiting on its surface a peculiar ornamentation, 

 consisting of curved parallel ridges, so fine that there are as many 

 as 8 or 10 to a line. All traces of any deeper layer than that which 

 exhibits these ridges had disappeared. In discussing the affinities 

 of this fossil, Dr. Roemer decides in favour of its being the internal 

 shell of a Naked Cephalopod, upon the grounds, first, of its general 

 form, and secondly, of the presence of the diverging keels, in both 

 of which respects he considers the fossil to resemble the internal 

 shell of a Sepia. And he adds : " Inasmuch as the fine superficial 

 sculpture is altogether peculiar and different from that of the cuttle- 

 bone, and since, further, the fact that the fossil exhibits such a struc- 

 ture only upon its surface leads one to suspect that it was not a thick 

 ossicle, but thin and horny like that of Loligo, and since, finally, 

 its occurrence in so old a formation makes its generic identity with 

 the living genus improbable, it will be justifiable to consider the 

 fossil as the type of a new genus, although its clear definition can 



* Page 72, plate 13. 



