﻿1861.] 



HISLOP NAGPTTB SANDSTONE AND COAL. 



353 



plant-bearing beds are not very low in the Mesozoic series. These 

 stems belong to genera seemingly altogether undescribed. The only 

 fossil that has fallen under my observation which admits of being 

 compared with them, is one figured by Professor Hitchcock in his 

 paper on the Sandstone Formation of Connecticut and Massachu- 

 setts*, which has been shown by Prof. W. B. Rogers to be nearly 

 on the same horizon as the Richmond coal-basin. The object there 

 represented, as Sir C. Lyell justly remarks, cannot be a Tamiopieris, 

 but it may very well be a compressed branch or trunk of a tree, on 

 which supposition the oblique lines from left to right would corre- 

 spond with the markings on the bark of our SilewacZa stems. 



Before leaving this part of my subject, I would remark that some 

 of our seeds or seed-vessels remind me of some that occur in the Lower 

 Oolite at Stonesfield along with Tosniopteris. 



B. Animal-remains. — Turning now to the animal-remains, we 

 find that, like our plants, they are best represented in rocks of the 

 Mesozoic epoch. 



When I transmitted the cranium of Brachyops laticeps to your 

 Society in 1853, 1 pointed out its relations to the Labyrinthoclontidai, 

 which had never before been recognized in the East, and attempted 

 also to indicate the section of the family to which it belonged. To 

 me it seemed to have little connexion with the ArcJiegosaurus, &c, 

 but to be allied to that division of Reptiles which Yon Meyer has 

 named Prosthophthalmi, and to approach most nearly the genus Me- 

 topias. Professor Owen in his description did not enter on this part 

 of the subject; but I am glad to perceive that Professor Huxley has 

 since had occasion to allude to it, while speaking of the remains of two 

 Reptiles from South Africa and Australia, and, without knowing that 

 it had been done before, has shown a relationship to exist between the 

 Mangali Brachyops and the Metopias of the Keuperf . We are thus 

 authoritatively furnished with a means of judging of the era of our 

 Labyrinthodont, which proves to be the division of the Trias nearest 

 to the Jurassic formation. 



Together with the Brachyops skull, there occurs at Mangali a great 

 abundance of an Entomostracon, which, in accordance with a sugges- 

 tion from my friends Drs. Leith and Carter, I was disposed in 1854 

 to call Limnadia, but which Mr. Rupert Jones prefers to class with 

 Estheria. This species, which is almost equally common at Kota 

 and Mangali, is somewhat similar to that found in Virginia ; but it 

 perhaps still more nearly resembles in form and ornamentation the 

 species that sports in the pools of Central India at the present day, 

 and which a few months ago was described and figured by Dr. Baird 

 as E. compressa%. Besides Estheria we have another genus of Ento- 

 mostraca at Kota — I mean Cypris. From its elongate form Mr. 

 Jones feels warranted in saying that, according to our present know- 



* Plate 14. fig. 2, Trans. Amer. Geol. Soc. 1840-2. 



t Quart. Journ. Greol. Soc, vol. xv. p. 647. Prof. Huxley here speaks of the 

 affinity between Micropholis and Metopias, and subsequently of the resemblance 

 that Micropholis bears to Brachyops. 



\ Zool. Soc. Proceed., vol. for 1860, p. 188. 



2 b 2 



