ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XXXIX 



Brongniart. Subsequently JNI. Elie de Beaumont published an account 

 of beds occurring between Brian^on and St. Jeane de Maurienne, and 

 included them in the same series. Plants obtained from these rocks 

 were examined by M. Adolphe Brongniart, and identified by him 

 with those of the coal-measures. From all the facts M. Elie de 

 Beaumont inferred, that the beds with belemnites and ammonites, 

 and those containing the plants, were parts of one wdiole, and that 

 whole referable to the date of the lias and part of the oolitic series. 



This announcement was startling to those who were accustomed to 

 consider that the animal and vegetable life existing at each geological 

 period had been so entirely swept away, and replaced by new species 

 at another, that no species of one geological period would have its 

 existence prolonged into another. The view of M. Elie de Beaumont 

 was in consequence considered to require confirmation, and thus the 

 subject remained, as Mr. Bunbury has pointed out, until the meeting 

 of the Geological Society of France, at Chambery, in 1844, when the 

 observations of the members present led them to adopt the opinions 

 of M. Elie de Beaumont. 



When at Turin in 1848, iNIr. Bunbury carefully examined the fos- 

 sil plants from the Tarentaise in the ^luseum. In this examination 

 he experienced difiiculties from the imperfect preservation of the 

 plants, their confused mixture and distortion, and from the injury to 

 the structure caused by their replacement by a coating of talc. The 

 specimens in the Turin Museum afforded Mr. Bunbury fourteen dif- 

 ferent forms, for he wdll not venture to call them species, of which 

 nine are Ferns, two Calamites, and three Asterophyllites or Annula- 

 rise. " Two of these ferns," he obsenes, " Odontopteris Brardii 

 and Pecopteris cyathea, may be pronounced with tolerable certainty 

 to be identical with characteristic and well-known plants of the coal- 

 measures. Three, or perhaps four, others have a strong resemblance 

 to coal-measure plants, with which they may probably be specifically 

 identical, but," he continues, " 1 cannot feel certain of them. An- 

 other, seems to be a remarkable and hitherto unnoticed variety of 

 Odontopteris Brardii^ connecting that species wdth O. ohtusa of 

 Brongniart. The eighth is perhaps a new species, but its nearest 

 allies are plants of the coal formation. Of the ninth, the specimens 

 are too imperfect to admit of determination. Of the remaining plants, 

 Calamites approximatus and Annularia longifolia appear to be ab- 

 solutely identical with coal-measure plants ; and the other two, An- 

 nularicB or Asterophyllites^ are at least very similar to carboniferous 

 forms. The other catamite is undeterminable." 



The occurrence of similar plants at the Col de Balme, and in the 

 mountains above Servoz and Martigny, is then noticed, as also the 

 absence of belemnites in beds interstratified with the others in those 

 localities. The plants obtained by ]Mr. Bunbury from the neigh- 

 bourhood of Chamonix, and those seen by him in the Museum at 

 Geneva, consisted of eight Ferns, one Calamite (species undetermi- 

 nable) and one Asterophyllites. A well-preserved specimen of Lepi- 

 dodendron ornatissimum, of Brongniart, was pointed out to Jiini by 

 M. Elie de Beaumont in the collection at the Ecole des Alines at 



