1848.] BUNBURY ON FOSSIL PLANTS. 133 



where examples of them are generally exhibited for sale. Specimens 

 from this locality were examined and described, together with those 

 from the Tarentaise, by M. Adolphe Brongniart, in the paper already 

 quoted. The black slates of the Col de Balme and the Valorsine, in 

 which these plants occur, are admitted on all hands to belong to the 

 same formation with those of Petit Coeur ; but in the former localities 

 they present, as far as I can learn, no anomalous features, containing 

 no belemnites, nor, I believe, any animal remains whatever. When 

 at Chamounix, in August last, I visited the slate quarry near the Col 

 de Balme, from which, as I was informed, most of the specimens of 

 fossil plants had been collected, but I was not able to meet with any- 

 thing beyond some very slight and obscure traces of impressions. I 

 procured, however, at Chamounix a considerable number of well-pre- 

 served specimens, and others were shown to me by Professor Pictet 

 in the museum at Geneva. The Col de Balme is not the only locality 

 near Chamounix from which these fossil plants have been procured ; 

 they occur also in the mountains above the village of Servoz, from 

 which the Dioza torrent comes down to join the Arve ; and in the 

 mountains on the right bank of the Rhone, opposite to Martigny. 

 But in none of these places, as I was informed by M. Pictet, have 

 belemnites been found, nor any characteristic fossils, except the vege- 

 table impressions. 



It may be worth while to add, that M. Elie de Beaumont himself 

 told me that he considered the slates of the Col de Balme as belong- 

 ing to the lowest part of the lias formation. They are the lowest 

 fossiliferous rocks of that district, and rest immediately on crystalline 

 talcose schists, which pass downwards into the gneiss and protogene 

 that constitute the mountains on both sides of the valley of Cha- 

 mounix. 



My specimens from the neighbourhood of Chamounix, and those 

 which I examined in the museum of Geneva, include ten different 

 forms of fossil plants, of which eight are Ferns, one a Calamite (spe- 

 cies undeterminable), and one an Asterophyllites . The two latter are 

 extremely like, if not absolutely identical with, common forms of the 

 coal-measures. Of the ferns, there are, I think, only two which I 

 did not observe among the Tarentaise specimens : one of these is the 

 well-known Neuroptei'is Jlexuosa, very distinctly characterized, and 

 perfectly agreeing with specimens from Pennsylvania and Cape Bre- 

 ton. The other comes near to Neuropteris conferta of Goppert (a 

 plant belonging to the upper part of the coal-measures), but the spe- 

 cimen is not sufficiently perfect for accurate determination. 



Lastly, I may mention that M. Elie de Beaumont showed me, in 

 the collection of the Ecole des Mines at Paris, a well-preserved speci- 

 men of Lepidodendron ornatissimum of Brongniart (Lindley's TJlo- 

 dendron majus), with its characteristic markings, and especially the 

 large round scars of abortive buds or branches, very distinctly exhi- 

 bited. This was brought from the Col de Chardonnet, not far from 

 Brian9on. The strata in that locality are considered by M. de Beau- 

 mont as belonging to the uppermost part of the Alpine anthracite 

 formation, and as probably equivalent to the Oxford clay. 



