1856.] PLANT UPPER KEUPER SANDSTONE. 373 



Plantce. 



Casts of Echinostachys oblongus and Equisetce, and remains of 

 Voltzia. 



I am inclined to think, from the impressions left on the overlying 

 bed of sandstone, that the jet-black deposit intercalated in the thick 

 beds (middle member) contains the remains of Algae. 



Annelida, 

 Cololitic remains of Annelids, and casts of their tubes. 



Crustacea, 



Estheria minuta^ ; found both in the green marls and the thin 

 sandy shales. 



Pisces. 



Teeth of Placoid Fishes t ; widely scattered through the strata ; 

 the surfaces are marked with three grooves and the anterior edges 

 finely serrated. 



Ichthyodorulites J, of a curved and slender form ; these are but 

 rarely found perfect ; their existence is often to be traced in an inta- 

 glio impression, stained with a dark red oxide of iron, or by a cavity 

 from which the organic form has perished, leaving only the mould 

 and external markings impressed on the sandstone. The longest 

 spine measures 1 inches, decreasing from a diameter of three-quarters 

 of an inch to one-eighth. 



One of the best specimens is deposited in the Museum in Jermyn 

 Street, another in the Town Museum at Leicester (the ribbed surface 

 is very sharp and distinct upon this specimen) : these both show the 

 fibrous structure of the interior and the socket-like hollows which 

 run through their entire length. 



On the surface of some of the shales nodules are frequently found, 

 which from their appearance are most probably the casts and re- 

 mains of Fish-coprolites. 



Fragments of bone have also been found in one of the beds of 

 marly sandstone, about 2 inches thick ; the largest fragment is 

 5 inches in length, and nearly an inch in diameter ; it is coloured 

 by a light red oxide of iron ; the centre of this specimen is filled up 

 with a fine sand, but the hollow may prove to be the effect of crush- 

 ing forces having brought the edges of the bone together, as it seems 

 greatly distorted and broken. Another fragment of bone is firmly 

 cemented to an Ichthyodorulite. 



* This is the little Triassic shell that has been termed Posidonomya and Posi- 

 donia minuta. In Morris's ' Catalogue of British Fossils,' 2nd edit. 1854, it is 

 included in the Crustacea (as Estheria minuta) ; but (apparently from inadvert- 

 ence) it has not been expunged from the list of Molluscs in that work. Mr. 

 Rupert Jones having informed me that, from a microscopical examination of this 

 little fossil, he had been enabled to determine its real Crustacean character, I 

 have on his authority entered it here as a Crustacean. — July, 1856. J. P. 



t According to Sir P. Egerton, to whom I sent a selection of the teeth, they 

 resemble those of the genus Strophodus ; but may possibly be of a new genus. 



i Probably belonging to the same species as the teeth. 



