1852.] STRTCKLAND — UPPER LUDLOW ROCK AT HAGLEY PARK. 383 



ignited, these fragments burn like anthracite, without smoke or flame, 

 and remain ignited until they are reduced to a light white ash. The 

 occurrence of vegetable remains in the corresponding beds at Down- 

 ton Castle is noticed by Sir R. Murchison * and near Stoke Edith, and 

 in the May Hill district by Prof. Phillips f. 



The bed No. 9 is interesting as being unquestionably the repre- 

 sentative of the "Ludlow Bone Bed," described by Sir R. Murchi- 

 son |. His description of this deposit near Ludlow, as "a mass of 

 scales, ichthyodorulites, jaws, teeth, and coprolites of fishes, united 

 by a gingerbread-coloured cement," is precisely applicable to the 

 stratum at Hagley. The cement which unites the bones is calcareous 

 and imperfectly crystalline, exhibiting a chatoyant lustre when the 

 eye catches the light reflected from the cleavage-planes. This sin- 

 gular deposit of ichthyic remains occurs as a thin band, in some 

 places no thicker than a wafer, and gradually increasing at other 

 points to about an inch and a half in thickness, as if deposited by 

 eddies in shallow depressions of the sea-bottom §. These minute 

 osseous fragments are mostly much water- worn and highly polished 

 by mutual friction. Some of them are black, but the majority are of 

 a yellowish or ferruginous tint. As very few of the bones or teeth 

 are sufliciently perfect to indicate generic or specific characters, we 

 are only able to enumerate the following : — 



Spines of Onchus Murchisoni, Agass., Sil. Syst. pi. 4. f. 10. 

 Teeth of Thelodus parvidens, Agass., Sil. Syst. pi. 4. f. 34-36. 

 Teeth resembling that figured in Sil. Syst, pi. 4. f. 37, but serrated 



at the margin. 

 Ganoid scales. 



The only molluscous remains in the fish-bed are the Orbicula ru- 

 gata, Sil. Syst. pi. 5. f. 11, and an Orthis. 



In some places fragments of coaly matter, similar to that in the 

 bed No. 8, are mixed up with these osseous remains. One of these 

 carbonaceous pellets seems to be the seed of some terrestrial plant. 

 It is globular, about a quarter of an inch in diameter, and being 

 broken across exhibits a central cavity, the parietes of which are about 

 one-tenth of an inch thick, and composed of fibres radiating to the 

 external surface |1 . 



The bed No. 10 corresponds in character with the uppermost 

 strata of the Ludlow Rocks wherever they are visible in the neigh- 

 bourhood. It is a fine-grained sandy shale, of a greenish or greyish 

 colour, abounding with small particles of mica, and efi'ervescing with 



* Silurian System, p. 197. t Mem. Geol. Survey, vol. ii. pp. 176, 188, 312. 



X Sil. Syst. p. 198. 



§ Precisely the same conditions exist in the case of the well-known bone-bed 

 at the base of the Lias, and are doubtless due to the difference between the specific 

 gravity of the fish-bones and that of the arenaceous grains of the sea-bottom, 

 causing the former to be separated from the latter by the action of the currents. 



II I propose on a future occasion to give a fuller description of these singular 

 bodies, which have since been detected in the same stratum at several other 

 localities. 



2 c 2 



