3/6 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



M'Clelland seems to suppose that the Burdwan coal-measures were 

 deposited hi a sea, for in the last plate of his Survey already referred 

 to he has figured a fossil which he has called Fucoides venosus ; but 

 any person who compares the plant there represented with the Glos- 

 sopteris figured in his plate XV. under the name of G. reticulata will, 

 I believe, agree with me in considering both plants generically, if not 

 specifically, the same. I infer, therefore, that there is no evidence 

 whatever to proAC that our sandstone, or the shale at Kota, or the 

 Bengal coal-measures, were deposited in the sea ; but on the contrary 

 every reason to believe that they were all formed in a large body of 

 fresh water. 



Age of these Strata. — The coarse iron-banded sandstone above, and 

 the more fissile strata lying conformably below, which are undoubt- 

 edly of one and the same era, require first to be considered. For the 

 sake of clearness, however, I shall refer to the latter member alone, 

 as it has afibrded most of the fossils, and furnishes the best data for 

 comparison with the rocks of other localities. Some of the seed- 

 vessels which it has yielded bear no very distant resemblance to those 

 of the Stonesfield slate ; Asterophyllites 1 lateralis^ to use the pro- 

 visional name proposed by Bunbury, and the forms of Pecopterisy 

 show its near connection with the carbonaceous shales and sandstones 

 of Scarborough ; Phyllotheca, Glossopteris, and the narrow fronds 

 of Cyclopterisy if M'Coy's figure* be truly of that genus, mark out 

 the relation to the coal-beds of New South Wales, while Tceniopteria 

 magnifolia, and sulcated stems in all respects corresponding with 

 Phyllotheca, testify to the agreement with the Virginian carboni- 

 ferous strata. These coincidences, some of which, as in the so-called 

 Asterophyllites 1 and Tceniopteris magnifolia, seem to amount even 

 to specific identity, along with the remarkable relations which the 

 distant localities exhibit among themselves, form a network of proof, 

 which in my opinion binds down all the various series of rocks to 

 about the same epoch, — an epoch which the known position of the 

 Stonesfield and Scarborough strata show to be Lower Oolitic. 



W^hether the Mangali sandstone is to be reckoned contemporaneous 

 with these, — whether the two different kinds of strata there — the 

 coarse thick-bedded upper and the fine fissile lower — are to be 

 reckoned the equivalents of our a and b, is a question which observa- 

 tion in the field and a comparison of the respective fossils do not 

 enable me to answer. The massive sandstone at Mangali, as has 

 been said, is destitute of iron-bands, and the inferior argillo-arenaceous 

 strata are much redder than ours ; and especially the organisms of 

 the lower strata at the two places are very dissimilar. Here they 

 are all vegetable, while there they are almost exclusively animal. 

 Only one of the fossil plants at Mangali appears to us to bear a re- 

 semblance to anything found in this vicinity. At the same time, if 

 any inference is to be derived from the succession of the rocks there, 

 it is in favour of the idea that they are the counterparts of our a 

 and B. And that they cannot in age be far removed from them, is 

 proved by a comparison, not of the Mangali fossils with others in this 

 * An. Mag. Nat. Hist. vol. xx. pi. ix. fig. 3. 



