MISCELLANEA. l73 



in its depths along with the plants which are undoubtedly of land 

 origin. — Richard Hoivse. 



Preliminary Noiice of the Occurrence of Archanodon [Anodonta), 

 Juhesii, Fortes, in the Lower Carboniferous Rochs of North North- 

 umlerland (Plate XIY.) — On the last day of our special meeting 

 at Wooler and the Cheviots, on the 28th of July, 1877, I had the 

 pleasure, through the kindness of Mr. Weightman of Wooler, of 

 becoming acquainted with the existence in the Lower Carboni- 

 ferous Eocks of Northumberland of a very large freshwater shell, 

 much resembling in shape the large Anodon of our present rivers 

 and lakes. The two specimens which this gentleman showed me 

 were of unusual size for fossil bivalve mollusca, measuring respec- 

 tively eight and nine inches in length, by three and four in 

 breadth, and even these measurements could not be taken as ex- 

 treme, owing to the partial destruction of the margins of the shell 

 in the friable sandstone in which they are imbedded. Through 

 Mr. Weightman's kind direction, I was enabled to find Mr. James 

 Waldie, who had found these shells, and also to secure the sand- 

 stone matrix from which the casts had been carefully taken, and 

 to obtain some account of the stratum from which the shells had 

 been obtained ; all which facts will be of great use hereafter in 

 ■working out exactly the divisions of our Carboniferous Rocks, 

 and will also enable us to correlate them more exactly with those 

 of Scotland and Ireland. 



At first sight the species seemed altogether new, but on my 

 return home a careful comparison of the shells, which have been 

 obligingly presented by Mr. Weightman to the Newcastle Mu- 

 seum, with the figures of Anodonta Juhesii of Forbes, leads un- 

 doubtedly to the conclusion that our .shell must be identified 

 with the Irish species collected from the Kiltorkan beds of Kil- 

 kenny, a group of sandstones and shales placed by Jukes and 

 most of the Irish geologists in the Upper Devonian or Upper Old 

 Pted- Sandstone scries, though previously Sir Richard Griffiths 

 had considered these beds to bo of Lower Carboniferous age. 

 Eventually, no doubt, this last opinion will be generally adopted, 

 for in Northumberland, as in Ireland, the beds of sandstone pass 



