184/.] LYELL ON THE COAL-FIELD OF EASTERN VIRGINIA. 279 



The Equisetum columnare is said to be common to the trias and 

 oohte in Europe. Among the ferns, Fecopteris Whitbiensis, which 

 I procured, seems to have been correctly identified by Mr. W. B. 

 Rogers, and is one of the commonest species of the Yorkshire oolite. 

 The large Tseniopteris is also allied to some of the Yorkshire oolite 

 ferns. The genus Zamites is represented by many species in the 

 oolitic rocks of Europe, but is also triassic. 



Fig. 7. 



The fossil, somewhat like a Stigmaria — see fig. 7 (No. 13. of Mr. 

 Bunbury's description of plants) — which Dr. Hooker has had the 

 kindness to figure for me, has more of the aspect of a plant from the 

 old coal than any other, but we have not as yet sufficient knowledge 

 of its true relations to found any argument upon it. I may remark 

 also, that if some of the plants and the shell called Posidonomya 

 should indicate a formation rather older than the Whitby oolite, they 

 may still belong to part of the great Jurassic period; for the Whitby coal 

 occurs in, or immediately below, the great oolite, which is succeeded 

 in descending order by the inferior oolite and the lias. Now as we 

 have not in Europe any coal-fields, nor any large development of a 

 fossil flora in these older subdi\dsions of the Jurassic group, the Vir- 

 ginian strata may correspond in age either to the inferior oolite or 

 the lias, and for that reason may have more of a triassic character 

 in their organic remains than the coal strata of Whitby in York- 

 shire * . The occurrence of the large smooth scales of a fish of the 

 genus Tetragonolepis, so characteristic of the lias, favours this view. 

 It has been well remarked by Prof. W. B. Rogers, that the few plants 

 discovered by Captain Grant in connexion with the oolite-coal series 

 in Cutch, resemble very closely those of the East Virginian coal- 

 measuresf . There can be no doubt that the Indian fossils belong to 



* Some fossil plants figured and described by Professor Hitchcock, from " the 

 new red sandstone formation of Connecticut and Massachussetts" (Trans, of Amer. 

 Geol. 1840-42, p. 294 and pi. 13.) do not enable us to decide the age of that 

 formation, or to compare it with that of Virginia. The supposed Taeniopteris, 

 fig. 8, cannot belong to that genus, the striations of the leaf not being at right 

 angles to the midrib, and the entire portion represented being of the same dia- 

 meter throughout. The plant (fig. 3 and 4) is probably related to the genus 

 Lycopodites, which is also found in the Virginian coal-field ; if, as conjectured, it 

 be Voltzia, this genus is common to the magnesian limestone (Permian) and trias 

 of Europe. f Grant, Trans. Geol. Soc. Lond. vol. v. 2nd series. 



