54 FOSSIL ESTHERLE. 



abundance of marine shells and remains of Saurians. Beneath thes^e, the upper bed of the 

 sandstones that are worked contains fossil wood and Catamites. The clay-band that 

 succeeds contains impressions of Ferns and Conifers. It is in the clay-bands covering the 

 lower bed of stone, or the third, that one meets with the most numerous and best 

 preserved impressions of plants. In the clays the most delicate parts of the plants arc 

 admirably preserved. One of these lower clay-bands is covered, so to say, with Posido- 

 nomya minuta ; another exhibits the impressions of two crustaceans belonging to the 

 genera Branclnpus and Apus. 1 " (p. 116.) 



In 1853 W. P. Schimper mentioned Posidonomya minuta in his 'Notes on the 

 Xiphosures of the Trias of Alsace,' forming part of his ' Palseontologica Alsatica,' in the 

 'Mem. Mus. Nat. Hist. Strasbourg,' 1853, vol. iv. At p. 7 speaking of the Apudites 

 antiquum, Schimp. (pi. 3, fig. 2 — 4), he says, it occurs in numbers in all positions, is won- 

 derfully like the recent Apus cancriformis, that annually swarms in some of the pools of 

 the neighbourhood of Strasburg ; it is found in argillaceous beds together with Posido- 

 nomya minuta in the upper part of the Gres bigarre at Soultz-a-bains in the Departement 

 du Bas-llhin. A Limulus {Limulites Bronnii) was found in 1851 in the Gres bigarre, 

 near Wasselonne, about ten miles from Strasburg. 



Estheria minuta ? in the Trias of Northern Italy. In the ' Nuovi Annali Scicnz. 

 Nat. Bologna,' 1816, Febbr., Prof. T. A. Catullo mentions the occurrence of Posido- 

 nomya minuta in the Venetian Alps (See Bronn, epioted above,, p. 50). Posidonomya 

 Wenyensis and Avicuta globulus, mentioned at page 13 as small bivalves, of doubtful rela- 

 tionship, occurring in the St. Cassian beds of the Tyrol, maybe again referred to here. 



1 Schimper and Mougeot, ' Monogr. Plantes Foss. Gres Bigar.,' 1841, p. 5; and 'Mem. Mus. Hist. 

 Nat. Strasbourg,' vol. iv, p. 7, 



