xlvi PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
stones Pecopteris Australis, a Sphenopteris and a Zeugophyllites 
were found. In a fine compact quartz rock of Spring Vale, on the 
east coast of Australia, Fenestella, Producta, Spirifer, and a Crinoid. 
were obtained. 
Mr. Richard Brown, in a notice of the gypsiferous strata of Cape 
Dauphin, in the island of Cape Breton, admitting the view taken by 
Mr. Lyell, that these beds belong to the paleozoic series, further 
points out that, on the western boundary of the Sydney coal-field, and 
exposed along a lofty cliff, the lower part of the coal-measure accu- 
mulations is distinctly seen to repose on carboniferous limestone and 
associated marls, containing gypsum. Of these beds, commencing 
with that termed ‘millstone grit,’ Mr. Richard Brown gives a de- 
tailed section, their total thickness amounting to 1056 feet. This, 
no doubt, is a valuable addition to our knowledge respecting the 
mode in which sulphate of lime occurs among rock accumulations,— 
a subject of much geological interest. From the remains of animal 
and vegetable life entombed in the coal-bearing beds of this part of 
North America, and in the limestones supporting them, these rocks 
have been referred to the date of the coal-measures and carboniferous - 
limestone of the British Islands ; and—without assuming that, part 
for part, they are exactly equivalent, since in the area of the British 
Islands themselves we find that the conditions for the growth of plants, 
the remains of which subsequently formed palzeozoic coal-beds, ob- 
tained in the north earlier than in the south,—we may fairly conclude 
that they were of about that date, regarding the subject generally. 
Mr. Lyell, while describing the coal-field of Eastern Virginia, above 
noticed, points out that the only accumulations of North America 
which occupy a similar position with these sandstones, shales and 
coal beds, the lower portion of the deposit resembling granites or 
syenites, having been formed from the detritus of the rocks on which 
they rest, are the red sandstones which repose unconformably on the 
palzeozoic series of the Appalachian system, and which were, conse- 
quently, deposited after the movement that gave the paleeozoic, car- 
boniferous, and still more ancient groups of the Alleghany mountains 
their present strike, dip and direction. He then proceeds to inquire 
if the accumulations under consideration may be either newer or older 
than this so-called new red sandstone, and finds a difficulty, from 
fossil fish and the foot-tracks of birds, without plants, beg the only 
evidence of life presented by the red sandstone, while the organic 
remains of the coal district near Richmond are almost exclusively 
vegetable. It is remarked that most of the fossil fish hitherto 
discovered in this coal district are referable to a new genus of the 
homocercal class, while all the fish hitherto obtamed from the so- 
called new red sandstone of Connecticut river, four or five species in 
number, are heterocercal. ‘‘ Could we, therefore,” Mr. Lyell ob- 
serves, “feel sure that the beds containing the ichthyolites and the 
foot-prints of birds in the valley of the Connecticut were triassic, it 
would afford strong ground for presuming the oolitic age of the Vir- 
ginian coal strata.” He however considers the question whether the 
Connecticut sandstone be Permian or of triassic date, to be still open. 
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