ME. J. W. KIREBY ON PERMIAN FISH iND PLANTS. 65 



higher in the Permian series than any vertebrate remains had 

 previously occurred.* 



The fossils were first noticed by the workmen in August, 1861, 

 in a newly opened quarry belonging to Sir Hedworth William- 

 son, Bart., at Fulwell, about a mile and a half to the north of 

 Sunderland ; and my attention was almost immediately drawn to 

 them by Mr. Henry Abbs, of the latter town. From that period, 

 almost up to the present time, though chiefly during the autumn 

 and winter of 1861, and the spring and summer of 1862, I have 

 continued to collect specimens, and to pursue inquiries as to their 

 palasontological and geological relations. In these researches I 

 was joined by several scientific friends, who courteously allow 

 me to use the results of their labours along with those of my own 

 in this account of the fossils. Among these friends I ought spe- 

 cially to mention Mr. A. W. Dixon and Mr. W. M. Wake, of 

 Sunderland, and Mr. R. Howse, of South Shields. I should also 

 remark, that I am considerably indebted to the lessee of the 

 quarry, Sir H. Williamson, with whose permission my inquiries 

 were made ; and I also owe much to the active assistance and 

 careful observation of the overman, Mr. T. Foster. 



The quarry referred to is situated on the northern slope of Ful- 

 well Hill, and is not far distant from another more extensive and 

 much older quarry belonging to the same proprietor. In these 

 quarries, as well as in others on the same hill, more to the west, 

 the Magnesian Limestone is largely worked for lime-burning, as 

 it has been in the older quarries for the last sixty years or more. 

 During the whole of that period, up to 1861, no traces of any 

 organic remains had ever been found in the limestone of this hill. 

 But about the time named, or a little before, it became necessary, 

 in order to keep the new quarry at its proper level, to cut through 

 some underlying beds (brought up by an anticlinal), which had 

 never yet been quarried on account of the unvendible quality of 



* Both. Professor King and Mr. Howse allude to the discovery of fossil fish in Marsden 

 Bay, though neither mention in which member of the series the discovery was made. I 

 have lately however become aware that the specimens to which these distinguished 

 palaeontologists refer, were found— the one by Miss Green, of South Shields, and the 

 other by Mr. Fryer, of Whitley— in the Upper Limestone, from about the same horizon 

 at which I met the imperfect specimen noticed at page 66. 



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