224 Murchisoris Silurian System. 



doubtful affinity, Equisetaceae, Filices, Lycopodiaceae, &c, 

 the greater part of which are figured in the British Fossil 

 Flora by Messrs. Lindley and Hutton, others by foreign fos- 

 sil botanists, Sternberg, Adolphe Brongniart, &c. ; of these 

 six species are common to this and other coal fields in Shrop- 

 shire, and the Museum of the Natural History Society of 

 Shropshire and North Wales, recently established at Shrews- 

 bury, contains an extensive series of these remains. 



The animal remains consist of three species of Fishes, 

 namely, Gyr acanthus formosus, Megalichthys, Hibberti, and 

 Hybodus of Agassiz. Of Crustacea, Cypris, Limulus trilo- 

 bitoides ; and three small species of undescribed Trilobites, 

 different from any species of those animals which we shall 

 afterwards see that Mr. Murchison found to be so numer- 

 ous in the rocks of the Silurian system. Of Mollusca, up- 

 wards of forty species have been found in this coal field, 

 most of them described and figured in Phillips' Geology of 

 Yorkshire, or in Sowerby's Mineral Conchology, as belonging 

 to the carboniferous limestone, but all these fossils are dif- 

 ferent from those of the Silurian system. Insects have 

 also been found in a fossil state in the ironstone concretions 

 of this coal field, two of which, published by Dr. Buckland 

 in his Bridgewater Treatise, have been supposed, according 

 to Curtis and Samouelle, to resemble African or South Ame- 

 rican forms. A figure of one of the wings of an insect is 

 given by Mr. Murchison, and although only a fragment, is 

 upwards of two inches in length. It was supposed to be 

 a plant, and was sent to M. Adolphe Brongniart, who imme- 

 diately perceived the transverse nervoures were unlike any 

 thing in the vegetable kingdom ; and on being referred to 

 M. Audouin it was pronounced to be the wing of a neurop- 

 terous insect, closely resembling the living Corydalis of Ca- 

 rolina. Mr. Murchison pays a high tribute to Mr. Anstice 

 and Mr. Prestwich, the first for his collections of the fossils 

 of this coal field, and the second for his researches into 

 their character, as well as the relations of the alternating 



