284 J. M. Clarke—Devonian Spores. 
« |. The most violent shocks of the earthquake of December 
25, were experienced in the region intervening between the Sierra 
Nevada and the Serrania de Ronda, and precisely on the very 
belt which enclosed the archaic mass of the Sierras Tejea and 
Almijara. That part of Andalusia, broken and torn by the secu- 
lar disturbances of our globe, has proved naturally the weakest, 
and has, therefore, been the most exposed to the shocks from 
which Andalusia has so terribly suffered.” 
The Spanish government has appointed a commission, under 
the presidency of Sr. D. Manuel Fernandez de Castro, to study 
the phenomena of this series of earthquakes; and the Paris 
Academy of Sciences has also sent out a commission on a 
similar errand, under the lead of M. Fouqué, Professor of 
Geology in the Collége de France. The former has already 
issued an exhaustive list of questions, and most interesting and 
valuable results nay be expected from the labors of these com- 
missions. 
Princeton, N. J., March 6, 1885, 
ArT. XXXIX.—On Devonian Spores ; by J. M. CLARKE. 
HE name Sporangiles Huronensis was proposed by Sir J. W- 
Dawson in this Journal, April, 1871, p. 257, for minute, flat- 
tened, disc-like bodies occurring in abundance in the bitumi- 
nous shales of Kettle Point, Lake Huron, rocks then regarded 
y Dr. Dawson of the age of the Marcellus epoch of New York; 
but referred to the “ Upper Devonian” by Orton (this Journal, 
1882, vol. xxiv, p. 174). These bodies were looked upon as 
spores or spore-cases of éerrestrial acrogens, and this name has 
been applied to all such spore-like bodies wherever noticed in 
the Devonian rocks of North America. 
Professor Edward Orton has noticed the occurrence of the 
same in the Devonian and Snb-carboniferous rocks of Ohio 
‘A Source of the Bituminous Matter in the Devonian and 
Sub-carboniferous Black Shales of Ohio,” loe. cit., p. 171). 
Professor H. S, Williams reports similar bodies from the 
Hamilton Shales of New York (quoted by Dawson, Proc. Am. 
Ass. Adv. Sci., 1888, “On Rhizocarps in the Palaeozoic Period.”) 
They are also found to be common in the black shales of the 
Marcellus and Genesee epochs in Ontario and adjoining coun- 
ties of New York. 
Dr. Dawson, in 1871 (op. cit.), suggested that these bodies 
were the fruit of Lepidodendron, possibly of the species L. 
Gaspianum and L. Veltheimianum, which occur at the same 
horizon. Professor Williams’s specimens were associated with 
