AND DEVONIAN CONODONTS. 353 
pyrites. In addition to the Conodonts, there are in this same bed 
numerous fragments of Crinoid stems, bones and plates of undeter- 
mined fishes, and teeth closely resembling, if not identical with, those 
of Ptyctodus*, Pander, also from Devonian strata in Russia; but 
there are no remains of Crustaceans or Gasteropods. It is only on 
the weathered surface of the rock that Conodont teeth are visible, 
and then only with the assistance of a good lens. 
There are also a few Conodonts associated with plates and teeth 
of fishes in a thin band of limestone of the Hamilton group at 
Arkona, Lambton County, Ontario. 
Immediately succeeding the Hamilton group are beds of black 
bituminous shale, known as the Genesee Shale in New York and 
Canada, and as the Huron Shale in Ohio; and the Conodonts are 
distributed in these shales, in places widely apart. I have found 
them in exposures of these strata at Kettle Point, on the shores of 
Lake Huron, and at Bear Creek, both in Lambton County, Ontario, 
as well as in small boulders derived from these beds in the cliff- 
sections on the north shore of Lake Erie: at North Evans, New 
York, where there is a splendid section of these shales, Conodonts 
are also abundant; and IJ have also fragments from the same shales 
near Louisville, in Kentucky. At all these localities these shales are 
but sparsely fossiliferous, and the fossils are limited to spores of 
Lycopods and portions of other plants, a few Brachiopods of the 
genera Lingula and Discina, Avicule, and the scales, mostly de- 
tached, of Palewoniscus. There are no organic fragments to give 
any clue to the animal to which these numerous Conodont teeth 
belonged. 
Though my paper does not include the Lower Carboniferous Cono- 
donts of Ohio, treated by Dr. Newberry, | may mention, from my 
own examination of the beds in which they occur, that the strata 
are black shales not dissimilar in appearance to the Genesee shales, 
but less bituminous; and, like these latter also, have scarcely any 
other organisms in addition to the Conodonts but plants and scales 
of Ganoid fishes. 
My object in mentioning somewhat in detail the fossils occurring 
with the Conodonts in the different formations has been to point 
out that they cannot be attributed to these associated organisms, 
and to show the probability, so far as negative evidence extends, 
that these minute teeth and plates are the only portions of the 
animals capable of preservation in a fossil condition. 
The appearance of the American Conodonts is so similar to those 
from Russia that Pander’s description will almost equally apply to 
both. They occur as very minute, shining bodies, sometimes con- 
sisting of a single more or less curved conical tooth with an ex- 
panded base; but more frequently they possess an elongated basal 
portion in which there is generally a large tooth with rows of similar 
but smaller denticles on one or both sides of the larger tooth, accord- 
ing as this is central or at one end of the base. In some forms the 
* ‘Ueber die Ctenodipterinen des deyonischen Systems,’ St. Petersburg, 1858, 
p. 49, table 8. 
202 
