416 Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 



found that all animal and vegetable life had contained it from the 

 very earliest time ; but it was apparent that the Crustacea were the 

 chief producers of it in the early seas, and of the Crustacea the 

 trilobites more particularly. It was always found where they were 

 present, and the shells of some of the larger trilobites, as now pre- 

 served, contained as much as from 40 to 50 per cent, of phosphate of 

 lime. The analyses made by Mr. Hudleston and the author of 

 recent Crustacea proved that they also contain P 2 5 in very consider- 

 able proportions. 



In the second part of the paper the author showed that where 

 intrusive dykes had passed through or between the beds containing 

 the phosphate of lime, the beds for some distance on each side of the 

 dykes had undergone a considerable change. Scarcely a trace of the 

 P 2 5 or of the lime was now to be found in them, though it was 

 evident that, before the intrusions into them had taken place, 

 they, like the other portions of the beds, had contained both in- 

 gredients in considerable proportions. It was well known that h eat 

 alone could not separate P a 0. from lime ; therefore he found it 

 difficult to account for this change in the character of the beds, un- 

 less it could be produced by gases or watery vapour passing into 

 them at the time the intrusions took place. He thought it even 

 probable that the dykes, which in some parts are found to contain a 

 considerable amount of lime and also of P 2 5 , might have derived 

 these, or at least some portions of these, from the beds through which 

 they had been forced, and which must have been broken up and 

 melted as they passed through them. There are no contemporaneous 

 tuffs known in Wales of earlier date than the Llandeilo beds ; and 

 he thought these dykes belonged to that period, and that they were 

 injected into the Lower Cambrian beds after from 8000 to 10,000 feet 

 of deposit had been superimposed. In an agricultural point of view 

 the author considered that the presence of so much phosphate of 

 lime in some of the series of beds must be u matter of great import- 

 ance ; and on examining the districts where these series occurred, he 

 invariably found the land exceedingly rich. 



Mr. Hudleston gave the results of the analyses made by him 

 at the request of Mr. Hicks. He found in a portion of dark grey 

 flaggy rock taken from close to a fossil 1-62, in a portion of 

 black slaty rock containing trilobites but in contact with trap 0*11, in 

 a portion of the shell of a trilobite 17*05, and in the trap above 

 mentioned 0*323 per cent, of phosphoric anhydride. A lobster-shell 

 dried at 100° C. gave 3-26, an entire boiled lobster (undried) 0*76, 

 and a boiled lobster without shell 0*332 per cent, of P 2 O g . If the 

 analysis of an entire lobster was correct, he estimated that a ton of 

 boiled lobsters would contain about 17 lbs. of phosphoric anhydride. 

 In the analysis of the shell of a Trilobite there appears to be a great 

 excess of phosphoric acid, which Mr. Hudleston thought must be due 

 to substitution. — Abstracts of the Proceedings of the Geological Society, 

 No. 299. 





