Palaeontology — Crustaceans — Worms. 523 



coal ; they are usually in fine bituminous shale above and below the 

 coal, and most frequent in the roof immediately above it, where, as 

 at Burdie House, near Edinburgh, there is a thin seam of coprolitic 

 matter ; they are rarely mixed with any great quantity of vegetable 

 remains. In the lower measures of Lancashire they are associated 

 with Goniatites and Pectens, and in the higher measures of Lan- 

 cashire and Yorkshire with freshwater shells allied to Unio, and with 

 Entomostraca. Exact observations as to facts of this kind are of 

 inestimable importance, for it is only by careful induction from 

 a sufficient number of such-like phenomena, and from similar de- 

 tails as to the local distribution and condition of animal and vege- 

 table remains in the marine and fluvio-marine and lacustrine depo- 

 sits which compose the carboniferous series, that .we shall arrive at 

 a solution of the grand problem of the formation of coal. 



CRUSTACEANS. 



The Rev. T. B. Brodie has discovered in the Wealden formation 

 near Dinton, in the vale of Wardour, the remains of Coleopterous 

 and Hymenopterous insects, and a new genus of Isopodous Crustacea 

 in the family Cymothoidae. The Isopods are clustered densely to- 

 gether ; the lenses in their eyes are sometimes preserved ; there are 

 also traces of legs, but of no antennae. With them he has found a 

 large species of Cypris. The insects are chiefly small Coleoptera ; 

 there are several species of Dipterous, and one Homopterous insect, 

 and the wing of a Libellula. Mr. Brodie's discovery is the first yet 

 made of insects in the Wealden formation, and also the first example, 

 in~a secondary formation, of Isopods that approximate in form to 

 the Trilobites of the Transition series. 



WORMS. 



An addition has been made to fossil Helminthology by Mr. Atkin- 

 son of Newcastle-on-Tyne, who has found in slabs of micaceous slaty 

 sandstone, from the carbonaceous series near Haltwhistle, tortuous 

 casts of vermiform bodies of various sizes, some almost an inch in 

 diameter, and several feet in length ; the surface of many of these 

 is thickly marked by transverse rings and a longitudinal groove, 

 similar to those in the largest recent marine sand worms, e. g. the 

 Leodice gigantea. The integument of some of these worms con- 

 taining chitine, like the covering of insects, seems to have endured 

 long enough to fix impressions of the transverse rings upon the 

 sand ; and the habit of swallowing large quantities of earth and 

 sand, which we observe in many recent worms, may explain the 

 presence of the large portion of sand, now indurated to stone, which 

 occupies the interior of the impression of the skin. Since many casts 

 are found upon the same slab, these worms must have been very 

 numerous at the bottom of the sea, when the sandstone was in pro- 

 cess of formation. Similar impressions of Annelids on the Cam- 

 brian rocks are figured by Mr. Murchison in PI. 27 of his great 

 work on the Silurian System. 



