4:10 



FOSSIL PLANTS OF GREAT OOLITE. 



[Oh. XX. 



logical science can prove to the contrary, it may have been unguicu- 

 late, insectivorous, and marsupial ! * 



Professor Owen has remarked that, as the marsupial genera, to 

 which the Phascolotkerium is most nearly allied, are now confined 

 to New South Wales and Yan Dieman's Land, so also is it in the 

 Australian seas that we find the Cestracion, a cartilaginous fish which 

 has a bony palate, allied to those called Acrodus (see fig. 453, p. 421) 

 and Strophodu'Sj so common in the Oolite and Lias. In the same 

 Australian seas, also, near the shore, we find the living Trigonia, a 

 genus of mollusca so frequently met with in the Stonesfield slate. 

 So, also, the Araucarian pines are now abundant, together with ferns, 

 in Australia and its islands, as they were in Europe in the Oolitic 

 period (see fig. 421). Endogens of the most perfect structure are met 

 with in oolitic, rocks, as, for example, the Podocarya of Buckland, 

 a fruit allied to the Pandanus, found in the Inferior Oolite (see 

 fig;. 420). • 



Tic;. 420. 



Portion of a fossil fruit of Podocarya, 

 magnified. (BucMand's Bridgew. 

 Treat., pi. 63.) Inferior Oolite, 

 Charmouth, Dorset. 



Cone of fossil Araucaria. Inferior Oolite. Bruton, 



Somersetshire. •§■ diam. of original. 



In the collection of the British Museum. 



The Stonesfield slate, in its range from Oxfordshire to the northeast 

 is represented by flaggy and fissile sandstones, as at Collyweston in 

 Northamptonshire, where, according to the researches of Messrs. Ibbet- 

 son and Morris,f it contains many shells, such as Trigonia angzdata, 

 also found at Stonesfield. But the Northamptonshire strata of this 

 age assume a more marine character, or appear at least to have been 

 formed farther from land. They enclose, however, some fossil ferns, 

 such as Pecopteris polypodioides, of species common to the oolites of 

 the Yorkshire coast, where rocks of this age put on all the aspect of a 

 true coal-field ; thin seams of coal having actually been worked in them 

 for more than a century. 



* Owen's Paleontology, 2d ed., p. 348. 



f Ibbetson and Morris, Keport of Brit. Ass., 1847, p. 131 ; and Morris, Geol 

 Journ., ix. p. 334. 



