Geological Society, 309 



GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



[Continued from p. 227.] 



March 23rd, 1870.— Warington W. Smyth, Esq., M.A., E.R.S., 



Vice-President, in the Chair. 

 The following communications were read : — 



1. Professor Huxley communicated a letter received by him from 

 Dr. Emanuel Bunzel, of Vienna, giving a short account, illustrated 

 with figures, of the posterior portion of a skull obtained by Professor 

 Suess from a coal-mine of Upper Cretaceous (Gosau) age. Dr. Bun- 

 zel stated that at the first glance this skull appeared to possess 

 Reptilian characters, but that the convexity of the occiput, and its 

 gentle passage into the roof of the skull, the presence of a transverse 

 ridge in the occipital region, the absence of sutures, the globular 

 form of the condyle, and some other peculiarities prevent the animal 

 to which this skull belonged from being referred to any known order 

 of Reptiles. The author compared this fragment of a skull with that 

 of a bird, and suggested the establishment of a new order of fossil 

 Reptiles (Ornithocephala), closely related to Prof. Huxley's Ornitho- 

 scelida. He proposed to refer his fossil to a new genus, which he 

 named Struthiosaurus. 



2. " On the Discovery of Organic Remains in the Caribbean Series 

 of Trinidad." By R. J. Lechmere Guppy, Esq., E.L.S., E.G.S. 



The author described the rocks of the " Caribbean Group" as con- 

 sisting of gneiss, gneissose, talcose, and micaceous slates, and crystal- 

 line and compact limestones, and remarked upon the probable distri- 

 bution of rocks of the same series on the continent of South America. 

 In Trinidad the uppermost member of the series is a compact dark 

 blue limestone, which contains obscure but very abundant fossils ; 

 in the subjacent clay-slates and quartz rocks calcareous strings and 

 bands containing more distinct traces of organisms occur. The 

 author believed that he had detected an Eozoon (which he called 

 E. caribbeum), a Favosites (named F. fenestralis), a Coral, and frag- 

 ments of Echinoderms. He considered it probable that the Caribbean 

 series was pre-Silurian. 



3. " On the Palaeontology of the Junction-beds of the Lower and 

 Middle Lias in Gloucestershire." By Ralph Tate, Esq., A.L.S., 

 F.G.S. 



The object of this paper was to show that the attachment of the 

 zone of Ammonites raricostatus to the Lower Lias and that of A. 

 Jamesoni to the Middle Lias harmonizes with the distribution of the 

 organic remains : 50 species were catalogued from the united zones 

 of A. oxynotus and A. raricostatus, 8 of which pass up into the 

 Middle Lias, whilst 13 occur in the lower horizons ; 115 species were 

 enumerated as occurring in the zone of Ammonites Jamesoni, 60 of 

 which pass to higher zones, whilst 11 made their first appearance in 

 the Lower Lias, — the number of species common to the contiguous 

 zones being 14. 



The author inferred that, as the conditions of depth and deposit 

 of the upper part of the Lower Lias are repeated in the lower part 



