FAUNA LOWER KEUPER SANDSTONE. 5 



perplex us. Such a complete knowledge we can, however, 

 hardly expect to attain ; but we may reasonably hope in 

 the near future to add largely to the knowledge we possess. 



The thousands of feet of Shales, Marls and Sand- 

 stones, probably approaching a mile in thickness, that 

 intervene in this country between the coal measures, teem- 

 ing with life at the close of the Palaeozoic period, and the 

 Lias full of the remains of the life of the Mesozoic, are as 

 a whole remarkable for their dearth of fossils, whilst the 

 Bunter Sandstone (about the centre of the series) so 

 largely developed in this neighbourhood is absolutely non- 

 fossiliferous, though the pebbles enclosed in it contain 

 remains of a much earlier geological period, and the 

 Keuper above it yields us only very uncertain traces. It is 

 with these slight traces that I propose to deal this evening. 

 They consist of the footprints of vertebrates and the tracks 

 of some invertebrates. A few other districts are, however, 

 more fortunate, and in limited areas in our own country 

 sufficient remains have been found to show that a 

 numerous and varied fauna existed, whilst allied, if not 

 actually similar, forms have been found in comparative 

 abundance in the Trias of South Africa, India, Australia 

 and the continent of Europe, and in North America. 



Within the last year the announcement has been 

 made of the discovery of a rich deposit of well-preserved 

 vertebrate remains in the valley of the Dneiper, in strata 

 of probably the same age, although spoken of as Permian, 

 including examples of the same genera that are found in 

 the similar deposits in South Africa and India, from which 

 hitherto the greater part of our knowledge of the land 

 animals has been derived ; and it is to be hoped that 

 shortly more detailed descriptions of the forms found will 

 be published. 



According to the catalogue of British Fossil Yerte- 



