, et The American Naturalist. [January, 
suspended mud may have overwhelmed these fish, and this 
water-burst may have been attendant upon other circumstan- 
ces by which the fish were frightened into shoals and ex- 
posed to a common death. The carbonaceous films may also 
be due to the penetration of oil between the lamine of lime- 
stone, the oil arising from the decomposition of fish. | 
Some of the bone beds of Ohio present a mass of ground 
plates, broken teeth and crushed spines, which have become 
cemented together by carbonate of lime into a breccia of or- 
ganic fragments. They represent, according to Dr. Newberry, 
a deposit in deep water of the excrements of larger fish whose 
digestive vigor has failed to entirely destroy the harder parts 
of their prey. It is not necessary to assume that these remains 
were buried very quickly, as their own strength and hardness 
would resist erosion, solution and the destructive power of 
animal feeders, though the circumstances attending its deposit 
must have been peculiar. A fragmentary layer of such a 
character accumulated in deep water—this conclusion Prof. 
Newberry believes is warranted on account of the absence of 
shore stones, gravel, pond wash, ete——and not dispersed by 
the currents, and quite destitute of all other fossils than fish 
debris, is an anomaly which Prof. Newberry explains by this 
assumption: “It has seemed to me not impossible that this 
fish bed was, for the most part, made up of excrementitious 
matter, and that it represents the hard and indigestible parts 
of fishes which have served as food for other and larger kinds. 
On this supposition the fragmentary and worn appearance of 
the bones would be attributable to the crushing, maceration 
and partial digestion which they have suffered. If this is the 
true history of the deposits, it accumulated in some nook or 
bay, perhaps bordering a coral reef, where large and small 
fishes congregated, age after age, until their kjokkenméddings 
formed a sheet some inches in thickness over all the sea-bot- 
tom.” 
It may, however, be said that the strongly bituminous or oil 
odor in this rock elicited upon striking it, shows that it did 
not represent solely the excrements of fish, but received very 
probably the occasional contribution of the bodies of living 
