1885.] Geology and Paleontology. 167 
lished in Stockholm in 1881, enters a vigorous protest against 
the indiscriminate identification of fossil marks with Alge. In 
this memoir he tells how certain of these marks were readily 
made by himself, and how many others can be identified with 
marks seen on ocean beaches! It is, indeed, time that this habit 
of referring to some sort of life every mark found in the rocks of 
the earth, and calling all uncertain marks marine plants, should 
be protested against. If it is not done the nomenclature of the 
science will be so encumbered with useless names that chaos 
will result. The multiplication of species has gone entirely too 
far already ; and when every mark made by a dash of water, 
every turn made by a worm or shell, and every print left by the 
claw of a crustacean is described as a new addition to science, it 
is time to call a halt and eliminate some of the old before making 
any more new species.— Jos. F. Fames. 
GroLocicaAL News.—/urassic—The Marquis of Saporta an- 
nounced to the geological section of the French Association for 
the Advancement of Science, the discovery of a plant bed of 
Jurassic age near Beaune. The enclosing rock is a fine-grained 
limestone, probably of the Corallian epoch. The plants are 
closely related to those which have been collected from beds of 
the same age upon the Meuse, and consist of attenuated conifers 
and dwarf cycads and ferns. The discovery at two points so far 
apart of such a starveling flora proves that it was not local, as at 
first believed, but was spread over a large area. Associated with 
these plants are some, widely-spread echini, such as Czdaris cervi- 
calis, C. florigemma, etc. M. Saporta has also returned to the 
defense of bilobites, gyrolites and other fossils, the vegetable 
origin of which has receatly been disputed. The Cretaceous 
of the Pyrenees has been studied by M. Hebert, who published 
the first part of his researches in 1867, and in a more recent arti- 
cle states that nothing has since come to hand to invalidate his 
previous conclusions respecting the Lower Cretaceous, which are 
to the effect that the Lower Neocomian is wanting, the Middle 
Neocomian is continuous, the Upper Neocomian occurs at many 
ints, and is lacking in others through denudation, and that the 
Gault exists both in the Central Pyrenees and the Corbiéres. The 
Lower Cretaceous usually abuts upon faults which bring it in 
contact with beds which are proved by their fauna to be Senonian, 
and therefore much more recent. The Lower Cenomanian ap- 
pears to be absent from this region, while the Upper Cenomanian 
lies either upon the Neocomian or the Trias, thus showing that 
at the time when the chalk of Rouen was deposited the Pyrenees 
had in great part emerged, forming an island or a series of islets 
in a Cenomanian sea. The Turonian is largely represented i 
the Pyrenees, but the almost crystalline structure of the beds is 
unfavora ble to palzontological researches. 
Bini Count Saporta has shown, in reply to Mr. Nathorst, that some of the re- 
i Ep. 
ported Algze are correctly so determined.— 
