1883. | Lower Ponent ( Catskill) Group of Middle Pennsylvania. 279 
From the same beds Dr. J. W. Dawson has mentioned (Q. J. G. 
S., May, 1881, p. 301) three species of ferns, viz: 
Archeopteris magnacensis 
a obtusa 
Cyclopteris brownii. 
Should these beds prove to be of Catskill age, the five species 
of fish and two of the three ferns above named must be added to 
the organic remains of the group. 
Lastly I must mention that quite recently the well-known Irish 
fern Cyclopteris or Archeopteris hibernica has been found and iden- 
tified beyond doubt by Mr. Lesquereux from Susquehanna county, 
Pennsylvania. 
In the district now under consideration the upper part of the 
Chemung group consists of greenish and yellowish shales, for the 
most part unfossiliferous or very scantily fossiliferous. Beds of 
red shale are occasionally met with but they are not thick. The 
passage to the Catskill group is somewhat abrupt. Red shale 
and brown sandstone suddenly form the mass of the rock, and 
afford a clear lithological base for these uppermost Devonian beds. 
€y are apparently unfossiliferous for about 200 feet. 
Above this occur two remarkable beds of brown sandstone 
charged with fish-scales. The lower of these two is about three 
inches thick and consists almost entirely of a mass of fish remains, 
chiefly scales, embedded in shaly sandstone rather harder than 
the SVOI and underlying beds. The scales themselves are distinct 
4 Be the rock but very difficult to extract on account of the crumb- 
3 ling nature of thé stone. Their well-known impressions may be 
_ “en and often obtained, and so far as yet determined consist of 
ale wrinkled scale of Holoptychius americanus, and the pitted 
‘Scales of Bothriolepis taylori. 
a The upper bed lies about ten feet above the lower, is rather 
PO but abounds to an equal degree with the same organic 
_Temains, 
These two beds—fish beds—afford us, so far as they extend, an 
“isputable paleontological base for the Catskill group in Perry 
ened : €se two species, as shown above, constitute nearly all 
_ 1S yet known of the Catskill fauna, indeed it is scarcely too 
_ uch to say that they may be regarded as the sole characteristic 
- enor thee group in America! 
a 
: ue Holoptychius passes up into the Lower Carboniferous, but the spe- 
SNS (wo systems are different, 
