69 



FOSSILS FROM THE MENEVIAN GROUP- 



Below the strata of Bell Island there are about 2000 feet consisting of 

 sandstones and slates, in which no fossils have been found except a few 

 fucoids. These with the Bell Island rocks may represent the Middle and 

 Upper Lingula Flats. They are immediately underlaid by about 2000 

 feet of slates, sandstones and limestones, holding fossils which prove them 

 to be of the age of the Lower Lingula Flags, or the Menevian group of 

 Salter and Hicks. Fossils in some of the beds are abundant but very 

 imperfect. The following are all that are sufficiently well preserved to 

 admit of description : 



Obolella? miser. (N. sp.) 



Dhscriptmi. — Shell small, transversely broad ovate, nearly circular ; 

 width slightly greater than the length. Ventral valve strongly convex, 

 depressed conical ; greatest elevation at about one-third or one-fourth the 

 length from the hinge line. The latter appears to be straight, and about 

 one-fifth the width of the shell. In the apex, or the most elevated point 

 of this shell, there is an irregularly circular aperture or depression. The 

 dorsal valve is less convex than the ventral, but more uniformly so, the 

 greatest elevation near the centre ; beak apparently curved down to the 

 level of the hinge line. 



Surface to the naked eye apparently smooth, but when magnified show- 

 ing very fine concentric stri^. The width of the largest specimen of the 

 dorsal valve seen is about one line; length, a Httle less. This species 

 occurs at Chapel Arm, in Trinity Bay. 



Mr. Davidson has figured and described* under the name of 0. saggi- 

 talis, Salter, a species from the Menevian group, North "Wales, which is 

 closely allied to this, the only difference (so far as can be made out with- 

 out comparisons of specimens) being, that the English species is about 

 double the size of ours. As I understand Mr. Davidson, what appears to 

 be an aperture, in the apex of the ventral valve, is not truly such,^but an 

 impression made in the cast of the interior by a tubercle on the inside of 

 the shell. 



• On the earliest forms of Brachiopoda hitherto discovered in tlie British Paloeozoic 

 rocks; by Thomas Davidson, Esq, F.K.S, Gjolo^ical Magazine, V j1. 5, No. 7, July, 1868. 



