THE 



QUARTERLY JOURNAL 



OF 



THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OE LONDON. 



Vol. XXXVII. 



1. Note on the Occtjeeence of Bemaixs of Becext Plants in 

 Beowst Ieox-oee. By J. Aethtje Phillips, Esq., E.G.S. 

 (Bead November 3, 1880.) 



This bed of fossiliferous iron-ore is situated at Bio Tinto, in the 

 province of Huelva, Spain, and is in close proximity to the cele- 

 brated copper-mines of that name. 



In this portion of Southern Spain deposits of cupreous iron 

 pyrites, consisting of a series of lenticular masses of ore, having a 

 general direction a little north of east and south of west, extend 

 from Aznalcollar, near Seville, in the east, for a distance of more 

 than seventy miles westward to within the Portuguese frontier. 



At Bio Tinto the deposits of this mineral are very extensive, and 

 consist of a compact and intimate admixture of iron pyrites with a 

 little copper pyrites, through which strings of the latter mineral 

 sometimes ramify. 



Although these mines appear to have been worked, and the copper 

 smelted upon the spot, from time immemorial, it is evident from the 

 vast heaps of furnace- slags, and from the extent of the various other 

 remains in which coins and inscriptions of the reigns of the 

 Emperors from Nerva to Honorius have been discovered, that their 

 great development under the Bomans took place during the first four 

 centuries of the Christian era. After the fall of the Boman empire 

 they seem to have been abandoned down to as late as the year 1727, 

 from which date they were intermittently worked by the Spanish 



Q. J. G. S. No. 145. b 



