BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



105 



1. Steinhaur^ (Roots). — " Sp. 1. Ph?/tolithus verrucosus, ^]QXQ\v,^g?,.\ — 6. Martin, 

 *Petrif]cata Derbiensia/ plates 11, 12, and 13; Parkinson, 'Organic Remains,' vol. i, 

 pi. 111,%. 1. 



" The fossil which has received this name from the ingenious author of the ' Petrificata 

 Derbiensia ' is by far the most common, and perhaps the most remarkable, of this class. 

 Woodward seems already to have collected numerous specimens, notwithstanding their 

 bulk and comparative unsightliness (' Catalogue of English Fossils,' vol. i, part 2, p. 104 ; 

 vol. ii, p. 59, &c.) ; and Mr. Parkinson has exercised considerable, though fruitless, 

 ingenuity in elucidating them. It might appear presumptuous, after the labours of men 

 of such distinguished abihties, to obtrude to public notice any further remarks, had not 

 these authors left abundant room for observation, which place of abode and inclination 

 have enabled the writer to pursue during a series of several years. AVithin this period 

 we have collected several hundred specimens, worked many from the bed of clay in 

 which they were embedded, and examined in quarries, on coalpit hills, among heaps of 

 stone by the roadside, and in various other situations, several thousand. The geological 

 situation of this fossil is well known to be the coal strata, in almost all which, as far as 

 the wTiter is enabled to judge, it is found. Its geographical habitats in these strata may be 

 partly collected from the works already quoted. The specimens more immediately 

 examined were found in the neighbourhood of Fulneck, near Leeds, or in the space 

 included by the towns of Leeds, Otley, Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfield, and Wakefield ; 

 but I have also found it on the top of Ingleborough ; in the Coal strata of Northumber- 

 land ; abundantly in Derbyshire ; at Dudley in Shropshire ; and in the neighbourhood of 

 Bristol. With respect to mineralogical constituent matter, it seems always to coincide 

 with that of the stratum in which it is imbedded, with a slight modification of density. 

 It is most abundant in the fine-grained siliceous stone provincially called ' Calliard ' 

 and ' Canister,' and in some of the coal ' Binds ' or ' Crowstones,' which have probably 

 received this appellation from spots of bitumen or coal attached to these petrifactions. It 

 is rather less frequent in the beds of scaly clay or clay mixed with sihceous sand and 

 mica ; very common, but completely compressed, in the coal shales or bituminous slate- 

 clay ; of occasional occurrence in the argillaceous iron-stone ; not rare in the common 

 grit, and upper thick beds of argillaceo-micaceous sandstone, or rag, and sometimes, 

 though rarely, discoverable in the coal itself. Mr. White Watson, of Bakewell, hud also 

 in his collection, which we examined, a specimen in the Derby Toadstone or Trap; and 

 we have also noticed it in the limestone behind the Bristol Hot Wells, at its junction 

 with the sandstone. So immense, however, is the number of relics that, when the eye 

 has been accustomed to catch their appearance, it is scarcely possible to walk a furlong 

 in the districts where they are at home without meeting them in one shape or another. 

 The most perfect form in Avhich this fossil occurs is that of a cylinder more or 



1 'Transactions of the American Phil. Soc.,' vol. i, p. 205, 1868. 



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