207 



MICRO-PALiEONTOLOGY OF THE NORTHERN 

 CARBONIFEROUS SHALES. 



By GEORGE R. VINE, 

 Attercliffe, Sheffield ; Secretary of the British Association Committee on Fossil Polyzoa. 



IV.-POIiYZOA, ENTOMOSTRA^CA, aASTEROPODA, 

 AND MISCELLANEOUS ORGANISMS OF THE SKELLY GATE 

 SHALES, NORTHUMBERLAND. 



It may perhaps be as well to state that personally I know but 

 little of the various divisions of the Limestone, or Shale beds of 

 Northumberland. My studies have been confined more particularly 

 to the micro-palaeontology, rather than the geology of the districts 

 that I mention in the head lines of my various papers. It may 

 appear, therefore, an exhibition of ignorance on my part in thus 

 separating the Redesdale from the Skelly Gate deposits. But I do 

 so purposely, because I find that the organic forms in my two lots 

 of shale, supplied to me by the Rev. W. Howchin, are character- 

 istically distinct. With reference to the distinction that I made in 

 my first paper (Naturalist, Sept., p. 38), Professor G. A. Lebour 

 writes : ' The Skelly Gate and Redesdale locahties are really the same, 

 the former being a part of the latter, and the bed of ironstone shale 

 in which the overlying limestone, in which the Foraminifera were 

 found, being the same in both.' I cannot dispute the above, yet at 

 the same time the organisms in the two sets of material have been 

 differently preserved. The Skelly Gate material is a portion of a 

 true muddy shale, and the organisms in it appear to have been 

 destroyed by an inrush of mud in some estuarine locality ; or it may 

 be mud and limestone debris have mingled together, and in this 

 way become re-deposited. The perfection and peculiarity of the 

 Entomostraca, however, seems to point in the direction that we are 

 dealing with a local estuarine deposit. Perhaps Professor Lebour, 

 or some other local student living in the neighbourhood of these 

 Shales, may be able to settle the points now raised. 



I cannot make much of the Foraminifera of the Skelly Gate 

 material. I have certainly given a rather full list of species in my 

 introductory paper (Naturalist, Sept., p. 39), but this is chiefly from 

 the monograph of Mr. H. B. Brady, and after the most careful 

 examination I cannot find more species than those marked 

 in the Hst, together with additions to the locality marked "^v. 

 Trochammi7ia incerta and T. ceiitrifiiga are very abundant, and some 

 of the forms seem to be enveloped by a thin crust of iron pyrites. 

 In the finest siftings of this Shale many of the more minute 

 specimens of these species may be found, but they are best seen 



April 1885. 



