392 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



of no higher faculties than such as would enable it to erect a protecting 

 shed, fashion a stone for special purposes, or store up food for winter ; but, 

 like the gorilla or chimpanzee, be devoid of speech, and equally as uncon- 

 scious of the existence of a Godhead? Man's psychical endowments are 

 visibly expressed in the prominent frontal and the elevated vertex of his 

 cranium. But, considering that the Neanderthal skull is eminently simian 

 in its great characters, he felt constrained to believe that the thoughts and 

 desires which once dwelt within it had never soared beyond that of the 

 brute. The Andamaner indisputably possesses the dimmest conceptions 

 as to the existence of the Creator: his ideas on this subject, and of his 

 own moral obligations, place him very little above animals of marked sa- 

 gacity ; nevertheless they are such as to specifically identify him with 

 Homo sapiens. Furthermore, the strictly human conformation of his 

 brain-case bears out the collocation. Psychical gifts of a lower grade than 

 those characterizing the Andamaners cannot be conceived to exist ; they 

 stand next to brute benightedness. Applying the above argument to the 

 Neanderthal skull, and considering its close resemblance to that of the 

 chimpanzee, and, moreover, knowing that the simian peculiarities are un- 

 improvable — incapable of moral and theositic conceptions — the author 

 saw no reason to believe otherwise than that similar darkness characterized 

 the beings whom he did not hesitate to call Homo Neanderthalensis. 



FiSH-BeMAINS IN THE CoAL-MEASURES OF NORTHUMBERLAND AXD 



Durham. By Messrs. T. Atthey and W. J. Kirkby.— In otwith standing 

 the great attention that has been paid to the vegetable fossils of this coal- 

 field, very little is known of the fossil animals associated with them. In 

 this respect the palaeontology of the Durham and Northumberland coal- 

 measures has been neglected, compared with what has has been done in 

 several other coal-fields ; for in the coal-measures of Yorkshire, Lancashire, 

 Staffordshire, etc., these fossils have not only been carefully collected, but 

 to some extent described, in the memoirs of'Messrs. Hibbert, Binney, and 

 Denny. The highest horizon at which the authors have observed fish-re- 

 mains in the coal-measures of this district is apparently situate not many 

 fathoms from their summit, or, to speak more precisely, from the base of 

 the Lower Bed Sandstone. The fossils referred to are found in some dark 

 grey shales with nodular bands of ironstone, and in overlying beds of black 

 and highly-carbonaceous shale or " blackstone." These beds are exposed 

 on the north bank of the Wear opposite to Claxheugh, where they are 

 brought up by an upcast fault to the east that crosses the river a little 10 

 the west of their outcrop. From the "blackstone,"' which apparently 

 forms a very thin bed. there have been obtained scattered ganoid scales of 

 small size, which evidently belong to species of Palaeoniscus or Ambly- 

 terus. With them have also occurred a small maxillary and seme other 

 etached bones, which, so far as size is concerned, may belong to the same 

 fish or fishes as the scales. These remains do not pass down into the un- 

 derlying shale, but in place of them we there find large quantities of a 

 small suboval or orbicular shell, which in the shale itself is pressed fiat, 

 but in the ironstone is flatly conical or patelliform. This fossil does not 

 attain more than one-eighth of an inch in length, being generally less, is 

 extremely thin, shows several coarse concentric wrinkles or plaits, and has 

 an apex or umbo placed away from the centre. In specimens from the 

 shale the umbo is not symmetrically placed. Specimens of this shell in 

 the possession of Mr. Vint, from a lost locality, were shown to Professor 

 Phillips more than twenty years ago. and referred by him to Ancylus. On 

 rediscovering the fossil this year, the authors thought it an Estheria. but 

 it is not considered by Professor Bupcrt Jones and Mr. T. Davidson 



