NOTES AND QUERIES. 



205 



the pleasure of editing, I beg permission to express in your journal, 

 which, I trust, has the wide circulation it deserves, my sincere regret 

 that any one could be found to exhibit such a carelessness of truth, or 

 ignorance of fact, in a book intended for an intelligent public. 



I am, dear Sir, yours, &c,, 

 Somerset House, April 10, 1858. T. Eitpeet Jones. 



N-QTES A^s^D QUERIES. 



BOXE-BEARING GrAVEL OF CrOPTHORXE. NeW FeRN FROM THE COAL NEAR 



Bewdlet. — Passage-bed between Silurian and Devonian Rocks in the 



Abberley Hills. 



{Extract of a letter from Mr. G-. E. Roberts to the Editor.) 



Dear Sir, — I have made two or three minor discoveries this month, but not of 

 importance to warrant a paper ; however, they are interesting^ so you may use 

 them as you please as extracts from this letter. 



The bone-bearing gravel of Cropthorne (near Evesham), a post-tertiary deposit, 

 is well known for its bones of Pachydennatous and other mammalia. I have dis- 

 covered a northerly continuation of this at Himbleton (four miles north-east of 

 Worcester). It there forms a terrace-line on the lower Lias, and presents the 

 usual lacustrine indications ; shells of Unio, Lymncea, and Cyclas occurring among 

 the gravel and bones, as in the DeflFord and Cropthorne beds. I have met with no 

 elephantine remains, however ; the bones (vertebrae, tibia, &c.) being restricted 

 to one Bos (B. lonrjifrons) and a Cervus. I first noted this ossiferous gravel in 

 September last, and, meeting Dr. Falconer soon after, brought some of the bones 

 under his notice. The bed is there six feet in thickness, and also contains bones 

 of Saurians [Ichthyosaurus tenuirostris and /. intermedius) washed out of the Lias 

 shales upon which it rests. 



The hollow bones (tibia, &c.) are filled with an infiltration of marl, and are 

 pierced, in some instances, by Teredines (?) 



I have lately been working at a bed of estuarine shales, belonging to the upper 

 Coal Measures, and exposed on the east bank of the Severn, two miles north of 

 Bewdley. A new fern, of great beauty, fi'om thence, is in the hands of Professor 

 MorriSjWho intends to describe it. I have, also, from this bed, several fine fronds of 

 Pecopteris, attached to the rachis, which fact goes far, I think, to connect these 

 plants in a direct line of ancestry with our living Pteris and Lastrcerx ; I had rather 

 believe them such than the mere leaves of Sigillarian trees, as some have thought. 

 The rachis is, in its compressed state, from half to three-quarters of an inch in 

 width, just the dimensions of a recent fern-stalk, grown succulent in a damp 

 situation. 



My last excursion was to the north end of the Abberley Hill. Here I can add 

 some trifling matter to Professor Phillips's admirable monograph (" Palseozoic 

 District of Malvern and Abberley," &c., &c.) I believe the equivalents of the 

 Ludford Fish-bed, of the " Trochus and Beyrichiae bed," and of the " Railway 

 shales," are to be found there. The characteristic fossils of the first I have met with, 

 but they are distributed through six feet of deposit, instead of being confined 

 within the narrow limits of the " Fish-bed." (Shagreen-scales, a simple plate 

 of Cephalaspis, fragments of fish-bone and Onchus spines.) Again, in the upper 

 Ludlow Tilestones, well exposed on both sides of the terminal hill, Trochus 

 hehcites occurs, and Beyrichice (two or more species), but I cannot detect the true 

 equivalent of the " Trochus and Beyriohiae bed." 



Orthis lunata is very abundant where the Fish-bed ought to be, and Orhiculci 

 rugata ; so we have the leading fossils, if we are here beyond the confines of that 

 remarkable conclusion of iehthyic life. However, I do not think we are. 



The rarest fossil 1 met with was Agnostus Maccoyii, in the Downton Sandstones, 

 on the west side of the hill. I was pleased to find, on the east side, in the same 

 formation, the equivalent of the Downton Vegetable-bed. The fossils are little more 



