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BRITISH ASSOCIATIOX :a:EETmG. 



(Continued from page 504,) 



" On the YoEKsniEE Flagstone weth Fossils." by S. Baines. — This paper 

 >v:is intended to exemplify a formation found in the Yale of the Calder and its 

 tributaries. 



Un a bleak moor-side in the shelving formation of a fine sandstone, was a 

 hollow dammed across for the accumulation of rain-water for scouring purposes, 

 and which, in a few years, became filled up by a gradual deposit of sand. When 

 dug out, there were presented finely laminated strata. In noticing this and 

 other similar depositions, the author found that each layer was the deposit of one 

 shower, or continous rain-fall ; and in proportion to the quantity or time of each 

 succeeding rain did the thickness of the deposit depend. Each layer is the result 

 of one flood, a period of time then intervening after the sand was thus accumulated, 

 during which the water smoothed its surface by a very gentle action, so that the 

 smoothed bed would not allow the next flood's deposit to mingle with it. Each 

 layer may be as thin as paper, or an inch or more thick, varying indeed 

 with the circumstances of the case, from extreme tenuity to the uninterrupted 

 deposition of ages, presenting many scjuare yards in its mass, as in the great beds 

 of freestone. One might compare this Yorkshire flag to the pond on a large scale, 

 and regard it as the deposition of some ancient estuary, the waters of which washed 

 the finer particles of the carboniferous sandstohe from the Halifi^x and Tod- 

 morden districts. The deposition of the debris took place in still water, the 

 faintest breeze causing ripple -marks, as shown by thousands of the slabs of free- 

 stone ; and these flag-strata must have been, while forming, at times completely dry, 

 for they abound in impressions of rain-drops (?) and tracks of Annelides. 



The flag-formation is extremely barren of animal remains ; the quarrymen, 

 however, adhere doggedly to the assertion of live toads being occasionally found 

 entombed in the rock.* The author himself has not seen sufi&cient evidence of 

 this. A quantity of large bones were dug from a quarry in South Owram, within 

 a few yards of which impressions of a large foot have been met with. The flora 

 in the Yorkshire flag is not so numerous as in the "crooked stone" iibove and below. 

 The most common fossil-vegetable found in this formation and its kindred shales 

 is the Calamite, some shales between the different strata abounding with its 

 impressions. 



The next most common plant is the Stigraaria, although but very rarely 

 accompanied by the truuk. or Sigiharia ; the heavy appendages, however, denote 

 tills to be a mud-plant or roots. Some most magnificent and perfect specimens of 

 the Lepidodendron are found, and there are a few fossil-fruits similar to the 

 Trigonocarpum ovatum ; Pecopterh nervosa and F. oreopteridis are also met with. 



The specimens referred to appear to be similar to the fossils of the Newcastle 

 coal-field, figured in " Lindley and Hutton s Fossil Flora.'' There are in this 

 district only two seams of coal, namely, Halifax "soft " and "hard '' beds under 

 the flags, before the great sandstone-grit base comes on ; while the^e are thirty- 

 three beds or bands of coal, with hundreds of varying strata overlying the flags 

 within twenty miles eastward to old Normanton, forming a series more than seven 

 hundred yards thick. 



The author, in conclusion, refers to the excavation of the beautiful valley of the 

 Calder in these strata, and remarks that in the newer Tertiai-y deposits in the 

 tributary valleys, the boulders are of the local sandstone, while in that of the main 

 valley of the Calder are boulders of almost every variety of rock, from granite and 

 mountain-limestone, <S:c., to those of the ordirary sandstone. 



Mr. T. P. Teale laid before the section the remains of Hippopotamus major, 

 Elephas, Bos, and of smaller mammalia, from the valley of the Aire, near Leeds, 

 accompanied by observations on the local character of the deposit in which they 

 were embedded. 



2q. 



