NATURALISTS SOCIETY. 
From the Bristol Daily Post of January \Uh, 1865. 
The monthly meeting for January was held on Thursday 
evening last, 12th inst., having been postponed from the 5th 
on account of the Christmas vacation. There was a fair 
attendance of members and visitors, including ladies, and 
the president, Mr. W. Sanders, occupied the chair. After 
the reading of the minutes, there being no other business to 
transact, Mr. Handel Cossham read a paper on the pennant 
formation of the Bristol coalfield. The term pennant 
was applied to a well-defined band of sandstone occurring 
between the upper and lower coal measures, which varied 
very much in colour— dark brown, reddish, and gray, but was 
very easily worked for paving and other purposes, and was 
remarkable for the quantity of water it contained in the 
shape of springs, which rendered the working of coal in or 
under the pennant more difficult than above it. The coal 
measures might ba roughly divided into three series, 1, the 
coal itself, of which there were 60 seams at Radstock, with 
an aggregate thickness of 90 feet. 2, the coal shales, argil- 
laceous strata, which contained the most delicate fossils, and 
3, sandstones, of which the pennant was one, specially de- 
fined, and below which they were not s© numerous, thick, or 
coarse as above it. The author then stated his belief that 
the Bristol, South Wales, and Forest of Dean coalfields had 
in former times been part of one and the same, and showed 
that the coal itself might be divided into five series, Rad- 
stock and Faringdon Gurney, under which came the pennant ; 
and then the Kingswood, Bedminster, and Ashton series, 
lying upon the Millstone grit, which embraced the wh®le. 
With the aid of a map, Mr. Cossham traced the course of the 
pennant round the Coalpit-heath field, and pointed out how 
entirely its dip was everywhere conformable with the dip of the 
.coal strata, and that, with a slight exce ption, the circuit was com- 
plete at the surface of the ground, while in the Somersetshire 
coal field the coal measures were covered by oolite, lias, and new 
red sandstone, and the pennant only appeared at the surface 
in two places, owing to upheavals. Near Kingswood a great 
upheaval had taken place, due east and west, and the pen- 
nant had even been denuded ; it appeared again, however, at 
Crew's Hole, and dipped thence under Keynsham into 
Somerset. Having alluded to the fact that a very rich lode 
of iron ore had recently been discovered in the pennant at 
Frampton Cotterell, and that good coal had been found in it 
in some places, the author proceeded to inquire into the 
source of this remarkable bed. He was disposed to regard it 
as having been formed chiefly by the denudation of the old 
red sandstone, and during the action of a more violent sea 
than that which assisted to form the coal measures above 
and below it. It was destitute of fauna, but abounded in 
remains of hardy and less succulent plants, a list of which 
Mr. Cossham promised to complete, and forward to the 
society. 
A discussion on this able paper then ensued, in the course 
of which Mr. Stoddart referred to the presence of mica in 
the pennant, and of remains of carboniferous limestone. 
Mr. W. Sanders then spoke of the occurrence of beds of drift 
coal, and even of pebbles of coal, in the pennant, and in the 
upper coal measures, which seemed to imply that the lower 
coal measures had had time enough to consolidate, had then 
