537 
BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING. 
(Contiuiied from page 504.) 
" On the YoEKsniuE Flagstone with Fossils," by S. Baines. — This paper 
■was intended to exemplify a formation found in the Vale of the Calder and its 
tributaries. 
Vn a bleak moor-sidc in the shelving formation of a line sandstone, was a 
hollow dammed across for the accumulation of rain-water for scouring purposes, 
aud 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 square 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 sandstone from the Halifax 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 inipi'essions 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 sufficient evidence of 
this. A cjuantity of large bones were dug from a quarry in South Owram, withia 
a few yards of which impi-e.'-sions of a large foot have been met with. The flora 
in the Yorkshire flag is not so numerous as in the "crooked stone" above and below. 
The most common fossil-vegetable found in this formation and its kindred shales 
is the Galamite, some shales between the difierent strata abounding with its 
impressions. 
The next most common plant is the Stigraaria, although but very rarely 
accompanied by the trunk, or Sigillaria ; the heavy appendages, however, deuote 
this 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 similur to the 
I'riffoiiocarpum ovatuvi ; Pccoptcris nervosa and F. orcnpteridis 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 P'ossil Flora.'' There are in this 
district only two seams of coal, n.amoly, Halifax "soft" and "hard" beds under 
tlie 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 Tertiary 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 gi-anite and 
mountain-limestone, &c., to those of the ordinary sandstone. 
Mr. T. P. Teale laid before the section the remains of Hippopotamus major, 
Ekphas, Bos, and of smaller mammalia, from the valley of the Aire, near Leed.s, 
accompanied by observations on the local character of the deposit in which they 
were embedded. 
2*i 
