102 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
sizes, aoreein"" in nothing so much as the particularly slender and 
narrow shape of the leaflets and branches. They look like parsley 
leaves, coriander leaves, mimosa, and some again look like what 
they are — finely divided ferns. Figure 7* shows the peculiarly 
oraceful character of the tribe. There are several other kinds of 
''opteris'', with which, as the Scotch song says, "I'm laith to vex ye." 
But I must mention one that is not very common in the coal, but which 
has been found in a perfect state in some beds older than the coal, both 
in Ireland and in Scotland. This is the Adiantites Hihernicus, a fern 
first brought to notice by that eminent man and ardent naturalist, 
Edward Forbes. It is common in some rich fossil beds in the upper 
part of the Old Red Sandstone of Ireland. It puts one in mind of the 
fern which is the glory of Killarney — the King or Royal-fern, Osmunda 
regalis — about the same size, and with the spreading broad leaflets set 
on a broad stem. But whereas our Killarney friend carries her fruit on 
her head, that is to say, the terminal leaves and pinnse are changed into 
fruit-bearing spikes, the fern that grew in old old times on the margin 
of the Palaeozoic bogs has its lower or bottom pinnae crowded with seeds. 
(To be continued.) 
■h 
ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF CEPHALASPIS AND 
PTERASPIS IN ENGLAND. 
By Geoege E. Roberts. 
I HOPE our scientific tourists of the approaching season will take their 
good eyes into Herefordshire quarries. For now that the Scotch mono- 
poly of the Old Red fishes is broken up, they will be found to repay time 
and trouble, if searched for in that and the adjoining counties ; and 
something like a reasonable history of these strange old littoral fishes 
may be the result of a single season's work. There is a great deal 
about them well worth knowing, and their remains will be found 
tolerably abundant, though very fragmentary, both in the sandstones 
and corn stones ; and therefore I have a peculiar pleasure in intro- 
ducing our primaeval fish-fauna to the notice of those on search 
already — or hoping to be as the season advances — for relics of 
ancient life. 
Before I call particular attention to some fruitful localities, let me 
say a few words upon the physical condition and geographical aspect 
of the age they lived in. Though I ought rather to say ages, for 
they anticipated the advent of the system they are popularly said to 
belong to — that vast life-era — the extent of whose inland-seas and 
shallow littoral ocean- zone we see in the sandy, shaly, and gravelly 
be^s which contain our fishes, and of whose deep seas the thick-bedded 
* The figures of SpTienopteris Schlotheimii, Adiantites HihernicuSj and Osmunda 
regalis will be given in the next number. 
