392 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
of no higher faculties than such as would enable it to erect a protecting 
shed, fashion a stone for specic^l purposes, or store up food for winter ; but, 
like the gorilla or chimpanzee, be devoid of speech, and equally as uncon- 
scious of the existence of a Godhead? Man's psychical endowments are 
visibly expressed in the prominent frontal and the elerated vertex of his 
cranium. But, considering that the Neanderthal skull is eminently simian 
in its great characters, he felt constrained to believe that the thoughts and 
desires which once dwelt within it had never soared beyond that of the 
brute. The Andamaner indisputably possesses the dimmest conceptions 
as to the existence of the Creator: his ideas on this subject, and of his 
own moral obligations, place him very little above animals of marked sa- 
gacity ; nevertheless they are such as to specifically identify him with 
Homo sapiens. Turthermore, the strictly human conformation of his 
brain-case bears out the collocation. Psychical gifts of a lower grade than 
those characterizing the Andamaners cannot be conceived to exist ; they 
stand next to brute benightedness. Applying the above argument to the 
Neanderthal skull, and considering its close resemblance to that of the 
chimpanzee, and, moreover, knowing that the simian peculiarities are un- 
improvable — incapable of moral and theositic conceptions — the author 
saw no reason to believe otherwise than that similar darkness characterized 
the beings whom he did not hesitate to call Homo Neanderthalensis. 
FiSH-EeMATNS in the CoAL-MeaSURES of NoETHrilBEBLAND AND 
DuEHAM. By Messrs. T. Atthey and W. J. Kirkby. — Notwithstanding 
the great attention that has been paid to the vegetable fossils of this coal- 
field, very little is known of the fossil animals associated with them. In 
this respect the paleeontology of the Durham and Northumberland coal- 
measures has been neglected, compared with what has has been done in 
several other coal-fields ; for in the coal-measures of Yorkshire, Lancashire, 
Staffordshire, etc., these fossils have not only been carefully collected, but 
to some extent described, in the memoirs ofMessrs. Hibbert, Binney, and 
Denny. The highest horizon at which the authors have observed fish-re- 
mains in the coal-measures of this district is apparently situate not many 
fathoms from their summit, or, to speak more precisely, from the base of 
the Lower Bed Sandstone. The fossils referred to are found in some dark 
grey shales with nodular bands of ironstone, and in overlying beds of black 
and highly-carbonaceous shale or " blackstone." These beds are exposed 
on the north bank of the Wear opposite to Claxheugh, where they are 
brought up by an upcast fault to the east that crosses the river a little to 
the west of their outcrop. From the " blackstone," which apparently 
forms a very thin bed, there have been obtained scattered ganoid scales of 
small size, which evidently belong to species of Palseoniscus or Ambly- 
pterus. With them have also occurred a small maxillary and some other 
detached bones, which, so far as size is concerned, may belong to the same 
fish or fishes as the scales. These remains do not pass down into the un- 
derlying shale, but in place of them we there find large quantities of a 
small suboval or orbicular shell, which in the shale itself is pressed flat, 
but in the ironstone is flatly conical or patelliform. This fossil does not 
attain more than one-eighth of an inch in length, being generally less, is 
extremely thin, shows several coarse concentric wrinkles or plaits, and has 
an apex or umbo placed away from the centre. In specimens from the 
shale the umbo is not symmetrically placed. Specimens of this shell in 
the possession of Mr. Vint, from a lost locality, were shown to Professor 
Phillips more than twenty years ago, and referred by him to Ancylus. On 
rediscovering the fossil this year, the authors thought it an Estheria, but 
it is not considered by Professor Bupert Jones and Mr. T. Davidson 
