665 
myself seen sufficient evidence, but I do know that a quan- 
tity of large bones were dug from a quarry in Southowram 
and sold to an old bone collector for a quart of ale. 
Since that time, there has been a better look-out for fossil 
remains, and the impressions of something like a large foot 
have been found, which suggested the idea that it was the 
foot-prints of the same animal whose bones were exhumed 
within a few yards. The flora in the Yorkshire flag is not 
so numerous as in the crooked stone below and above, simply 
from its being a quieter deposit than the other strata. The 
most common fossil found in this formation and its kindred 
shale is the Calamite, a species of water plant, reed, cane, or 
rush ; some shales between the different strata being literally 
composed of its impressions. The next most common plant 
is the stigmaria, and if it be the root of the sigillaria, as some 
paleontologists affirm, and I have no doubt of it — we have 
them in profuse abundance, but very rarely the trunk of the 
sigillaria. It is quite evident that the tuberous appendages 
denote it to be a mud plant or root. There are some of the 
most magnificent and perfect specimens of the lepidodendron 
found in this strata. There are also pecopteris nervosa and 
neuropteris, &c, as also a few fossil fruits, similar to trigono- 
carpum ovatum, hazel nuts, &c. This formation, with its 
fossil plants, may strictly be termed a mud formation ; hence 
the idea with many that it is a modern formation. But from 
the specimens named, it would appear that they are similar 
to the Newcastle coal field fossils, figured in Lindley's and 
Hutton's Fossil Flora, and for which strata I claim a similar 
age. We have only two seams of coal, namely, the Halifax 
soft and hard beds, under this strata, before the great Sand- 
stone Grit Base, or back-bone of England comes on, while 
we have thirty-three beds or bands of coal, with hundreds of 
varying strata overlying this deposit, within twenty miles 
eastward, at Old Norraanton, forming a series over seven 
