344 
PROCEEDINGS, LSaB — 1870. 
shafts. Tho}' generally occur within half-a-mile of the river, which 
at this point tlows round an escarpment of red sandstone. Some of 
the pits are of ancient date others have been formed within recent 
years. One fell in in June, 1836, and another in the spring of 18G(). 
The level of the river is about SO feet below the tops of these pits, 
and some of the shafts have a depth of between GO and 80 feet. 
During wet seasons, and when the river is high, water can be 
seen at the bottom of them; usually they are dry. ^Ir. Tute is of 
opinion that the pits have been formed by the washing away of the 
red marl and gypsum by subterranean streams connected with the 
river. This would cause dome-shaped caverns in the magnesian 
limestone which overlie the gypsum, and when tlie pit had become 
sufficiently large so that it did not afford a support for the overlying 
limestone, it naturally fell in, and the large dome-shaped hollows 
were the result. 
At the same meeting, Louis C. Miall, Cnrator of the 
Bradford Philosophical Society, read a paper on a new carbonifer- 
ous labyrinthodont, which had been discovered in the roof of the 
black-bed coal at Toftshaw, near Bradford. Remains of amphibia 
are by no means rare in the coal shales of the British Islands, and 
specimens of their vertebra3, skulls, and teeth, have frequently been 
tbund. The specimens found in the West Riding coal held have 
hitherto been very fragmentary. The specimen described was the 
most complete that had been discovered ; nearly 6 feet in length, 
it possessed twenty-six vertebrae, eighteen ribs, and a well-marked 
skull showing fort)'-two teeth, and a large number of scutes in their 
proper relative position. The specimen had been sent for desci'iption to 
Professor Huxley, and was described in the Quarterly Journal of the 
Geological Society as a new generic and specific form under the name 
of Pholideiyeton scutigerum. Mr. ^Miall gave a detailed description 
of the fossil, and considered the classificatory position of the group 
of amphibians to which it belongs. 
The Seventy-fifth meeting of the members of the Society was 
held at the Cutlers' Hall, Sheffield, on the 29th April, 1870 ; Lord 
Wharncliffe, a Vice-President, occupied the chair. The following 
gentlemen were appointed local secretaries : — Dr. Sorby at Sheffield ; 
