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and ores are chiefly deposited in little veins or bunches in the direction of 
the planes of bedding or in the joints. 4. It is chiefly the sandstone which 
has taken up these minerals, especially where the rock appears to he the most 
metamorphose d. ’ ’ 
The Carboniferous Coal of Russia. — A monograph on the coal of Russia 
has been published at St. Petersburg. It is by Lieut.-General de Helmerson, 
and among other facts, it gives the distribution of the coal of the Carboniferous 
age. This distribution is as follows : 1. On the eastern and western slopes 
of the Oural mountains. 2. In the governments of Novgorod, Iver, Moscow, 
Kalouga, Toula, and Riazan. The coal occupies a large elliptical basin, six 
hundred versts in length and four hundred in width, in the centre of which 
the town of Moscow is situated. 3. In Samara, a little peninsula formed by 
the river Volga, near Stavrpool ; and 4. In the government of Ekaterinoslav, 
where the coal-beds form a chain of low mountains called the Donetz, and 
are associated with abundant deposits of iron, which latter have not at 
present been worked for economic purposes j though they would well repay 
the cost. 
The Perforations in Spirifer Cuspidalis. — Professor W. King does not yield 
his opinion on this point. He still contends that there is every probability of 
the existence of perforations in the shell of this species. He states that an 
imperfect testiferous specimen now in the Geological Museum of Queen’s 
College, Galway, displays under a hand magnifier, here and there, par- 
ticularly on the protective parts — as the medial furrow — patches of faint, 
slightly-raised oval impressions. He does not mean to have these appear- 
ances accepted as positive evidence of the existence of perforations, but he 
thinks they bear so strong a resemblance to rather ill- defined markings, 
undoubtedly arising from perforation often seen on metamorphosed specimens 
of Delasma hastata and other allied carboniferous species, in their force and 
arrangement as to render the existence of such a structure extremely 
improbable. Vide Geological Magazine , June. 
The Phosphate of Lime Bed in North Wales. — Mr. D. C. Davies has sent an 
account of this curious deposit to the Geological Magazine. Our readers 
will remember that Professor Voelcker called the attention of Agri- 
culturists to this bed, two or three years ago. The bed occurs in the midst of 
what Mr. Davies has already described as the middle or principal band of 
the Bala limestone. It was first discovered at Cwmgwynnen but it has since 
been found to extend for about two miles in a north-easterly direction and 
for about the same distance in a south-westerly line. It has been worked 
somewhat extensively at Cwmgwynnen, and here it may be studied best. 
It is black in colour, has an average thickness of about fifteen inches, and 
occurs in a bed, and not as a vein, as is sometimes stated by chemists. There 
are plenty of traces of former life in the bed : thus, Mr. Davies has obtained 
from it numerous casts of Modiola, Aviculopecten , Orthoceras, Orthis, Lingula, 
and fragments of Trilobites ; but the fossils are not well preserved, their 
organic structure having apparently been destroyed by chemical agency. 
Mr. Davies regards this Phosphate bed as the remains of a Laminarian zone 
of sea life, just as the wide stretching, ferruginous sandy fossiliferous layers, 
in the same formation, with their fossils often broken and confusedly huddled 
together, are the remains of the Littoral zone of the same period. The bed> 
