beds of South Africa, which may ]>e either late Triassic, llhaetic, or Lower 
J urassic. 
Perhaps the most important fact, however, is the absence in the 
llawkesbury beds of fishes with well-developed vertebral centra. Only one 
fragment of a fish of this type {3Ieg(dopterus) has hitherto been discovered in 
the European Keuper, and nothing is known of any allies in the lllia3tic ; but 
in the Lower Lias, Leptolejns is one of the most abundant and characteristic 
fossils, and well distinguishes the horizon from those l)eneatli. Moreover, 
Fachycormus occurs in the Lower Lias, and seems to have only a single 
Triassic representative at SeefekP ; and in the British Museum there are 
now examples of the Pycnodont Mesodon from three Lower Liassic localities. 
In the Eish-fauna of the Lower Lias, there are thus several elements 
that become especially characteristic in later Jurassic times, and of which 
there are no traces in the llawkesbury collection ; though they have two 
solitary representatives in the uppermost European Keuper. So far as cau 
be determined from the fishes, therefore, the llawkesbury beds may be 
regarded as homotaxial with the Keuper of Europe, or, at latest, with the 
Bhretic; and, on the whole, the present writer is inclined to adojfi the first 
of these interpretations. 
* Eiifjnathws indgnis, R. Kuer, Sitzungsb. math.-naturw. Cl. k. Akad. Wiss. Wien, 18(10, Vol. liv. Ft. i, 
pp. 306-313, PI. i. 
