279 
Guppy Reprint 
131 
PAPER No. 16. 
TOBAGAN FOSSILS 
Recorded in the “List of Scientific Papers’’ b}’ Guppy as 
having been published in the “Bulletin of the Trinidad Botanical 
Department, April igo.t, p. 541.’’ The separate is labelled : 
514. — Tobagan Fossils. — On some specimens of Fos.sils 
from Tobago in the Victoria Mmseum, Trinidad. 
Page I — of the Separate 
At the Victoria Museum the other da}' I saw some Speci- 
mens from Tobago — one had a Label carefull}' wrapped round it 
to the effect that it had been determined by the British Museum 
Authorities to be Area grandis and therefore was of pleistocene 
age. This at first puzzled me exceedingly as there did not ap- 
pear to me the slightest evidence that the Fossil was an Ark — it 
looked more like an Oyster. However I looked at the other 
Specimens and the truth then flashed upon me. The.se two spec- 
imens were Area patrieia described by Sowerby at Page 52 of Vol. 
VI. (1850) of the Journal of the Geological Society of London 
(5(?£' my Report on the Tobago Specimens 1901). The likene.ss 
of Area patrieia to A. grandis is alluded to by Sowerby in the 
place indicated and the differences are pointed out. If a Concho- 
logist met with this shell by itself he might probably identify it 
with Area grandis and that being a living species he might 
thence infer the age of the stratum containing it to be pleisto- 
cene. But in Haiti and also in Trinidad Area patrieia occurs 
with a ver}' exten.sive molluskan Fauna containing a large pro- 
portion of extinct species many of which bear a remarkable re- 
semblance to living pacific species ; and those Paleontologists 
who have studied the matter have decided the age of the forma- 
tion to be miocene t^see my Paper on the West Indian tertiary 
Fossils Geological Magazine 1874, Page 433 ; also Proceedings of 
the Scientific Association of Trinidad, December 1867, Page 146). 
Though Gabb in his account of the Geology of San Domin- 
go identifies y'lrru patrieia with A. grandis and gives his reasons 
for so doing I am not prepared (having often found myself at 
