REPORT ON UPPER PALEOZOIC FOSSILS FROM CHINA. 301 
as do the Russians, who thus designate the Gschelian stage of their section, 
but as our own geologists, so that it would cover the Moskovian as well. 
The fauna obtained in Shan-tung at station 59, while quite different 
from that which occasioned the foregoing remarks, is nevertheless clearly of 
Upper Carboniferous age. 
Probably no group of shells is so characteristic of Carboniferous faunas 
as a whole, none represented by such a variety of species, and none present 
in such profusion of numbers as the genus Productus. It is therefore one of 
the most marked peculiarities of these Chinese faunas that shells of this group 
together with a few Chonetes are practically absent. In the Ssi-chu’an 
section only one form, doubtfully referred to Producius, has been found, and 
but a single small species, probably a Marginifera, has come to hand from 
the province of Shan-tung. With these inconsiderable exceptions the whole 
family of the Productide is unrepresented in our collections. 
It is doubtless in part owing to this circumstance that these Chinese 
faunas present so individual a facies, being, so far as their characters are 
shown, distinct from any of the faunas with which they would most reason- 
ably be expected to agree. It is true, however, that with the exception of 
the fauna obtained from the lower beds of the Wu-shan limestone too few 
species have been procured, and these too obscure and ill-preserved to afford 
a practical idea of the faunal facies. Whether they be compared with other 
Chinese Carboniferous faunas described by Kayser, with the faunas of the 
Salt Range of India, or with those of eastern Russia, it is clear that they are 
more or less completely different. The lower fauna of the Wu-shan lime- 
stone, to which these remarks must especially refer, does, however, show 
remote affinities with the Indian and Russian faunas, manifested rather in 
the presence of the same genera than of identical species. Thus, the Wu- 
shan fauna possesses a stromatoporoid coral, the appearance of which group 
is such a novel feature in the Salt Range fauna; it has a Geinitzella related to 
G. columnaris, together with brachiopods of the genera Hemiptychina and 
Notothyris. On essentially the same grounds a certain affinity is shown with 
the Russian faunas of the Upper Carboniferous, and both faunas have in 
common the presence of shells belonging to Schwagerina, a circumstance in 
some measure suggesting a correlation with Tschernyschew’s Schwagerina 
zone, which, indeed, a few specific resemblances tend to confirm. The faunas 
in the present collections are less closely allied to those previously known 
from China than to those from the more remote regions just considered. 
Aside from the occurrence in both of Schwagerina they have little in common 
with the Carboniferous faunas described in von Richthofen’s volume, which 
came chiefly from Lo-ping, in the province of Kiang-si. 
The faunas of western North America have, as compared with those of 
the Mississippi Valley, a distinctly Asiatic facies; but these Chinese faunas 
are still distinct, the very features which ally them to the faunas of India and 
China and in which their Asiatic affinities chiefly reside, aiding prominently 
