(b) Black Mica of Swedish Granite and Gneiss.

No. 1. Jonesed. From the black micaceous gneiss of Jonesed, near the Trollhätta Falls: this gneiss is composed of red felspar and black mica, and is much contorted even in hand-specimens; the direction of its bedding coincides at the Falls with that of the river, W. 30° S. (mag.). No. 2. Ytterby.-Occurs in the black micaceous partings already described; in large flat crystalline sheets.

(c) White Mica of Swedish Granites.

The specimen of white mica that I analyzed was taken from a large mass found by me in the quarry at Ytterby, within a foot of the black sheets of mica. It had the following composition:---

Throughout the entire mass of the large crystals of oligoclase examined, minute specks of quartz were occasionally visible-a circumstance which seems to me irreconcileable with the supposition of the formation of this oligoclase by fusion, in the dry way.

+ The celebrated quarry on the Island of Ytterby, near Waxholm, has been worked for upwards of half a century for china-felspar. It consists of a dyke 12 feet wide, vertical, and bearing 20° east of north (mag.). This dyke is filled with the constituent minerals of the granite developed on a grand scale, the milky quartz and white oligoclase preponderating, sometimes in masses upwards of a foot in length; and pink orthoclase, in large tabular crystals, is intimately mixed up with them. The black and white micas are developed in parallel sheets traversing the dyke obliquely; the sheets of black mica are from inch to 2 inches asunder, the intervals being filled with orthoclase and oligoclase. So far as I could judge, the rare minerals of the quarry, yttrite, yttrotantalite, phosphate of yttria, and others, were only developed in the felspar between the sheets of

This corresponds to (SiO,: R,O,: RO)=(7·908: 6:0916).

3

EXTRACTS from LETTERS relating to the further DISCOVERY of FOSSIL TEETH and BONES of REPTILES in CENTRAL INDIA. By the late Rev. S. HISLOP.

[Communicated by Prof. T. Rupert Jones, F.G.S.]

(Read December 16, 1863*.)

THE following extracts from letters, relating to late discoveries, by the Rev. S. Hislop and Major Gowan, of fossil Bones in Central India, are offered to the Society, not only as being of interest in themselves, but as being the last remarks on the subject by Mr. Hislop, whose sudden removal, in the prime of life, we most deeply feel.-T. R. JONES.

From Letter, April 7th, 1862.—“The country all around Kotá is the most interesting geological locality in the Central Province. Often would I wish to visit it; but it is far, and my duty does not carry me there. I can only learn about it by messengers.

"A friend of mine, at my request, lately visited Máledi, and, I understand, has found something new, but what it is I have not yet heard. All my acquisitions from that spot I have lately entrusted to a lady, who leaves Calcutta by steamer tomorrow, and who, I trust, will reach London before the end of May. She carries with her all the bones mentioned in p. 202,' Bombay Asiatic Soc. Journal,' xxi., some of which are very interesting, particularly the jaws, thickly set with teeth, and grooved, as I believe, by an upper jaw, narrow and sharp, like a knife-edge. This must be something new. Oldham does not think the vertebræ Dicynodont. All the bones sent were found on the surface of the red clay, near each other; but I have no proof that they all belonged to the same animal You remember, Máledi is the place where were discovered the Ceratodus-teeth described by Oldham in Mem. Ind. Geol. Surv. vol. i. p. 295."

Letter, August 17th, 1863."When Prof. Huxley is describing Reptilian Remains from India, will you kindly see that he gets the specimens from Máledi to examine? He seems to be interested in them, and will do them every justice. I have got more * For the other communications read at this Evening-meeting, see p. 116.

from the same place, which I have no doubt Prof. Huxley will think worthy of study. I shall endeavour to send them to him, if I can find an opportunity; if not, I shall forward to him drawings. In the meantime I shall give you a brief account of them.

"The specimens are all found in connexion with red clay strata, and generally on the surface. The localities are three. On W.S.W. Ceratodus-teeth are met with, along with pitted and grooved scales. On S. are found the jaws with numerous conical teeth, such as have already been sent to London. Near those jaws, also, have been discovered scutes, much the same as above, and vertebræ. Of the vertebræ some appear to be dorsal and others caudal. Besides these are two phalanges, which seem to fit into each other; and other bones, the position of which it is difficult for me to indicate. I think, among the specimens that Dr. Oldham left at the Geol. Museum was a sharp bone, which may have belonged to the upper jaw, and formed the channel in the lower. Another such sharp bone has been found with something like rudimentary teeth along the edge. On the same (south) side of the village, and quite near the bones, but at a little higher level, where the clay, somewhat sandy, is whitish, were collected fragments of one large species of Unio, and more complete specimens of a smaller species.

"These two sites (W.S.W. and S.) were known before. This year I sent my collector, Vira, again to Máledi, where he discovered fossils on the north side. Among these were vertebræ much shorter than those from the south side; one with both ends pretty equally concave; another with one end more concave than the other; and a third (the smallest) with both ends somewhat plane. Here also were scutes, much as before, but only one bone with teeth (jaw or palate?). The summit is furnished with rudimentary sort of teeth; from that there is a slope down, at the base of which there is a row of thinly set conical teeth, resembling those in the jaws from the south. In the immediate neighbourhood were picked up 16 or 17 teeth, like those of Megalosaurus. They are of all forms, from the long-conical to the stout lance-shaped. You may remember a beautifully serrated tooth found by Dr. Rawes at Takli, and deposited in the Geol. Society's Museum. One of those recently found bears a great similarity to it, only the Maledi specimen is considerably thicker. It is strange that we should meet with at Máledi, along with the remains of Ceratodus, a tooth so like one from the Inter-trappean': but the strangeness ends not here: one of the conical varieties from Máledi is, I should say, almost exactly like a tooth found along with Physa Prinsepii and other 'Inter-trappean' shells in the 'Sub-trappean' of Phisdura. I do not know whether it may increase the wonder to add that in a nulla at Máledi, which cuts through strata immediately underlying the bed with Megalosaurus-like teeth, there was presented in position an abundance of the smaller species of Unio mentioned before. I cannot assert that this species resembles any of the species of Unios that occur in the Inter-trappean.' I rather think it is a new species. Still it is as modern-looking as any I have described in my paper on the Eocene Mollusks of Central India.

66

By the by, in your Tabular View of Indian Rocks*, positions are assigned to some of our strata, in which, with my present light, I find it difficult to concur. I feel that I am to blame for any mistake there may be, except, perhaps, in regard to the Mángali sandstone. It seems to me that both it and the shales of Korhádi and the red clay of Máledi should be above the Umret Coal and the Plant-sandstones. In the course of my tour last January, I met with shales very like those of Korhádi, and they appeared to lie at the base of our Eocene shelly beds, and would therefore require to be included with the strata I have comprehended under the name of the 'Takli series' (Bombay Asiat. Journal, No. 21). The state of my mind in regard to the Maledi clay, as you may have gathered above, is very unsettled. The Mángali beds, I decidedly think, lie above the coalstrata. This month, palæontological evidence has been obtained bearing on this point.

"An officer (Major Gowan) of the Bengal Army, in wandering about the base of the Mahadewa Hills, stumbled upon a slab of sandstone bearing the impression of a vertebral column and ribs. He reported his discovery to the Governor at Calcutta, and the officials there, moved by the Bengal Asiatic Society, addressed the officials here, requesting the specimen to be forwarded to them. It has been brought down to this place on its way to Calcutta, and it has been submitted to my care in the meantime. It turns out to be a Labyrinthodont of a size considerably larger than the Brachyops, and is pretty complete (as an impression), wanting only the lower part of the abdomen and the tail, and three of the legs. The head, when found, was perfect; but, when laid bare, the long scutes crumbled into small fragments. It shows a long row of teeth on each side, like the Brachyops; but the position of the orbits of the eyes indicates little affinity with that genus. The Mangali Reptile, in fact, belonged to v. Meyer's Prosthophthalmian subdivision of Labyrinthodontidae, whereas that from the south base of the Mahadewa Hills is an Opisthophthalmian. The former are found, according to the German geologist, in the Upper Triassic, while the latter occur lower down. Now, the strata in which this more ancient Reptile was imbedded must have been our Indian Coal-beds; for, although the sandstone slab was not in position, yet I have every reason to know that it could have belonged only to them.

"During my last Missionary-tour I met with some more bones at Phísdura. Some of them are very large and massive. One femur is upwards of a foot broad at the condyles. One vertebra is about 7 inches across. The vertebræ have all lost their processes; but the number I have in my possession now is very great. They are so heavy that I fear I shall not be able to send them home; but if Dr. Falconer would undertake to say something about them, I should be glad to make careful drawings of them. You may recollect these remains occur with coprolites, some of them huge enough, and an abundance of Physa Prinsepii, Paludina Deccanensis, and other shells of the Inter-trappean.""

* Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xix. p. 150.

On the PEBBLE-BED of BUDLEIGH SALTERTON. By W. VICARY, Esq., Esq., F.G.S. With a NOTE on the FOSSILS; by J. W. SALTER, F.G.S., A.L.S.

(Read December 16, 1863 *).

[Plates XV-XVII.]

In bringing the fossils figured in Plates XV.-XVII. under the notice of the Geological Society, I beg to offer a few remarks on the locality in which they were found, and on one or two other circumstances connected with them.

If we look at a geological map of Devon, it will be seen that from Petit Tor, near Babbacombe Bay, to a little way beyond Sidmouth, the coast exhibits cliffs of the New Red Sandstone formation. These rocks present us with variously modified features. At about a quarter of a mile west of Budleigh Salterton, and for about a mile and a half further on in the same direction, is a bed containing pebbles in large quantities, varying from a small size to that of a man's head. These are generally of a flattened-oval form, are completely free from angularity, and are known in the neighbourhood as Budleigh pebbles or "popples."

The figures illustrating this paper represent the part of the cliff where this pebble-bed is found, and which furnishes the pebbles in which the fossils are imbedded.

The coast here runs in a direction nearly east and west, and it will be observed that the dip of the bed is to the east. The diagram

also shows that as the pebble-bed rises up from its first appearance at the beach to its highest level, the regularity of the rise is disturbed by the interference of several small faults. The greatest thickness of the bed is probably a little over a hundred feet. The pebbles and sand of which it is composed cohere so slightly that any portion *For the other communications read at this Evening-meeting, see p. 116.