Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 33.djvu/622

528 pure shale, thus indicating their hollow or soft pithy heart, like large tree ferns &c.

The remains of plants were, however, rare. I was fortunate in finding some fragments amongst the heaps of refuse near the mouth of some of the drifts; and I was indebted for some others to Mr. Barkley, who kindly gave them to me so as to lead to the true identification of the age of this singularly isolated patch of the true Coal-measures, as they have proved to be. The fossils I then procured are now for the first time exhibited; for, although they were sent to England to my lamented friend Edward Forbes, for identification, at the same time as my report was sent to the Admiralty, by some mischance the box containing them was detained in some Custom House until the end of 1854 or beginning of 1855, and only reached him shortly before his removal from the Museum in Jermyn Street to Edinburgh, and consequently just previous to his death; so that only an extract from a hasty letter to him, sent at the same time, has ever been published in reference to my examination of these Black-Sea coal-beds. This appeared soon after his arrival in Edinburgh, in the 'Edinb. New Phil. Journ.,' 1855, pp. 172, 173.

The fossils themselves have, fortunately, remained at the Jermyn-Street Museum since that time; and, on recently inquiring about them through the General Curator, Mr. Reeks, they were readily found. A list of them has been kindly made by Mr. Etheridge to accompany these long delayed remarks upon this important coal-district; and as there are ten genera of fossil plants amongst them, they will more fully establish the age of these beds than has hitherto been done. For, although a brief visit was made to Erekli and to the Kosloo Valley (by sea) by Mr. Poole, soon after the extract from my letter appeared in the Edinburgh Journal, that gentleman has only briefly referred to the existence of the Coal-deposits, without giving any details.

This fact, and the special interest that has recently sprung up in reference to the East, has induced me to think that a fuller description of these coal-bearing deposits and of the district in general, such as my notes and private journal enabled me to give, were now desirable, in a general as well as in a geological point of view.

I was informed by Mr. Barkley that the coal-bearing deposits extended to the eastward of Kosloo to within a mile of Amasny, and were found in almost every intermediate valley. On the west side of Kosloo they extend to within three or four miles of Erekli, thus embracing an area of nearly fifty miles east and west, and from three to ten or twelve miles north and south. Their northern margin terminates on the coast, and therefore must pass under this part of the Black Sea for an unknown and probably considerable extent. But the entire area is characterized by great disturbances and numerous faults.

The existence of these coal beds was first brought into notice about the year 1838 or 1840; but they were not systematically