Page:The Geologist, volume 5.djvu/27

Rh Phillips, as President of the Geological Society of London, and also one in Professor Haughton's Appendix to the 'Voyage of the Fox in the Arctic Seas.' Professor Phillips, when discussing the influence of ancient currents of the sea, remarks that "only a small proportion of the fossils of North Devon occur in South Devon;" and Professor Haughton says, "I do not believe in the lapse of a long interval of time between the Silurian and Carboniferous deposits,—in fact in a Devonian period.

"The same blending of corals has been found in Ireland, the Bas Boulonnais, and in Devonshire, where Silurian and Carboniferous forms are of common occurrence in the same localities,"

It should be remembered that the statement with which we have here to deal is, "that the blending of Silurian and Carboniferous corals" (the word is not fossils) "is of common occurrence in Devonshire."

I have consulted such registers as I have been able to command, and have thrown so much of their contents as bear on the questions before us in the following tabular form; for which, of course, no higher value is claimed than attaches to the original documents.

The materials have been mainly derived from Professor Morris's 'Catalogue of British Fossils,' published in 1854, in which are embodied the results of the labours of Mr. Lonsdale, Professors Phillips and M'Coy, and Messrs. Edwards and Haime. The liberties taken with the 'Catalogue' have been but few; such, for example, as the removal of the Devonian Stromatopores from the class Zoophyta to Amorphozoa, Sphæronites tessellatus from Echinodermata also to Amorphozoa, and the addition of a few localities to those already registered.

I have great pleasure in acknowledging the prompt and kind assistance of Mr. Salter, of the Geological Museum, Jermyn Street, London, in certain matters on which I consulted him.

Every geologist is, of course, aware of the numerous and elaborate tables and ratios introduced by Professor Phillips in his 'Palæozoic Fossils of Devon and Cornwall,' when discussing questions akin to those under consideration. In the preparation of this paper the author has in no way made use of the valuable data these tables contain.

It appears from the three left-hand columns of figures, headed "Totals," Table I., that, taken together, the five areas have yielded three hundred and forty-seven species, belonging to ninety-seven genera and forty-nine families, of nine classes of animals; namely, three classes of the sub-kingdom Radiata, one of Articulata, and five of Mollusca; hence fifteen of the twenty-four classes into which the existing animal kingdom is commonly divided are totally unrepresented in the series, as is the entire vegetable kingdom also. It may be as well to stale here that, in conformity with Morris's