Last summer I paid a visit to the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy, and saw certain features which must, I think, have hitherto escaped notice. It has been asserted that the roads consist of, or are cut out of, mere superficial detritus; and that they never appear where the solid rock appears; and much discussion has arisen as to the mode of formation of the roads on this supposition, viz. that they consist of detritus merely.

A short time ago, whilst examining and appending the names to a number of specimens of fossil fish in the collection of the Bradford Philosophical Society, which are being arranged and exhibited in the new Corporate Museum in that town, I came across the spine which is the subject of this notice. It is from the Black-bed Coal at Dudley Hill, near Bradford.

Hitherto, exposures of the junction of the Bunter formation with the Keuper, in the Nottingham district, have shown the brown sandstones and red marls of the “Waterstones,” with a band of dolomitic conglomerate at the base, resting directly on an eroded surface of the Bunter Pebble Beds. Recently, howeve, between these formations there have been observed to intervene certain deposits that agree both in mineral composition and in physical characters with the white sandstones and conglomerates, known as the “Basement Beds,” that form so important a feature in the Keuper of the West Midlands.

This cast indicates a fusiform turrited shell adorned by discontinuous varices; the spire is wanting; it also shows that the shell was transversely ribbed and corrugated; the outer lip was strongly plicato-dentate internally; the aperture rather small; canal moderately long.