CARBONIFEROUS CONODONTS OP WEST OF SCOTLAND. 337 



At first sponge spicules, etc., were found in abundance (see 

 Annals and Mag. Nat. Hist., Nov. 1877) and of gigantic size 

 compared with those of the present-day sponges, but minute and 

 very fragile organisms were not suspected to exist in the rotted 

 stu£F, and it was only after using more delicate methods of pre- 

 paring the material that Conodonts were found. 



Having collected a number of specimens, I sent them to this 

 Society for exhibition, and, if possible, to procure some informa- 

 tion about them. As no one seemed to know what they were, I 

 left them in the Hunterian Museum that they might be shown 

 to visitors. The first caller who knew anything of them was 

 Dr. Hinde, who, on their being shown to him by Dr. Young, at 

 once pronounced them to be Conodonts, a class of fossil organisms 

 first discovered by Dr. Pander, of Russia, and described in his 

 monograph in 1856. 



In Britain, Conodonts were afterwards found by Dr. J. 

 Harley {Quar. Jour. Geol. Soc, 1861, p. 542) in the Ludlow 

 bone-bed j and by Mr. C. Moore in strata from the Silurian, 

 probably up to the Permian (British Association Report, 1869, 

 p. 375; and Quar. Jour. Geol. Soc, 1879, p. 351); and in 

 America a fine series has been procured from the Cambro- 

 Silurian and Devonian rocks by Dr. G. J. Hinde, and described 

 and figured by him — in three plates — in the Quar. Jour. Geol. 

 Soc. for August 1879. 



In the Geological Magazine for February, 1881, I recorded 

 the finding of Conodonts from the Silurian rocks of the Wren's 

 Nest, Dudley ; Dudley Tunnel ; Benthall Edge, and Lincoln 

 Hill, near Ironbridge ; Gleedon Hill, near Much Wenlock ; Dor- 

 mington, near Woolhope, all in Wenlock Shale ; and from rotted 

 limestone obtained in a quarry m the Upper Silurian (Aymestry 

 limestone) strata near Craven Arms. Some time after this I got 

 Conodonts in the rotted Devonian limestone of Newton Abbot 

 (Devonshire), and in various English Silurian localities. 



The Scotch Carboniferous Conodonts range from the bottom to 

 the top of the limestone series, and are, generally speaking, rare, 

 and, for the most part, confined to the limestones — an occasional 

 specimen being found in the shales. 



As Dr. Hinde does not mention the following in his " Notes," I 

 may say that he submitted his specimens to the late Prof. Huxley, 



