1865.] BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 457 



Lingula flags. And as the history of discovery in the Palaeo- 

 zoic rocks has been that every group beneath the old red sandstone, 

 containing a distinct fauna, has received a separate name, the au- 

 thors hold it of prime importance not to confound this fauna with 

 any of the overlying rocks of the Silurian or even upper 

 Cambrian systems. If Llandeilo, Caradoc, Llandovey, and 

 Wenlock imply distinct periods of creation, much more does the 

 term Lingula flag, Ffestiniog group indicate a remote period, 

 in which not even the genera of fossil animals common in 

 the great Silurian deposits are to be found. All is distinct and 

 anterior, lower in point of organization, more limited in point 

 of numbers ; the species even, with some exceptions, diminishing 

 in size. We seem to be coming to the dawn of animal and vege- 

 table life. As indicative of the value of a close observation of these 

 old faunas, it may be sufficient to say that by means of this Mine- 

 vian group, we can tell the exact horizon of the gold-bearing rocks 

 of Wales ; we can identify accurately the oldest fossil-bearing 

 strata of Bohemia and Sweden with those of our own country, and 

 assign them their exact position in the Palaeozoic series. The 

 genus Paradoxides becomes in this way one of the medals of cre- 

 ation, and the index of a most remote age — so remote that only a 

 few, and those the humbler members of the invertebrate classes, 

 inhabited the sea. With regard to the distribution of the fossils 

 themselves, the lowest beds, which actually lie under the uppermost 

 coarse beds of the Cambrian grits, only distinguished from them 

 by the want of purple color, contain a species of Paradoxides 

 (P. Aurora), with which are associated some minute trilobites; 

 Agnostus Jlicrodtscus, &c. Further up we have Paradoxides again t 

 but of a distinct species, and larger. The mass of the fossils 

 then come in, both Crustacea, shells, and sponges ; and high up in 

 the series a third Paradoxides, so large as to attract general 

 notice ; the well-known P. Dwbidis. Specimens of each of them 

 were exhibited on the reporter's table. Mr. Hicks described beds 

 of contemporaneous trap, and showed their origin and direction, 

 and the faults of the region were touched upon, but could not be 

 fully described. 



Mr. J. W. Salter offered some remarks upon the fossils of the 

 flags. He first gave a general section of the district. The central 

 portion consists of a mass of altered Cambrian rocks, and also a nu- 

 cleus of syenite. The central part is succeeded by black shales and 

 other deposits. The middle lingula succeeds ; and these are capped 



