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the rich and fertile land it is ; and for this reason I have always, in my addresses 

 and lectures on the Geology of Worcestershire endeavoured to induce our farmers 

 to use more lime. We have the same iron oxides, but the Worcestershire New 

 Red contains Httle carbonate of lime, and I therefore feel convinced that our 

 agriculturists would gain by its addition, and that if a regular system of well 

 liming the soil were persevered in for a few years, we should have finer crops, 

 less squashy cider, and better beer. 



As regards fossils, the Old Red Sandstone of Herefordshire is remarkably 

 poor. There are no fossil shells, for the peroxide of iron has destroyed every vestige 

 of their remains, and the relics of the fish of that period, so numerous in Scotland, 

 and so celebrated through the works of Mr. Hugh Miller and Agassiz, are with 

 Us very few and far between. We must not however forget that temporary deposits 

 in Devonshire contain abundance of fossil shells ; and that, in Russia, the fish of 

 Scotland and Herefordshire are entombed in the same rock with the shells and 

 corals of Devon. 



The Upper Old Red beds contain forms typical of the Carboniferous group 

 which succeed, while the lower forms of life partake of Silurian aspect and 

 demeaaour. The fishes too die out through that long period during which the 

 Old Red beds were depositing, for the Pterichthys of the lower strata had ceased 

 to exist long before the conglomerates of the Blorenge and Scjrrid were washed 

 into their bed, and of sixty fine species of remarkable fish but one (Holoptychius) 

 ascends to the Mountain Limestone. 



The Lower Old Red beds afford scarcely any traces of land plants, but its 

 uppermost contain a considerable number, including tree ferns and Calamites, 

 and thus shadow forth the period of the Coal. There is no abrupt break between 

 the Silurians and the Old Red, or the Old Red and the Carboniferous epochs, 

 but they seem, so to epeak, to glide into one another ; and yet, " significant 

 circumstance as to the lapse of time," we fearlessly assert that not one shell, 

 fish, plant, or even coral, is common to them all. 



One word, gentlemen, as regards ourselves and our collections. The 

 practical value of a Local collection depends chiefly upon the history of in- 

 dividual specimens. A fossil from the Old Red Sandstone of Herefordshire has 

 a value far beyond any accident of fineness or rarity ; it is illustrative of the history 

 of the Geology of our Native county. Chinese butterflies and Austrahan cuckoos 

 are very well in their way, and gifts not to be despised when offered ; I would 

 rather however see in Hereford a Herbarium containing from 700 to 800 

 Herefordshire plants presented by one of the many good botanists the county 

 C£in boast of, than all the foreign specimens of the British Museum. The same 

 remark apphes to fossils, birds, fish, or natural specimens of any kind. 



It may be argued that the Old Red Sandstone of Herefordshire contains 

 very few fossils ; perhaps so ; the Silurian rocks of Herefordshire are, however, 

 particularly rich, and careful eyes would, I am convinced, detect the remains of 

 the Old Red fish if careful eyes would but take the trouble to search. The Rev. 



