136 



" It did indeed give me entire satisfaction, at the late meeting of the British 

 Association at Liverpool, to point out a flagstone of the Old Red Sandstone, on 

 the surface of which Mr. Lewis had detected the trails of animals — some of them 

 apparently made by crustaceans, others by moUusks. Sterile as the Old Red 

 Sandstone has hitherto been in affording any traces of fossil remains except those 

 of fishes, this one fact, discovered at Puddlestone, near Leominster, leads us to 

 believe that there must have been an ebb and flow on the surfaces of the Red 

 rock, and no deep sea, just as we have numerous other evidences of shallow and 

 shelving shores, where the Upper Ludlow rock, with its minute fishes, was 

 accumulated. 



" In the later years of my labours, I received solid and substantial aid from 

 a lamented friend, whose name will never be pronounced in the City of Worcester 

 without producing unequivocal signs of respect for his character, and admiration 

 of his powers as a naturalist. 



" Mr. Hugh Strickland was not only my associate in the field, in unraveUing 

 the order of the youngest Red formation beneath the Lias, and in proving it to be 

 the equivalent of the German Keuper, but he executed a labour of love for me 

 in compiling and arranging that copious and most perfect Index of the original 

 " Silurian System." 



" One of my last excursions with him was when he took me to see the exact 

 position of the Black Schists, or the oldest fossil-bearing Silurian rocks, in the 

 west flank of the Malverns (schists in which Professor Phillips first detected the 

 Olenus), in which Mr. Strickland, with indomitable perseverance, had further 

 detected the very minute crustacean Agnostus piriformis. These close obser- 

 vations are of the highest importance, for they unequivocally identify the Black 

 Schists of the Malvern with the lowest zone in Sweden and Norway containing 

 animal remains, viz., the Alum Slates. Now, in Scandinavia, where I have 

 explored the Alum Slates, Black Schist is never of greater dimensions than in 

 your Malvern Hills ; they repose, as I have described, on a sandstone of much 

 more considerable dimensions, in which fucoidal impressions and casts are alone 

 discernible ; and as Professor Phillips, in his inimitable description of the Malvern 

 and Abberley Hills, has shown you that the Black Schists with crustaceans 

 repose on a similar rock (HoUybush sandstone), you have, in my opinion, the 

 very basis of all Silurian life within a short drive from the city of Worcester. 



" Such, let me say, is the unhesitating opinion of the first of all authorities 

 on the Schist, M. Barraude, who, seeing in your Malvern schists the very same 

 species of the Agnostus as in Sweden and in his own primordial zone of Bohemia 

 (also the base of Silurian life), has desired me to state his view publicly. 



" In a brief letter I am not going to endeavour to show that all the Silurian 

 formations, including my well-beloved rocks of Llandilo and Caradoc are ade- 

 quately developed. I know that these members of the Lower Silurian, which, 

 with their fossils, typify the group over wide continental regions, are only partially 

 seen near you. But let me remind you that your Upper Siliurian, from the 

 Woolhope limestone to the Ludlow rock and Old Red inclusive, are as instruc- 



