140 



There is a distinguished botanist, who is also, I am happy to say, an active 

 geologist, a member of our Club, who, since the meeting of the British Association, 

 has found time and energy to follow up our discovery between Ludlow and 

 Leominster — I allude to my friend Mr. Crouch, of Pembridge. This gentleman 

 has managed to collect, in a few short months, the most valuable series of Corn- 

 stone fishes it has ever been my lot to examine, with the exceptions of those in 

 Mr. Hugh Miller's cabinet. Sir Philip Egerton, the British ichthyologist, having 

 kindly offered to examine any specimens I could forward, I sent him those belong- 

 ing to Mr. Crouch, and they now lie on this table. Sir Philip, as you may see, 

 has already determined three species of Cephalaspis from the quarries of Leysters 

 Pole, aU of which are identical with the Scotch organisms. 



These fossil remains all appertain to the Cornstone, or middle group of the 

 Old Red Sandstone. I would here revert shortly to those deposits as they 

 occur in this immediate neighbourhood. Wherever in the Hereford district (of 

 coiurse, always excepting Silurian upthrows, such as Woolhope and Dormington 

 Hills) you see verdant and wooded hill, there is the Cornstone formation, with 

 its valleys denuded in the softer marls, and the hills made up of concretionary 

 nodules and gritty sandstones. The fact that these hills have been preserved 

 from destruction is owing to the hard impure limestone nodules of which they 

 are composed * 



There is another branch of the science of Geology connected with our dis- 

 coveries in the Old Red Sandstone, to which I would for a moment draw your 

 attention. It is that of " Ichnology," or the history and study of the footsteps 

 of animals, that untold ages ago walked on the shores of our Old Red Sandstone 

 seas. This intricate and difficult witness in the courts of geologic record has in 

 late years been put very closely to the question, and the Ichnology of Annandale, 

 and the description of the footprints impressed upon the Hunter beds, is a work 

 that will connect the name of Sir Wm. Jardiae with the most difficult of geologic 

 researches in modern times. 



The Leominster meeting was not only remarkable for tl.c discovery of a 

 habitat of fossil fish ; a distinguished geologist and former president of this 

 Society (Rev. T. T. Lewis) bore away in triumph a large slab, bearing thereon the 

 evidence not only of the ripple of the waves, but of an animal that had actually 

 travelled over the sandy beach upon which those waves dashed. 



This slab was brought forward by Sir Roderick Murchinson, at the meeting 

 of the British Associations, and the footprints thereon were declared by those who 

 have studied this branch ot the science, to be the traces of a crustacean, t 



While speaking of a Palasozoic crustacean, I may recall to your memory the 

 first discovery of the limbs of that remarkable Silurian " lobster " the " Pterygotus 

 problematicus," by Mr. Scobie, which is described in the Geological Journal 



* Here Mr. Synionds reverted to the remarks upon the Cornstones he made in his paper 

 on " The Old Red Sandstone (if Herefordshire." delivered at the meeting at Leoiiiinster, on 

 July loth, 1854, already printed a few pages antea. See page 117. — (Edilor). 



t This slalj is to be seen in the Museum at Worcester. — {Eaito?). 



