2G4 



With such a gathering of the scientific men of the district it will readily 

 be believed that the meeting was superior to the weather, and with Dr. 

 Grin.lrod's unequalled collection of Silurian fossils, a detention of three hours 

 was positive enjoyment. No one could fail to be struck with the remarkable 

 display of Trilobites, the perfection of the several specimens, or the graceful 

 elegance of their forms in the varied positions in which nature has seized and 

 preserved them for such countless ages. Dr. Grindrod has spared no pains to 

 get them together, and it may well be said that he has also been regardless 

 of expense, for one little case, of the many there, the Doctor said had cost him 

 fifty pounds. The following brief description of them has been kindly 

 supplied : — 



A GLA2^CE AT DR. GRINDROD'S MUSEUM. 



Contributed by the Rev. H. HOUSMAN, F.G.S. 



The main pui-pose for which this matchless collection has been made is 

 to illustrate the geology of iMalvern and its neighbourhood. The visitor should 

 bear this in mind, as it accounts on the one hand for the absence of those 

 gigantic fossils from the secondary and tertinry ages which are often the most 

 showy specimens on the walls of other museums, and on the other for the over- 

 whelming beauty and abundance of many almost local remains, which the 

 concentrated perseverance of Dr. Grindrod has here gathered together. 

 In fact, this collection should be regarded — at all events, in its present 

 state — as one exclusively of paloeozoic fossils, offering to the spectator a peep 

 at the beings which inhabited mid-western England in the immeasurable 

 remoteness of the geologic past far back beyond the age when man first walked 

 this world, beyond the 8ge when the huge saurians of the secondary period 

 roamed through the subsiding seas— kings of the then creation — beyond the 

 period of the exhuberant flora of the cai-boniferous epoch, when the summits 

 of the Malvern hills, rising above the ocean, formed the easternmost extremity 

 of that island which at last came to be called Britain. 



The Malverns are generally looked upon as the result of a vast volcanic 

 upthrow of syenite. This rock differs from granite, inasmuch as its component 

 parts are felspar, hornblende, and quartz, whereas true granite is composed of 

 felspar, quartz, and mica. But the late researches of Dr. Holl have given him 

 reason to suspect that this rock, hitherto regarded as syenite, and therefore 

 of true volcanic origin, is in fact an altered sedimentary deposit, older than 

 the Cambrian system, and of the same age as the Laurentian rocks of CanadSj 

 and the north-west coiner of Scotland. At present, however, not one single 

 organism has been discovered to attest the truth of this theory, which appears 

 to rest mainly on mineralogical similarity, a foundation far too uncertain to 

 support an hypothesis of so much geological interest. 



