aid to collect and classify the fossils peculiar to each. It was Mr. Lewis's facts 

 and observations that gave to Sir Roderick Murchison the first clear view of 

 that system of rocks which by further and more extended observations he was 

 enabled to lay down with such admirable precision, as the Silurian System. 



Mr. Lewis was President of the Woolhope Club in the yeai 1S53, but in 

 the autumn of the year before he led the Club from Mortimer*s Cross Inn by 

 Croft Castle over Croft Ambury, and along the escarpment of Yatton Hill, 

 visitiDg the quarries throughout the route, aud explaining from time to time 

 the geologi -al features presented by the hills and valleys around. In his ' Retiring 

 Address," delivered at Hereford, January 24th, 1S54, Mr. Lewis gave a Irief 

 description of this meeting, and goes on to say : "In our descent to Aimestry 

 we took the path of an old road, up which I had the honour of conducting Mr. 

 Murchison (now Sir Roderick) in his first visit to Herefordshire, July, 1831, 

 presenting in itself a continuous section from the Lower Lndlow Rock to the 

 Old Red Sandstone. I had at this time very fairly developed' the structure of 

 the surrounding country. My own researches in this district commenced with 

 my residence at Aymestrey, in 1827 ; but I was working in the dark, and it was 

 in that walk, which I continue to regard as one of the most intensing i Tents of 

 my life, there ^dawned upon me the vision of the deep interest of the then 

 comparatively unknown country in which it was my good fortune and happiness 

 to be dwelling, and to the true development of which I had, unknowingly, dis- 

 covered the key, and made some progress. With what zeal, industry, ability 

 and success, Sir Roderick Murchison has followed up these beginn-ngs, and 

 prosecuted the identification of these rocks through our own and the adjoining 

 counties, and the greater part of the North of Europe, into Asiatic Russia, is 

 shown by his great works on the Silurian System (1838), and the Geology of 

 Russia and the Ural Mountains (1845), and the various scientific journals of 

 the time." . 



The pleasant memory of that meeting was vividly revived, as such few 

 members of the club who had the good fortune to hear Mr. Lewis then, followed 

 the President and Mr. Symonds, on the present occasion, along the river's 

 side to the Common "Wood Quarry, where the search for fossil and plant 

 began. Here the limestone— called, from its marked development in this 

 village, the Aymestrey limestone — offers a fine bold surface, and is seen 

 to be deposited in successive layers from one to five feet thick. It is a 

 bluish grey limestone and highly fossiliferous, containing numerous layers of 

 shells and corals, and there is one calcareous band which contains an abundance 

 of that fine fossil shell, Pentamcrus Knvjhtii, which is characteristic of the 

 formation. 



Very little time was spent here, for at the Garden Wood Quarry the 

 Aymestrey limestone presents its typical characters in a still more marked 

 degree. 



Returning by the river, the party was very kindly taken by Mr. Shipley 

 through the gardens of the quarry, following once more the exact route taken 



