imperfect as regards their preservation ! We must not, however, 

 forget that contemporary deposits in Devonshire contain abundance 

 of fossi^ shells ; and that in Russia the fish of Scotland and Here- 

 fordshire 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 succeeded, while the lower forms of life 

 partake of Silurian aspect and demeanour. The fishes too, die out 

 through that long period during which the Old Red beds were 

 depositing, for the Ccphalaspis of the middle strata had ceased to 

 exist long before the conglomerates of the Blorenge and Scjrrid were 

 washed into their bed, and of sixty 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 speak, 

 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 ! 



There is another branch of the science of geology, connected with 

 our discoveries 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 

 Bunter beds, is a work that will connect the name of Sir Wm. 

 Jardine with the most difficult of geologic researches in modern 

 times. The Leominster meeting was not only remarkable for the 

 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. 



