and many new and rare, are in the cabinets of our I^Iembers, 

 unknown save to the select few ; and not only to the Members of 

 the Club would it be a guide to what the district has furnished, but 

 also am incentive to add to the list — while it would at once put the 

 geological stranger in possession of the key to the fossiliferous 

 localities, and would serve as an important feeder to the general 

 stream of discoverj-, besides elevating our Club to something more 

 than a mere local gathering. 



I will now, in a few words, make some remarks on the recent 

 researches and proceedings that have taken place in the Palfeozoic 

 rocks within the last year or two. Scotland has been the scene of 

 greatest interest, owing to the vast expanse of country which was 

 until lately but little understood and worked out. SmE. Murchison, 

 who has been labouring hard at it, has pointed out, while laying 

 down a more definite arrangement of the geological features of the 

 country, many new and interesting facts, on which the new edition 

 of Siluria, just published, has enlightened us. The Lower SUurian 

 deposits in the northern part of Scotland, particularly in Sutherland, 

 appear to be very different from the same deposits in this countiy, 

 consisting of a series of quartzite with intercalated limestone highly 

 crystalline, overlaid by quartzose and other crystalline rocks having 

 a gneissose character. So little were these understood, that Pro- 

 fessor NicoLL, of Aberdeen, was inclined to consider them as 

 equivalents of the carboniferous rocks in the south of Scotland, 

 while Hugh Miller regarded them as metamorphosed representa- 

 tives of the Old Eed Sandstone of the eastern coast. Mr. Peach 

 however discovered in these crystalline rocks, fossils, which are 

 determined to be of Lower SHurian age, consisting of a Serpulites 

 (S. Macciduchii) and a few fucoids from the quartzite, besides a 

 series in the limestone — Maclurea, Ophiolite, Oncoceras, and Ortho- 

 eeras, fossHs which hitherto have been Limited to the Lower Silurian 

 series of Iforth America, known as the Huronian rocks, and the 

 limestones above them. With regard to the Upper Silurian beds, 

 there have not been so many discoveries very lately — that is to say 



