PREFACE. 
Sryce the proof-sheets of the following Catalogue issued from the press, I have earnestly 
desired to write an Introductory Preface to it. Week after week and month after month 
have I waited in anxious hope of completing my humble task. But I have been greatly 
interrupted by a chronic malady which makes me incapable of any long-continued mental 
labour; and, in addition to this hindrance, a painful infirmity of sight almost entirely 
prevents me from consulting my manuscripts and memoranda, made during the Geological 
tours of many past years. To spare this continued infirmity of sight I now gratefully dictate 
the following pages to my young friend and assistant in the Museum—Mr Walter Keeping. 
The old Catalogue of the Paleozoic Fossils, by Prof. M*Coy (now of the University of 
Melbourne), was a work of enormous labour and of very great scientific skill; especially 
when we consider the date of its appearance. Its publication was a real benefit to the 
Academic Student, a distinction to the University Press, and a great honour to its Author. 
In the clearness and elaborate accuracy of its descriptions of the several species the work 
is I think unrivalled, in spite of all that has been written since. But I wish to write 
historically, and profess not here to enter upon critical questions of scientific detail. 
In an advancing science like Geology, any catalogue, however good at the time of its 
publication. must soon become defective from changes of nomenclature, from improved classi- 
fications, and above all from the discovery of new species. Mr Davidson's great works on 
the Brachiopoda have thrown new light upon the divisions of that class of Mollusca, and 
very greatly changed the nomenciature of the genera and species. 
The great additions made, of late years, to our knowledge of the older Paleozoic Fauna, 
and especially to the groups of fossils now in our Museum, derived from the lower division 
of what were formerly called the Lingula Flags; still more the great Fletcher Collection 
b 
