198 Fvsiiil Organic Bemains in Transition Bocks. 



sity of Oxford has also, by an honorary degree, given you a 

 similar testimonial.* That you are one of our fellows, is to 

 myself a circumstance peculiarly agreeable, as it must be to 

 the whole body over whom I have the honour to preside. Your 

 discoveries in the particular botanical question, for which I 

 have to give you the Copley Medal, are so important, not only 

 in a botanical, but also in a general scientific point of view, by 

 shewing the close analogies of animal and vegetable life, that 

 the Committee of Zoology have felt it as much their province 

 as that of the Committee of Botany, to recommend that the 

 Copley Medal should be bestowed upon you ; and the Council 

 have come to an unanimous resolution to give it, though at 

 the same time other gentlemen were recommended by other 

 scientific committees, with whom even an unsuccessful rivalry 

 would be no mean praise. 



I hope, Mr BroAvn, that you may long enjoy life and leisure 

 to pursue researches so valuable to science, and so honourable 

 to the country of which you are a native. 



Fossil Organic Bemains in Transition-Bocks in the Great 

 Southern HigH Land of Scotland. 

 Hitherto, comparatively few organic remains have been de- 

 tected imbedded in the rocks of the transition-class in the 

 south of Scotland. The well-known beds of transition-lime- 

 stone near to the Crook Inn, on the road from Edinburgh to 

 Moffat, afford fossil shells and corals ; and thin layers and 

 disseminated portions of glance-coal (Anthracite) occur in the 

 greywacke series of Queensberry Hill, in the upper part of 

 Dumfriesshire. Grnpivlites, which, on a general view, so much 

 resemble plants, but belong to the Radiaria of zoologists, have 

 been long known as fossils of oirr greywacke system ; even- in 

 this neighbourhood, as at Grieston Slate Quarry, in a hill on 

 the south bank of the river Tweed, about five miles from 

 Peebles, and one and a half from Innerleithen, one of our pu- 



* On occasion of the Meeting of the British Association at Edinburgh, 

 in 1834, the University of tliat City conferred on Mr Brown tlie lionorary 

 degree of LL.D., and the Lord Provost and Council at the same time 

 presented their illustrious countryman with the freedom of the Scottish 

 Capital. — Edit. 



