President's Address. 17 



Salter's list is cliiefly valuable as a means of comparison 

 between the MoUusca of this and the English Upper Silurian 

 areas. There is probably much in Salter's remark that the 

 Ludlow fauna of the Pentland Hills is representative only of 

 that of England, and not identical with it. He excepted 

 from this category the Pteropoda or pelagic Mollusca, on the 

 supposition that their erratic habits would lead them from 

 one area to another. A healthy impetus appears to have been 

 given to local Palaeontology by the Survey researches. Nothing 

 so contributes to the solution of geological problems, in fact 

 I may say natural history problems in general, as a well- 

 devised scheme of exploration on the part of those con- 

 stantly on the field of operations. Particular facilities given 

 to them are denied to chance visitants, or those employed only 

 on temporary investigation, either official or private. Our 

 knowledge of those districts is invariably the best, in which a 

 few prominent members of local societies who constantly 

 make the unravelling of its natural features, physical and 

 organic, their prominent study. The more discussion we 

 have on these matters the better, and the sooner we shall 

 arrive at some definite conclusion. 



The operations of the Geological Survey in the Pentland 

 Hills were closely followed up by those of the late INIr G. C. 

 Haswell, for some time secretary of the Edinburgh Geological 

 Society. His little work, " On the Silurian Formation in the 

 Pentland Hills," * affords a very good res?«?z^ of the work done 

 up to the time he wrote, including descriptions of all the 

 organisms known from thence. In addition to the species 

 determined by Mr Salter, Haswell was successful in obtaining 

 several additional forms, notably amongst the Brachiopoda. 

 I think we must look upon the recognition of his work 

 afforded later on by our greatest authority on that class of 

 shells, Thomas Davidson, Esq., F.E.S., as particularly credit- 

 able and honourable to Mr Haswell. Haswell showed the 

 existence in the Pentland Hill strata of a species of the genus 

 Mcrista, named by him Merista Maclareni, and he further 

 called attention to the presence in a certain bed of multitudes 

 of a Bliynchonella, which he named B. Pcntlandica. This 



* 8vo, Edinburgli, 1865. 

 VOL. VII. B 



