President's Address. 5 



"The Paliuozoic Concliology of Scotland" conveniently 

 subdivides itself into two sections — Silurian and Carbonifer- 

 ous. These will be treated of under separate headings, with 

 a few remarks on the unimportant Devonian and Permian 

 groups. 



CONCLIOLOGY OF. THE SILURIAN EOCKS OF SCOTLAND. 



The presence of fossils in the rocks composing the southern 

 uplands, and other Silurian areas of Scotland, was little more 

 than an undetected fact until a comparatively recent period. 

 Organic remains appear to have been first recorded from the 

 rocks in question by the illustrious physicist, Dr James 

 Hutton, in the year 1795. 



Dr Hutton tells us in his great work, the '' Theory of the 

 Earth," * of the discovery by his friend and co-labourer, Sir 

 James Hall, of " forms of cockles quite distinct, and in great 

 abundance," in an " Alpine limestone," at Wrae hill, in the 

 parish of Broughton, Peeblesshire. 



We cannot pass over this, perhaps to the observers in 

 question, apparently trivial circumstance," without pausing 

 to reflect, that to a physicist we are indebted for the first 

 discovery of life-traces in strata, afterw^ard regarded by their 

 successors in geological science as one of the pal?eontological 

 landmarks of the old rocks of the southern uplands. 



For about thirty -nine years these "forms of cockles" 

 remained the sole representatives of palseontological science 

 yielded by the strata in question. -[- It was not until the 

 late Mr Charles Maclaren, for some time President of the 

 Geological Society of Edinburgh, commenced his labours in 

 the Pentland Hills, that we hear any tiling more of Scotch 

 Silurian fossils. 



In 1839 Maclaren published his classic little work, "A 

 Sketch of the Geology of Fife and the Lothians," etc., X in 

 wliich he announced the interesting discovery of organic 



* Theory of the Earth, 1795, vol. i., p. 335. 



-j- I have left out of consideration the discovery of fossils by Laidlaw, the 

 friend of Sir Walter Scott. 

 X 8vo, Edinburgh, 1839. 



