78 OUR COMMON BRITISH POSSILS. 



is seen forming the bold hills of View Edge and 

 Stokesay camp, and the limestone in places literally 

 abounds with the well-known and characteristic fossil 

 brachiopod Pentamenis Knightii, The Garden House 

 quarries at Aymestry are capital collecting grounds. 

 Indeed, a good many of the fossils figured by Sir 

 Roderick Murchison in his " Silurian System " were 

 obtained at these quarries. Nearly every village in 

 the neighbourhood has several outcrops of or quarries 

 into the rocks, where fossils may be abundantly 

 hammered out. The commonest of the fossil corals 

 are CyatJiophylbmi (often well known among the 

 quarrymen and others by the name of "petrified 

 ram's horns," in allusion to the irregular way in which 

 the stony corallum usually twists), Heliolites inicr- 

 stincttis^ HalysiteSy and Ouiphynia (one species of 

 which, 0. subturbinata, is a very widely and plentifully 

 distributed Silurian coral). 



The Malvern Hills also afford several noticeable 

 localities where the Silurian strata yield fossil corals. 

 In Eastnor Park, just beneath the picturesque 

 Herefordshire Beacon-^one of the loveliest spots in 

 that picturesque district — we have hammered out 

 some splendid corals. Should the geologist pedes- 

 trinate this park towards the end of March, he will 

 see such a wealth of wild Daffodils as even Words- 

 worth's poem does not give the faintest idea of! 

 The Woolhope Valley should also be mentioned, 

 and here the commonest corals to be exhumed are 



