ee 
A WEEKLY ILLUSTRATED JOURNAL. OF SCIENCE 
°° To the solid ground 
Of Nature trusts the mind which builds for aye.” —\WORDSWORTH 
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1881 
A RECENT “FIND” IN BRITISH 
3 PALAZONTOLOGY 
HE world is but rarely startled nowadays by the dis- 
covery of whole groups of new organisms from the 
rocks of Britain; it is only from the Far West that 
such surprises come. Two or three generations of active 
collectors have ransacked our strata so thoroughly that 
only now and then by some happy chance is a new vein 
of research opened, the finder of which may be con- 
gratulated rather on his good luck than on his special 
acuteness in observation. Such a vein has recently been 
| struck by the Geological Survey among the Lower Car- 
-boniferous rocks of the south of Scotland. Some account 
| of the more important features of this “find’’ may be of 
interest to the general reader. 
Travellers who enter Scotland from the south, remark 
that after leaving the plains of the Tweed on the east 
side, or those of the Solway on the west, they find them- 
| selves in a range of hills or uplands, not lofty and pic- 
turesque indeed, but with sufficient height and individuality 
of feature to form a notable barrier between the valleys 
of the border on the one hand and the Scottish Lowlands 
pe the other. This belt of pastoral high grouncs, so 
| bright with the glamour of poetry and romance, has a 
special interest to the geologist. He can trace it back 
ce its origin about the close of the Silurian period, when 
it first began to rise out of the sea, and served, by its up- 
heaval, to define one or more of the great inland basins in 
\which the Old Red Sandstone was deposited. From that 
ancient time down to the present the ridge seems to have 
‘formed a barrier between the basins on its northern and 
‘southern margin. No doubt it has been enormously worn 
ldown in the general denudation of the country, deep 
valleys have been trenched through it ; much of it has 
now and again been submerged and covered by masses 
of sedimentary material. Nevertheless it has preserved 
kits existence. Lying along aline of terrestrial weakness, its 
strata, originally horizontal sheets of mud and sand, piled 
ver each other toa depth of many thousand feet, have 
een crumpled and corrugated to a vast extent. The 
\ VOL. Xxv.—No. 627 
movements by which these contortions were produced 
have doubtless recurred at many intervals, so that we 
may conceive them to have in some measure, if not en- 
tirely, compensated by occasional elevation for the lower- 
ing of the level of the ridge by continuous denudation. 
‘During the early part of the Carboniferous period these 
southern Silurian uplands of Scotland formed a barrier 
between the lagoons of the Lowlands and the more open 
waters to the south which spread over the north and centre 
of England, That the ridge was not continuous, or at least 
that there was now some water-way across it or round its 
end, between the basins on either side, is indicated by the 
similarity of their fossils. Yet that it formed on the 
whole a tolerably effective barrier is indicated partly 
by the marked difference between the corresponding 
strata on its northern and southern flanks, and partly by 
the singular series of organic remains to which attention 
is here called. 
For some years past the Geological Survey of Scotland 
has been engaged in the detailed investigation of the 
Carboniferous rocks between the Silurian uplands and 
the English border. The whole region has now been 
mapped ; the maps are partly published, and partly in the 
hands of the engraver for speedy publication. The rocks 
have been collected, and their chemical and microscopic 
analysis is in progress. Their fossils have been gathered 
from every available stratum, and have already been in 
large measure named and described. So that materials 
now exist fora tolerably complete review and comparison 
of the stratigraphy, petrography, and paleontology of the 
Carboniferous rocks of the Scottish Border. In the 
course of the work one particular zone of shale on the 
banks of the River Esk has been found to possess ex- 
traordinary palzontological value. From this stratum 
where exposed for a few square yards by the edge of the 
river a larger number of new organisms has been ex- 
humed by the Survey than has been obtained from the 
entire Carboniferous system of Scotland for years past. 
As a whole the remains are in an excellent state of pre- 
servation. Indeed in some instances they have been so 
admirably wrapped up in their matrix of fine clay as to 
retain structures which have never before been recognised 
in a fossil state. 
B 
