270 Notices of Memoirs — P. Macnair — 



In the New Statistical Account of Scotland, published in 1845, 

 under the section "Town and Parishes of Paisley", we find the 

 following important reference to this limestone and these fossils 

 (1845, p. 157). It is of very great interest, because it appears to 

 have hitherto escaped notice, and because it cites the Farm of 

 Gallowhill as the exact locality where the fossils were obtained. 

 The reference runs as follows: "To the north-east of Paisley, on 

 the Farm of Gallowhill, a quarry has of late been wrought in an 

 extensive bed of schistose rock lying almost horizontally about 3 feet 

 below the surface. Its colour is dark grey approachiug to black. 

 Its texture is compact and fine grained, and it readily splits into 

 layers, but is with difficulty broken across. The fracture is splintery 

 and rather conchoidal. It is composed of about 32 per cent, of 

 carbonate of lime, 47 of sand, and 9 of alumina. This rock abounds 

 in beautiful specimens of many genera and species of ferns, as also of 

 shells, chiefly Terebratula, Nucula, and Orthoceratites. The layer of 

 till immediately above this rock for several inches closely resembles 

 Fuller's earth." The most interesting point, however, bearing upon 

 the locality from which Scouler obtained his fossils is contained in 

 the following footnote, which is added: "Two species found here 

 belonging to a rare genus are described by Dr. Scouler in Thomson's 

 Records of General Science, vol. i." 



In 1865 Mr. James Armstrong (1865, p. 74) states in a paper 

 published in the Transactions of this Society that specimens of 

 Dithyrocaris were obtained by Dr. Scouler upwards of thirty years 

 ago in a limestone excavated for the foundations of the Paisley 

 Barracks. 



In a paper read to the Society in 1893 Mr. James Neilson (1S93, 

 p. 71) makes the following statement regarding the locality where 

 the type- specimens of Dithyrocaris tricornis and D. testudinea were 

 found : " It is worthy of notice that when the late Dr. Scouler first 

 discovered Dithyrocaris at Inkerman, near Paisley, nearly the entire 

 animal was got. These beds were afterwards lost, and during many 

 years since, the finding of only one or two carapaces has been 

 recorded." From this it will be seen that Mr. Neilson, in utter 

 disregard of any of the foregoing statements as to the locality at 

 which the specimens were got, has shifted it to Inkerman, l£ miles 

 west of Paisley. But he gives us no reason for his doing so, and 

 I am utterly unable to understand upon what grounds it was made. 



In their memoir on the British Palaeozoic Phyllocaridae Professor 

 T. Rupert Jones and Dr. Henry Wood ward (1898, p. 147) still further 

 complicate the matter, for in the text they say that Dr. Scouler's 

 original specimen of Dithyrocaris testudifiea is in hard, black, earthy 

 limestone from the Carboniferous Limestone Series about a mile to 

 the east of Paisley, the latter part of the sentence being quoted from 

 Dr. Scouler's paper. But in a footnote they say, "At a place now 

 called Inkerman, where Mr. P. Dunlop has lately most obligingly 

 sought for further indications of these fossils, but without success." 

 In this footnote they have evidently been misled by Mr. Neilson. 



As we have already said, we hope to show that the statement made 

 by the authors of the Statistical Account is probably the correct one, 



