Dr. J. FE. Marr—The Ashgiltian Series, 61 
Group. We are left with 19 forms, viz.: 2 Corals, 2 Bryozoa, and 
15 Brachiopods, of which 11 are Orthides, most of which have a long 
range. This attempted definition of the ‘‘ Upper Bala proper ”’ by its 
included fauna is almost as unsatisfactory as the attempt to draw 
definite lines at its base andsummit. The one satisfactory determination 
in the Catalogue is that of the position of the Ashgill Beds.! 
Having now considered the ‘‘ Upper Bala” Group as originally 
defined in the Cat. Camb. and Sil. Foss., we may pass to the 
consideration of other contributions to the study of the highest 
Ordovician strata at home and abroad. 
The British area where the Ashgillian rocks were first accurately 
separated from those of Middle Bala (Caradocian) age was, as has 
been already stated, that of Lakeland, and we may now consider the 
work which has been done in that region. 
The Upper Bala Beds of the Lake District proper, unlike those of 
Wales, have from the time of the restriction of the term in 1866 been 
correctly grouped, save that Salter included the Coldwell Beds (of 
Lower Ludlow age) with the Ashgill Beds proper, but his reference of 
the Ashgill Beds to the Upper Bala showed that these beds were 
recognised by him as separable from the Middle Bala Group. . 
Professor T. McK. Hughes in 1876 showed me that the shales of 
the Sedbergh area, which he spoke of as the ‘‘ Fairygill Shales,” were, 
like the Ashgill Shales, distinguishable from the ‘‘ Coniston Limestone ” 
below (which contains a Middle Bala fauna) by their organic contents, 
and he discovered Strophomena(?) siluriana in the Ashgill Shales of 
Ashgill, he and the Rev. H. G. Day having previously found it in 
Fairygill, etc., and sent specimens to Davidson, who described them 
in the monograph on the Brachiopods published by the Paleonto- 
graphical Society in 1870. Professor Hughes never published his 
views, but to him belongs the credit of showing that Salter’s Ashgill 
Beds were more than a local development of beds at Ashgill.? 
In a paper which appeared in the Quarterly Journal in 1878 I gave 
a short list of fossils from the Ashgill Shales, but at that time had not 
recognised a calcareous deposit below the base as belonging to the 
Ashgill Group. I first referred that limestone to the Ashgill Series in 
my Sedgwick Essay (1883) in the following words :— 
““ Upper Bala Series. The Ashgill Shales of Sedgwick and 
Salter succeed the Coniston Limestone, and have a very different 
fauna. They are never more than 200 feet thick, and consist of 
a lower stage of grey crystalline limestone, succeeded by poorly 
cleaved bluish or blackish shales.”? Then follows a list of fossils, of 
which those occurring in the lower (calcareous) stage are marked by 
1 J have found it necessary to criticise adversely some of Salter’s conclusions. It 
is only fair to state that at the time when the Cat. Camb. and Sil. Foss. was 
compiled he was in deplorable health ; also that he was unacquainted with the rocks 
in the field whose fossils he was arranging and cataloguing. I need hardly mention 
the respect I have for the work he did among the Lower Palzozoic fossils. 
2 There is reason to believe that the name Ashgill Beds was originally suggested 
to Salter by Aveline, who separated them from the ‘‘ Coniston Limestone’’ proper : 
at any rate, Salter proved the distinctness of the two groups on paleontological 
grounds. 
