370 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Apr. 22, 



To Mr. Alfred Marston, of Ludlow, is due the credit of making 

 the discovery of Starfish here; and he has also found them in a 

 similar bed, three feet thick, in a quarry about a quarter of a mile 

 north of this one, on the west side of the old road to Leintwardine, 

 but having* this peculiarity — that it lies conformably on a bed full 

 of Pentamerus Knightii, at least nine feet thick, and is covered by 

 another Pentamerus-bed eighteen inches thick, so that it is unques- 

 tionably enveloped in the Aymestry Limestone. This neighbour- 

 hood is traversed by many faults, and it has been suggested that 

 the occurrence of these Lower Ludlow beds above the Aymestry 

 Limestone may be due to them and the falling over or reversal of 

 the beds ; but in the last-mentioned case, certainly, this would not 

 explain the phenomena, inasmuch as the limestone-beds overlie, as 

 well as underlie, these beds containing Lower Ludlow fossils. In 

 the first-mentioned section, too, the circumstances are very peculiar; 

 for there is, apparently, evidence of the action of water, either sub- 

 aerial or, possibly, an ocean- current, which has cut through the 

 consolidated (but possibly not then indurated) beds of the Aymestry 

 Limestone previous to the cessation of the animal life of the Lower 

 Ludlow period ; so that, when circumstances again admitted of it, a 

 deposit took place, nearly similar in nature and contents to that of 

 the Lower Ludlow. Does it not bear some comparison with M. 

 Barrande's " Colonies," only reversed in position? 



I now come to the question of classification of the beds overlying 

 the Aymestry Limestone. It is well known that, at the time when the 

 maps of the Geological Survey relating to the Ludlow district were 

 coloured, there was comparatively less weight than at present 

 attached to the palaeontology of the Silurian strata in the discrimi- 

 nation of the beds, which was determined more by their lithological 

 character. We may fairly assume, I think, that the Whitcliff at 

 Ludlow was considered the typical section of the Upper Ludlow 

 rock, running downwards as it does from the Downton Sandstone, 

 and the Bone-bed, in apparently unbroken sequence. The surveyor 

 at that time, looking at the nearly identical dips of the beds there, 

 their lithological character, and structure of bedding, — and, more- 

 over, finding certain fossils, such as Chonetes lata, Rliynclionella 

 nucida, Goniopliora cymb&formis, and Orthonota amygdalina, in both 

 the upper and the lower beds, very naturally believed that they were 

 all part of the same group, and undisturbed. A little closer exami- 

 nation, however, would have shown the existence of two faults, by 

 which a large portion of the middle of the cliff is thrown up, until 

 the beds originally at the bottom of it now form the capping, though 

 the dip is but slightly altered. Again, a closer examination of the 

 fossils would have shown that though some of the fossils pervade 

 the whole series of beds, yet that portion between the faults also con- 

 tains a number of other species, which I believe are never found in 

 the true Upper Ludlow, and others, abundantly, which are very rare 

 in those beds, while all belong specially to the so-called Aymestry 

 Limestone and the Lower Ludlow. Among the fossils belonging 

 to the lower formation, but found on Whitcliff, I may mention 



