BRITISH SILURIAN BRACHIOPODA. 221 



In liis very valuable opening address to the Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh 

 " On the Palaeozoic Conchology of Scotland," 1881, Mr. R. Etheridge, jun., recapitulated, 

 among other things, all that had been published with respect to the Carboniferous and 

 Silurian Brachiopoda. In this able memoir Mr. Etheridge reminds his readers that the 

 existence of Lower Palseozoic rocks in Scotland was first announced by Dr. James Hutton 

 in the year 1795, and by his friend and fellow-labourer. Sir James Hall, speaking of " forms 

 of cockles quite distinct and of great abundance in an Alpine limestone at Wrae Hill, in 

 the Parish of Broughton in Peeblesshire ; " also that fossils were found by Laidlaw, the 

 friend of Sir Walter Scott, and that it is highly probable that some of the so-called 

 "cockles" were Brachiopods. Mr. Etheridge states likewise that Thomas Steven, in a 

 paper read before the Wernerian Society of Edinburgh on the 8th April, 1843, was the 

 first to tell us that he had found shells at Little Ross, which appeared to belong to the 

 genus Terebratula. 



In 1844 Prof. J. Nicol gave a list of organic remains derived from the strata of 

 Girvan, of which three were Brachiopoda. This communication was, in 1847, fol- 

 lowed by another in vol. iv of the ' Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society,' and in 

 this Mr, J. W. Salter described several Scottish Silurian Brachiopoda that had been 

 obtained by the Earl of Selkirk and Sir R. Murchison. The same distinguished palaeonto- 

 logist alluded also in 1848 to five species collected by Professor J. Nicol in the Silurian 

 rocks of the Valley of the Tweed; and he hkewise communicated, as a short note to Mr. J. 

 C. Moore's paper, " Descriptions of some Silurian Brachiopoda from the Stinchar River 

 and Slates of Loch Ryan." Prof. M'Coy described a few Scottish Silurian Brachiopoda 

 procured by the Rev. A. Sedgwick; and in the 'Annals of Nat. History' for 1850-52 

 alludes to some more. In 1851 a list of seventeen species of Brachiopoda from the 

 Silurian rocks of Ayrshire, collected by and for Sir R. Murchison, was published by Mr, 

 Salter. This was at that time a great advance in our knowledge of the subject ; now, 

 however, we are acquainted with 134 so-termed species from the same district. 



In 1867 Mr. C. W. Peach found a Brachiopod in the Lower Silurian rocks of 

 Sutherlandshire, and this at the time was looked upon as an important discovery. 



In 1858 Prof. A. Geikie had been so fortunate as to discover in the Upper Silurian 

 rocks of the Pentland Hills a species of Brachiopod ; and this led to an active study of 

 the beds and a careful and assiduous search for more specimens by Messrs. R. Gibs, J. 



Tertiary beds on the West Coast of the Island of Mull contain leaves of dicotyledonous plants, described by 

 his Grace the Duke of Argyll in 1857. 



Several species of Cretaceous Brachiopoda were found in Chalk-flints on the shore of Aberdeenshire, 

 and I described and figured them in the 'Geologist' for December, 1862, but no rock in situ has been 

 found to contain them. See also Salter and Fergusson, ' Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xiii. p. 84, &c. 



Devonian rocks are largely represented in Scotland by the " Old Red Sandstone," which Hugh Miller 

 has rendered classical through his admirable works, entitled ' The Old Red Sandstone,' ' The Footprints 

 of the Creator,' and others. Its wonderful fishes he admirably described ; but, as he has often told me, 

 no vestige of a Brachiopod was he ever able to discover. 



