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THE GEOLOGIST. 



may be advantageously made at every quarry. The Sutton quarry is 

 well worth staying at,forhere the head-plates of Pteraspis are of frequent 

 occurrence, and are much better preserved than elsewhere, phosphate 

 of iron having coloured them blue and purple, and chemically fixed 

 the outer striated layer of shell — so seldom found in position — to the 

 internal cancellated and filmy ones. At Bouldon too, in the quarry 

 near the mill, Pteraspis is not unfrequent; but the cornstone is 

 coarser, made up of larger and more angular pebbles, and the fossils 

 have suffered many breakages from being laid in their company. On 

 the opposite side of the dale, good Pteraspides have, I believe, been 

 found at Norton, a small village nearly opposite to Hayton ; and if 

 we turn eastward from that point, and skirt the foot of the Titterstone 

 Hill, we shall get some specimens of much interest from a quarry 

 near Farlow. Indeed, the finest specimen of P. rostratus I ever saw, 

 came from a sandstone rock occurring with cornstones, near the 

 forge in that village. 



There is another good exposure of fish-bearing Old Bed which has 

 had scant justice done to it — the beautiful country lying north of Brom- 

 yard. At Hinston and Acton Beauchamp, near this town, Cephalaspis 

 Salweyi has been met with. This is a large species, having its enamel 

 layer covered with "pearly drop-like tubercles" of small size, which, 

 together with its other distinct characteristics of shape and ornamen- 

 tation are described by Mr. Harley, in the Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., 

 vol. xv., p. 504. 



I think it likely that the Upper Cornstones occur near Tedstone 

 Delamere, though I have been unable to verify this by a visit. This 

 hard brecciated band is well worth searching for, as it contains in 

 the two openings made into it, of which I am aware, that very beau- 

 tiful species, Gej)lialasj)is asterolepis — the monarch, by virtue of size 

 and ornamentation, of the " Buckler-heads." A short memoir is 

 given by Mr. Harley, in the Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xv., p. 

 503, which, as we learn from a note appended, will be incorporated 

 with the description of Cephalaspides to be published by the Geological 

 Survey. The outer surface of the head-shield possessed by this regal 

 fish is ornamented by tubercles, variable in size, but larger than those 

 of C. Salweyi. But the most wonderful structure is that of the inner 

 plate — borrowing the words of Mr. Harley — " It presents lacunae and 

 long branching canaliculi precisely resembling those of human bone. 

 Many of these are completely injected with a transparent blood-red 

 material ; and so beautifully are they thus displayed, that one ignorant 

 of the structure of bone would be able to apprehend it by a glance at 

 a minute part of this ancient fragment. So wonderfully indeed has 

 nature i rcasured up her secrets in this disentombed relic of a time 

 so distant as to be incalculable, that she distinctly reveals in their 

 minutest details the structure of canals not more than the one fifty- 

 bhousandth of an inch in diameter, and such as defy the skill of the 

 anatomist to inject." Several good specimens of G. aM&rol&pis have 

 been from time to time obtained by me from an exposure of the Upper 

 Cornstones at Heightmgton, near Bewdley. But the mine is now 



