16 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



There is not in all England more lovely scenery than that 

 around the protruded Upper Silurian dome of Hagley Park, in 

 the village of Bartestree, five miles S.E. of the old town of 

 Hereford, nor am I aware of any locality where the Ludlow bone 

 bed is more charged with the relics of dead fish and Crustaceans. 

 It was here that my late friend, Mr. Scobie, obtained the most 

 perfect claw of the "Pterygotus Problematicus," — that extinct 

 Silurian lobster, — yet known to science ; here Mr. Strickland found 

 the seeds of the first known land plant, a Lycopodium, or fossil 

 club-moss ; and the only time I could ever afford an hour's work 

 there, I obtained the finest spine of the Onchus Murchisoni, an 

 Upper Silurian placoid fish, I have ever yet beheld; while, 

 doubtless, the cabinets of the Geologists of Herefordshire are 

 enriched with numerous specimens I have not seen. The 

 members of the Woolhope Club can hardly allow so rich a bed 

 to remain unexplored, more especially when the courteous owner 

 of the land, Mr. Phillips, railed off the dome, and preserved it for 

 their peculiar examination and benefit. 



To return to the organisms of the bone bed ; it is a curious fact 

 that, a few months after Mr. Strickland and Mr. Salter had 

 described the Pterygotus of the Hagley dome, Mr. John Burrow 

 should find the jaw-foot of the same animal in beds immensely 

 lower in the Geologic scale, even in the Caradoc sandstones below 

 Eastnor obelisk, on the flanks of the Malvems. Thus we have 

 evidence that this Crustacean, or one of the same genus, lived in 

 the Caradoc Ocean. Nor is this all ; the Pterygoti are found in 

 strata far higher than the Upper Ludlow bone bed ; they swarm in 

 the Tilestones of the Kington district, where it was discovered by 

 Mr. Banks. It is there associated with its feUow-Crustaceans, 

 Pterygotus Anglic anus and Himantopterus, with the Silurian fish, 

 Onchus Murchisoni, the new forms of, Plecti'odus, Cephalaspis 

 ornatus, Auchenaspis Salteri, and last, though not least, with the 

 Upper Silurian fossil, the little moUusc, Lingula cornea. We 

 ascend considerably higher on the ladder of geologic history, and 

 near Kidderminster we find grey tilestones passmg upwards into 

 true Cornstones; here Mr. Roberts detected the Pterygotus and 

 Eurypterus buried in the same grave vnth those very charac- 

 teristic Old Red fishes Cephalaspis Lyellii, and Cephalaspis 



