VINE : PALEONTOLOGY OF THE WENLOCK SHALES. 
227 
counted for in a very simple way — the want of persistent research 
and careful tabulation of the fragmentary remains as well as un- 
broken specimens. 
It would have been impossible, at the time Mr. Etheridge was 
compiling material for his address, to have furnished a list like the 
present one. Why we are able to do so now may be briefly restated — 
though fuller details will be found on reference to the pages of the 
Geol. Mag. for 1881. 
Messrs. George Maw and Mr. T. Davidson in the March number 
of that periodical, p. 100, gave a very full account of the washing of 
Wenlock shales for the purpose of illustrating results, but of one group 
only, viz., the Brachiopoda. Mr. Davidson says that between fifty 
and sixty thousand specimens were brought to light by the means 
employed, but even that does not fully represent the wealth of even 
the Brachiopadal remains in the shales, if I may be allowed to judge, 
from my own experience in the matter. Many interesting details 
are given by the authors, and we gather from these that altogether 
about 20 tons of the shales, from difi'erent localities, were washed and 
hand picked for Brachiopoda alone. Taking then a few horizons, which 
will be again referred to further on, we find that from one cart load 
of the shale from the Build was beds 4,300 specimens of Orthis 
biloba were obtained, "besides a much greater bulk of other Brachio- 
poda, amounting altogether to 10,000 specimens at least : but this 
does not nearly represent the full wealth of life of this rich horizon, 
as many of the larger species, and others not completely calcified, 
would get broken up in the washing process." This is true in every 
sense, and my connection with the shale washings is wholly due to 
the suggestive sentence which follows immediately after the close of 
the paragTaph quoted fop. cit. p. 101.) " The whole of the debris 
has been preserved," say the authors, after "picking out the Brachio- 
poda, as it abounds in minute corals and other fossils, which will, we 
hope, be investigated by other observers." 
Immediately after reading this paragraph I wrote to Dr. David- 
son for some of this reserved debris, and in a very kind letter which 
he wrote he referred me to Mr. G. Maw, in whose keeping it was. 
Not many weeks elapsed, however, after my request was so ably 
