424 
THE LAST DECADE. 
localities, considering the large area occupied by the Mountain Lime- 
stone extending from Clitheroe and Slaidburn, Thornton, Skipton, to 
Greenhow Hill in the south, to the limits of the county westwards 
and northwards, and that in all these localities the rock is exposed 
for commercial and agricultural purposes in quarries of enormous 
extent. There can remain but one conclusion that whilst these 
rocks are replete with fossil mollusca, corals, and encrinites, there 
appears to have been a most remarkable absence of fishes in the seas 
of that period. The non-discovery may, perhaps, be attributed to a 
want of interest in this branch of palaeontology, but with collectors in 
every district, searching for fossils of other kinds, it seems scarcely 
credible that the fishes would have escaped attention if they had 
been present. Occasionally localities are found in which fish-remains 
are abundant ; one such occurs in the red beds of limestone in 
Wensleydale, from which a large number of fossil teeth have been 
collected by Mr. Wm. Horne, of Leyburn. Occasional specimens have 
also been found at Settle, Kettlewell, and Richmond, and in all 
thirty species are recorded. The author compares the Yorkshire fish- 
remains with those from the Mountain Limestone of Armagh, Bristol, 
and other localities, and arrives at the conclusion that the fishes 
occurring most frequently in the thick-bedded lower limestone of 
other parts of the British Islands are absent or only represented by 
dwarf specimens. The great spines of Ctenacanthus and Oracanthus 
are not present. The great teeth of Orodus, most of the genera of 
the Cochliodonts, the large palates of Psammodus, and the teeth of 
the Petalodonts, have in each case become dwarfed and comparatively 
insignificant. They present the appearance of groups which have 
previously reached the climax of their existence, and were gradually 
succumbing to a more or less unfavourable environment. With the 
advent of the coal measures they almost entirely disappeared. 
Mr. J. Ray Eddy took the opportunity of the Society visiting 
the Raygill Quarries to conduct the members through the lead 
mining district of Cononley, and contributed a paper on the lead 
veins in the neighbourhood of Skipton, the most southern lead- 
producing district in the county. He gave a history of the discovery 
of various workings of the lead mines, and described the strata in 
