72 
HUGHES : INGLEBOROUGH. 
time referring to authors who speak of the " Coniston Flags 
proper " or the Upper Middle and Lower Coniston Flags, while 
they intend to exclude the lowest beds. 
The following references and extracts will enable anyone 
to verify the history of the clearing up of this part of our Silurian 
classification.* 
Harkness and Nicholson evidently were collecting from the 
Coniston Flags when (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xxiv., 
1868, p. 480) they recorded the fossils Cardiola interrupta, 
Actinocrinus pulcher, and (ib. vol. xxiv., 1868, p. 298) the 
Graptolites G. priodon, and G. Sagittarius, but they had not 
yet got the key to the classification, for they state that " two 
important members of the Silurian Series are wanting in the 
Lake Country, namely, the Llandovery rocks, and the Wenlock 
Group. In this district we have no smooth Pentameri : Atrypa 
hemisphoerica, Encrinurus punctatus, and other Upper Llandovery 
fossils are absent ; nor do the characteristic fossils of the Wenlock 
occur." The same authors, however, soon made a great advance 
towards clearing up the difficulty by their discovery of " the 
occurrence in the Lake District of a new and unique horizon 
containing a rich graptolite fauna in that portion of the Silurian 
Series which had been termed by Professor Sedgwick " the 
Coniston Flags." 
" The succeeding and conformable mudstones introduce 
an entirely new fauna, and one which has no representative in 
Great Britain among the rocks appertaining to the Caradoc 
age " (op. cit., p. 301). They do not, however place them above 
the Caradoc, but below it. " The species from these mudstones 
(with the exception of three, G. Sedgwickii, G. priodon, and G. 
tenuis) and the new forms are also equally confined in Great 
Britain to the Upper Llandeilo rocks and another form, Rastrites 
peregrinus, also has hitherto been found in Britain only in the 
same horizon." 
It is obvious that the fossils had been collected from flags 
of different age. The Upper or Silurian Flags of Builth had 
not yet been separated from the lower or Bala Beds of similar 
*cf. Siluria, 3rd Ed., p. 127. 
