28 
This portion of Sigillaria is often met with in the beds of 
limestone in the Yoredale series of Professor Phillips, as 
well as much lower down in the carboniferous series in the 
limestone of West Calder, near Bathgate, Scotland, where it 
occurs in great abundance. He also stated that the lower 
coal seams of Scotland containing workable beds were of 
considerably earlier date than the Posidonian Schists of the 
Isle of Man. 
Dr. R. Angus Smith, F.R.S., said that he had frequently 
visited some parts of the Continent, and had been a student 
of exhibitions such as included the useful arts. He was 
quite prepared to agree with those who saw a very great im- 
provement in the touch of the workman, in the countries 
nearest to us in the north of Europe especially. In France 
the advance made was very great, and so also in Germany ; 
but in neither of these cases did he consider that the exhibi- 
tion showed the true state of the arts among the people. A 
true exhibition would give the proportion of bad and of good 
manufactures. There was no attempt to do this except in 
cases where the objects were viewed rather as curiosities, as 
for example, when costumes and architecture were intro- 
duced. When a number of knife makers showed their 
manufactures, it was clear that they all showed their best, 
but they did not show how many made knives that would 
scarcely cut, and even if they had done so, it would not 
have been sufficient to exhibit the state of the arts among 
the people. It would not inform us how many of the popu- 
lation had no knives set down to them at dinner, and how 
many houses had not a fork of any kind. In one of the 
countries which had made greatest progress and showed 
beautiful work of all kinds at the exhibition, he had been 
in an hotel where no fork whatever existed, and when he 
asked for a knife, the landlady handed him one from her 
pocket. Yet she and the landlord were very respectable 
