XXVII. Notes on Scottish Brachiopoda

Abstract

The subject of Carboniferous Brachiopoda has lately been of very special interest to a number of the members of this Society, from the fact that Dr. Thomas Davidson, of Brighton, has been revising his great work on the group, published by the Palaeontographical Society, and is now engaged in preparing a supplement, with figures of all recent discoveries [since published, 1881]. There has therefore been a general searching for new points, and, amongst others, I have been in correspondence with Dr. Davidson regarding various matters, some of which, being quite new, I thought would be of interest to the members, more especially as, during the coming summer, there might be an opportunity of elucidating various questions not yet cleared up. Amongst the specimens I have brought for exhibition this evening you will find representatives of nearly all the species of Brachiopoda hitherto found in Scotland, there being only seven or eight not in the collection; but I need not now speak of more than the new or rarer forms. In the first place, I may direct your attention to a remarkable series of minute Brachiopods from weathered limestone at Dockra, near Beith, and which I had the good fortune to discover some six years ago. The decomposed rock is found, after washing, to abound with examples of various minute species, many of them being no larger than the dot of an i in the present type. Some of them have been hitherto regarded as very rare, while one species and This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract