Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 34.djvu/25



Introduction.—Little or no attention has been paid to the organic remains of the great series of strata below the Gilmerton or No. 1 Limestone of the Midlothian coal-field (adopted as the conventional base of the Carboniferous Limestone series by the Geological Survey when compared with the numerous papers and other publications bearing on the fossils of the overlying strata or Carboniferous Limestone Series. It is true the fishes were examined by Agassiz, and the plants to some extent by Lindley and Hutton, but in both cases only to a limited extent. Dr. Hibbert's celebrated paper on the Burdiehouse Limestone appears to have been the first memoir in which any systematic observations were recorded; and, with the exception of a few miscellaneous publications in the interim, it was not until the Geological Survey broke ground in the Edinburgh neighbourhood that any further detailed work of this nature was