Part 2-Palaeontology

Abstract

The Ordovician brachiopods of the Girvan district belong to a series of rich fossil assemblages that are among the best known in Britain because thay have been intensively collected by amateur geologusts for over a century on a scale rarely surpassed. The greatest contributors to museum accessions were Mrs. Robert Gray and members of her family, but mention must also be made of the late James L. Begg and Mr. Ronald P. Tripp, both of whom provided important supplemenst to the Gray collections.This large accumulation of well-localized material has been examined by geologists interested in Girvan stratigraphy and even Lapworth's studies, as he acknowledges, were partly dependent on the identification of fossils discovered by Mrs. Gray. Portions of the collections have also been systematically described by T. Davidson and F.R.C. Reed, who, although not primarily concerned with the geology of the district (which neither ever visited), were responsible for naming nearly all of the brachiopods recovered by the Gray family. By 1883, Davidson had identified 12 genera, 50 species and four varities of Caradoc brachiopods and in 1917 Reed emended and enlarged this list to include 75 species and 19 varities, distributed among 45 genera. Yet, weighty as these contributors are, they are strictly systematic and are even misleading in some respects. for Davidson, with as much evidence befor him as Nicholson & Etheridge (1878-80) had in their faunal researches, did not, like them, recognize the strong American affinities of the fauna, while Reed's studies perpetuated some of the