The neighbourhood of Much Wenlock and Buildwas is famous for Silurian fossils. It was from this district that George Maw procured such a large series for Thomas Davidson. The latter described to me how Maw used to work. He washed something like 11 tons of the shale, and the debris, sorted out by sieves, was spread on tables for women to look over, so that they might pick out the fossils. By this means thousands of specimens were obtained, and all the Brachiopods were sent to Davidson for the purposes of his monograph. There were as many as 10,000 specimens of Orthis biloba. I asked Davidson how he accomplished the labour of sorting, and with a chuckle he replied that he engaged the services of some Brighton Parsons for the rough sorting of the species, “because they had nothing to do six days in the week.”

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