Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2009
The collection of Upper Devonian trilobites which Whidborne studied and described or figured is a small one, but most of the figured specimens are in the Sedgwick Museum, and though generally they are in poor preservation he was able to determine the species to his satisfaction. However, since his Monograph appeared (1896) a considerable amount of work on Devonian trilobites has been published, and the whole question of the Devonian or Carboniferous age of part or all of the beds from which they came is still unsettled. The evidence of the trilobites is somewhat contradictory, the genus Phacops and its subgenera being usually considered to range up no higher than the Devonian, while Brachymatopus has been regarded in the past as restricted to the Carboniferous. Whidborne recorded also a species of Phillipsia from the Upper Devonian, but as will be pointed out in this paper the evidence of the specimens is against this generic reference. The precise horizon and exact locality unfortunately were not given by Whidborne in the case of his figured specimens, the name of the town, village, or road only being stated, and this is unsatisfactory, particularly in those instances where it is of great importance to know the definite horizon or bed from which they were obtained, for the lithological characters of the matrix or mode of preservation is usually insufficient to determine it.