nor even

not of merely a partial, but of a general vegetation. Now, the coniferous lignite of the Lower Old Red Sandstone we find charged, like the olive-leaf, with a various and singularly interesting evidence. It is something to know, that in the times of the Coccosteus and Asterolepis there existed dry land, and that that land wore, as at after periods, its soft, gay mantle of green. It is something also to know, that the verdant tint was not owing to a profuse development of mere immaturities of the vegetable kingdom, — crisp, slow-growing lichens, or watery spore-propagated fungi, that shoot up to their full size in a night, to an abundance of the more highly organized families of the liverworts and the mosses. These may have abounded then, as now; though we have not a shadow of evidence that they did. But while we have no proof whatever of their existence, we have conclusive proof that there existed orders and families of a rank far above them. On the dry land of the Lower Old Red Sandstone, on which, according to the theory of Adolphe Brogniart, nothing higher than a lichen or a moss could have been expected, the ship-carpenter might have hopefully taken axe in hand to explore the woods for some such stately pine as the one described by Milton,

"Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast

Of some great admiral."

SIR RODERICK MURCHISON

ON THE

RECENT GEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES IN MORAYSHIRE.

Ar a meeting of the Geological Society of London, held on the 15th December 1858, Part III. of a paper by Sir Roderick Murchison, on "the Geological Structure of the North of Scotland," was read.

Referring to his previous memoir for an account of the triple division of the Old Red Sandstone of Caithness and the Orkney Islands, Sir Roderick showed how the chief member of the group in those tracts diminished in its range southwards into Ross-shire, and how, when traceable through Inverness and Nairn, it was scarcely to be recognized in Morayshire, but reäppeared, with its characteristic ichthyolites, in Banffshire (Dipple, Tynet, and Gamrie). He then prefaced his description of the ascending order of the strata belonging to this group in Morayshire by a sketch of the successive labors of geologists in that district; pointing out how, in 1828, the sandstones and cornstones of this tract had been shown by Professor Sedgwick and himself to constitute, together with the inferior Red

Sandstone and conglomerate, one natural geological assemblage; that in 1839 the late Dr. Malcolmson made the important additional discovery of fossil fishes, in conjunction with Lady Gordon Cumming; and also read a valuable memoir on the structure of the tract, before the Geological Society, of which, to his, the author's, regret, an abstract only had been published. — (Proc. Geol. Soc. vol. iii. p. 141.) Sir Roderick revisited the district in the autumn of 1840, and made sections in the environs of Forres and Elgin. Subsequently, Mr. P. Duff of Elgin published a "Sketch of the Geology of Moray," with illustrative plates of fossil-fishes, sections, and a geological map, by Mr. John Martin; and afterwards Mr. Alexander Robertson threw much light upon the structure of the district, particularly as regarded deposits younger than those under consideration. All these writers, as well as Sedgwick and himself, had grouped the yellow and whitish-yellow sandstones of Elgin with the Old Red Sandstone; but the discovery in them of the curious small reptile the Telerpeton Elginense, described by Mantell in 1851 from a specimen in Mr. P. Duff's collection, first occasioned doubts to arise respecting the age of the deposit. Still, the sections by Captain Brickenden, who sent that reptile up to London, proved that it had been found in a sandstone which dipped under "Cornstone," and which passed downwards into the Old Red series. Captain Brickenden also sent to London natural impressions of the foot-prints of an apparently reptilian animal in a slab of similar sandstone, from the coastridge extending from Burghead to Lossiemouth (Cummingston). Although adhering to his original view respecting the age of the sandstones, Sir R. Murchison could not help having misgivings and doubts, in common with many geologists, on account of the high grade of reptile

to which the Telerpeton belonged; and hence he revisited the tract, examining the critical points, in company with his friend the Rev. G. Gordon, to whose zealous labors he owned himself to be greatly indebted. In looking through the collections in the public Museum of Elgin, and of Mr. P. Duff, he was much struck with the appearance of several undescribed fossils, apparently belonging to reptiles, which, by the liberality of their possessors, were, at his request, sent up for inspection to the Museum of Practical Geology. He was also much astonished at the state of preservation of a large bone (ischium) apparently belonging to a reptile, found by Mr. Martin in the same sandstone quarries of Lossiemouth in which the scales or scutes of the Stagonolepis, described as belonging to a fish by Agassiz, had been found. On visiting these quarries, Mr. G. Gordon and himself fortunately discovered other bones of the same animal; and these, having been compared with the remains in the Elgin collections, have enabled Professor Huxley to decide that, with the exception of the Telerpeton, all these casts, scales, and bones belong to the reptile Stagonolepis Robertsoni. Sir Roderick, having visited the quarries in the coast-ridge, from which slabs with impressions of reptilian foot-marks had long been obtained, induced Mr. G. Gordon to transmit a variety of these, which are now in the Museum of Practical Geology, and of which some were exhibited at the meeting.

After reviewing the whole succession of strata, from the edge of the crystalline rocks in the interior to the bold cliffs on the sea-coast, the author has satisfied himself that the reptile-bearing sandstones must be considered to form the uppermost portion of the Old Red Sandstone, or Devonian group, the following being among the chief reasons for his adherence to this view:-1. That these sandstones

have everywhere the same strike and dip as the inferior red sandstones containing Holoptychii and other Old Red ichthyolites, there being a perfect conformity between the two rocks, and a gradual passage from the one into the other. 2. That the yellow and light colors of the upper band are seen in natural sections to occur and alternate with red and green sandstones, marls, and conglomerates low down in the ichthyolitic series. 3. That while the concretionary limestones called "Cornstones" are seen amidst some of the lowest red and green conglomerates, they reäppear in a younger and broader zone at Elgin, and reöccur above the Telerpeton-stone at Spynie Hill, and above the Stagonolepis-sandstone of Lossiemouth; thus binding the whole into one natural physical group. 4. That whilst the small patches of so-called "Wealden" or Oolitic strata, described by Mr. Robertson and others, occuring in this district, are wholly unconformable to, and rest upon, the eroded surfaces of all the rocks under consideration, so it was shown that none of the Oolitic or Liassic rocks of the opposite side of the Moray Frith, or those of Brora, Dunrobin, Eathie, etc., which are charged with Oolitic and Liassic remains, resemble the reptiliferous sandstones and "Cornstones" of Elgin, or their repetitions in the coast-ridge that extends from Burghead to Lossiemouth. Fully aware of the great difficulty of determining the exact boundary-line between the Uppermost Devonian and Lowest Carboniferous strata, and knowing that they pass into each other in many countries, the author stated that no one could dogmatically assert that the reptile-bearing sandstones might not, by future researches, be proved to form the commencement of the younger era.

Sir Roderick concluded by stating that the conversion of the Stagonolepis into a reptile of high organization,