ON ELGIN SANDSTONE REPTILES 89 



from its bony scutes, described by Agassiz as an Old Red 

 Sandstone ganoid fish ; and how, after the description by 

 Mantell of the little lizard-like Telerpcton Elginense, the 

 Scottish Upper Old Red became credited with a reptilian 

 fauna. It was afterwards that Huxley determined Stagonolepis 

 to be a crocodilian of Mesozoic type, and that he described two 

 additional genera, Hyperodapedon and Dasygnathus> from the 

 same beds ; and as the former of these, Hyperodapedon, also 

 turned up in Triassic strata in England and in India, the faith 

 of geologists in the Palaeozoic age of the Reptiliferous Sand- 

 stone was completely shaken, and the necessary inference of a 

 long break in time between it and the undoubted Upper Old 

 Red Holoptyckius-\>Qaxmg beds of the same district came to 

 be acknowledged. Finally, in 1885, an imperfect skeleton 

 from the same region was determined by Professor Judd and 

 the present writer to belong to the Dicynodontia : a group of 

 reptiles previously unknown in Europe, but occurring in 

 Triassic rocks in India and Africa. All doubt as to the 

 Mesozoic age of these reptiliferous beds may now be said to 

 have disappeared from the minds of the overwhelming majority 

 of geologists. 



The last-mentioned skeleton, from Cuttie's Hillock, near 

 Elgin, along with other reptilian remains subsequently col- 

 lected in the same locality, has furnished Mr. Newton with 

 the material which, after much pains and labour, he has 

 worked up into the present elaborate memoir. In these fossils 

 the osseous substance itself has entirely disappeared, leaving 

 the bones represented only by hollow cavities in the rock. To 

 gain an accurate conception of their original shape is therefore 

 a matter of some difficulty, especially when we have to deal 

 with objects of such complicated configuration as the skull of 

 a reptile. This difficulty Mr. Newton has surmounted by 

 making casts of these cavities in gutta percha ; and in many 

 cases these casts had to be made in separate pieces, which 

 were afterwards fitted together. 



The whole of these reptiles from Cuttie's Hillock are new 

 to science, generically and specifically, and have been referred 

 by Mr. Newton to three genera and six species, belonging 

 to the extinct groups of Dicynodontia and Pareiosauria, as 

 follows : 



