88 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



ON MR. E. T. NEWTON'S MEMOIR "ON SOME NEW 

 REPTILES FROM THE ELGIN SANDSTONES." 1 



By R. H. TRAQUAIR, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S. 



OWING to its more northerly situation and consequently 

 colder climate, Scotland cannot in a general way compete 

 with England as a hunting-ground for the ordinary collector 

 of natural history objects. We do not find with us that pro- 

 fusion of insect life, or that abundance of lovely flowering 

 plants, with which the southern naturalist may fill his cabinet 

 or his herbarium. Geologically too, Scotland consists almost 

 entirely of crystalline and Palaeozoic rocks, with only a few 

 very small and isolated patches of secondary or tertiary strata, 

 so that the collector of pretty fossils need not come to us if 

 he wishes to load himself with those beautiful Jurassic ammon- 

 ites, Cretaceous echini, and Eocene volutes, which he can 

 obtain in abundance in those new r er rocks which cover so 

 much of the surface of the southern part of our island. 



But it is precisely in the field of palaeontology where lies 

 the distinguishing feature of Scottish natural history. It is 

 the peculiar richness of its Old Red Sandstone and Lower 

 Carboniferous fish-fauna which has hitherto invested Scotland 

 with a peculiar interest in the eye of the investigator of 

 ancient vertebrate life. Now another and newer formation, 

 the Triassic of the neighbourhood of Elgin, has been coming 

 to the front, and we have here to deal with vertebrates of a 

 higher grade than fishes, namely with Reptilia of Mesozoic 

 type. And the above-quoted paper by Mr. E. T. Newton, 

 F.R.S. , of the Museum of Practical Geology, London, dealing 

 as it does with recent discoveries in the Reptiliferous Sand- 

 stones of Morayshire, may be considered to be the most im- 

 portant contribution to Scottish palaeontology which has 

 appeared for many years, and one on which the author may 

 most heartily be congratulated. 



In a short introduction Mr. Newton tells the well-known 

 tale of the history of these Morayshire fossil reptiles : how the 

 earliest kno\vn of them, the crocodilian Stagonolepis, was first, 



1 "Philosophical Transactions," vol. 184 (1893) B. pp. 431-503, Plates 

 XXVI-XLI. By E. T. Newton, F.R.S. 



