226 LOUIS AGASSIZ. [CHAP. ix. 



letter in Vol. II., pp. 470-477 of her work (" Louis 

 Agassiz, His Life and Correspondence "). Lately 

 another letter has been found in Switzerland by 

 M. Auguste Mayor, and I here give an extract from it. 

 The principal part is descriptive of specimens of fossil 

 fishes sent to Agassiz, which would be unintelligible 

 without good figures, and is consequently omitted ; 

 but the parts given are interesting on account of the 

 great originality and keenness of the writer. 



CROMARTY, 3oth May, 1838. 

 PROFESSOR AGASSIZ, 



Neuchatel. 



Honored sir, - - 1 have just learned from my friend Dr. Mal- 

 colmson that you have expressed a wish to see one of the fossils of 

 my little collection. I herewith send it you and a few others which 

 you may perhaps take some interest in examining. 



I fain wish I could describe well enough to give you correct ideas 

 of the locality in which they occur. Imagine a lofty promontory 

 somewhat resembling a huge spear thrust horizontally into the sea,- 

 an immense mass of granitic gneiss, forming the head and a long 

 rectilinear line of Old Red Sandstone the shaft. On the south side 

 are the waters of the Moray Firth, on the north those of the Firth 

 of Cromarty. The claystone beds which contain the fossils occupy 

 an upper place on the sandstone shaft, covering it saddlewise from 

 firth to firth. A bed of yellowish stone about sixty feet in thick- 

 ness lies over them, except where they are laid bare by the sea, or 

 cut into by two deep ravines a bed of redder stone of unascer- 

 tainable depth (though it may be measured downwards for consid- 

 erably more than one hundred yards) lies beneath. The beds 

 themselves average from ten to thirty feet in thickness. They 

 abound everywhere in obscure vegetable impressions and fossil 

 fishes, but in some little spots these last are much better preserved 

 than in the general mass. All my more delicately marked fossils 

 have been furnished by one little piece of beach hardly more than 

 forty square yards in extent. 



