74 REVIEWS. 



means of their fossil flora ; indeed, " the club mosses reed-like casts and 

 impressions, streaked longitudinally, like the interior of the calamite, but 

 apparently without joints" of the Scotch geologists, remind us strongly of 

 Lycopodiaceous-like remains we have seen from Kiltorcan, and of the 

 Sigillaria dichotoma described by Professor Haughton, from Tallow- 

 bridge. 



We pass over recommending it, however, to the earnest investigation 

 of geologists who may have the opportunity of examining for themselves 

 the curious doubt which hangs over the true age of the famous Telerpeton 

 Elginense ; which, according to Mr. Miller, may belong to an outlier of the 

 lias formation, such outliers being common in the part of Scotland in 

 which this interesting fossil was discovered. If this conjecture should 

 prove correct, and the Telerpeton be found not to be of Devonian age, it 

 should serve as a caution to theorists not to press too hastily into the 

 service of their systems supposed facts, the evidence for which may prove 

 very doubtful. Our readers will remember the celebrated case of the sup- 

 posed Chelonian footprints from the Potsdam (Silurian) sandstone of North 

 America, which proved, on investigation, to be the traces of the passage 

 of Crustaceans. 



We pass on to the drift gravels of Scotland, in which Mr. Miller dis- 

 tinguishes three epochs. Of the shells found in the gravels of Banffshire, 

 the oldest of these groups of gravels, Mr. Miller observes 



" The only peculiarity of the shells themselves, viewed in the group, is their in- 

 tensely boreal character. The sole species of Astarte which I have yet found at either 

 Gamrie or Castleton King Edward and I have now visited these deposits five seve- 

 ral times is the Greenland shell (Astarte Arctica}; Natica clausa a shell of 

 Spitzbergen and the North Cape is the prevailing Natica ; and the most abundant 

 shell, of at least the Gamrie deposit-, is a bivalve not yet found living in our seas, 

 but common ten degrees farther to the north, Tellina proximo,. Even the great size 

 to which the latter shell attained in this locality is not without its bearing on the 



rjstion. ' The few specimens which have been dredged [dead] in Britain,' says 

 late Professor Edward Forbes, in his admirable history of the British Mollusca, 

 * are much smaller than the exotic ones, none which we have seen exceeding three- 

 quarters of an inch in length, and about half an inch in breath.' The mollusc is 

 one of those which attain to their fullest development amid the frosts and snows of 

 the higher latidudes ; and it is a curious fact, that in the Gamrie and Castleton de- 

 posits we find it of a considerably greater size than anywhere else in Scotland. My 

 largest specimens from the Clyde beds hardly exceed an inch in length ; whereas 

 my largest Gamrie specimens are nearly two inches long, and their breadth very 

 considerably exceeds the length given as British by Professor Forbes." 



Of the boulder clays of Caithness, the second of the groups of gravel 

 beds, Mr. Miller states 



"The prevailing molluscs of the deposit are Cyprina Island/ca and Turritella 

 communis, especially the former ; the prevailing Astartc, though the Arctica also 

 occurs, is Astarte elliptica; the prevailing Tellina, Tellina xolidula. Tellina prox- 

 imo is of smaller size than in the Gamrie beds; and Natica clausa less common. 



