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R. Murchison, who has been labouring hard at it, has pointed out, while laying 

 down a more definite arrangement of the geological features of the country, many 

 new and interesting facts, on which the new edition of SUuria, just published, has 

 enlightened us. The Lower Silurian deposits in the northern part of Scotland, 

 particularly in Sutherland, appear to be very different from the same deposits in 

 this country, consisting of a series of quartzite with intercalated limestone highly 

 crystalline, overlaid by quartzose and other crystalline rocks havmg a gneissose 

 character. So little were these understood, that Professor Nicoll, of Aberdeen, 

 was mclined to consider them as equivalents of the carboniferous rocks in the 

 south of ScotlcUid, while Hugh Miller regarded them as metamorphosed representa- 

 tives of the Old Red Sandstone of the eastern coast. Mr. Peach, however, dis- 

 covered in these crystalline rocks, fossils, which are determined to be of Lower 

 Silurian age, consisting of a Serpulites (S. Macculochii) and a few fucoids from 

 the quartzite, besides a series in the limestone — Maclurea, Ophiolite, Onchoceras, 

 and Orthoceras, fossils which hitherto have been limited to the Lower Silurian 

 series of North America, known as the Huronian rocks, and the limestones above 

 them. With regard to the Upper Silurian beds, there have not been so many 

 discoveries very lately — that is to say, in the old established Upper Silurian 

 rocks — but it is in the disputed ground of the Passage-beds that the most im- 

 portant work is being done, and new creatures discovered in rocks which were 

 formerly looked upon as unfossiliferous and uninviting. Some of the members 

 of our Club, especially our Ludlow and Kington friends, have been foremost in 

 developing the strange forms of Pterygotus, Eurypterus, Auchenaspis, Ceratio- 

 caris, that we are now familiar with ; nor must I forget the Starfish bed which 

 has yielded such uncommon fossils as the Palaocoma, &c., to their dihgent 

 hammers. While they have been working out their transition beds to such good 

 purpose, Mr. David Page has exhumed strange-looking forms from the Lanark- 

 shire and Forfarshire beds, which until their exact positions have been defined, 

 he styles Siluro-Devonian rocks. From the Tilestones of the former he has got 

 Pterinea, Orthonota, Trinucleus, Avicula, Orthoceras, Eurypterus clavipes and 

 Eurypterus spinipes, thus adding two new species to the twelve already known ; 

 while the Forfarshire flagstones, which appear at the base of the Old Red, have 

 yielded the gigantic tube of the worm (Scolithus) and two new crustaceans, which 

 have been named Kampecaris and Stylonurus, as well as a small fish with kite- 

 like head, armed with five spines, called Ictinocephalus granulatus. In the same 

 beds he has also found a Cyclopteris and Lepidodendron. Perhaps these are the 

 equivalents of the beds at Trimpley, where Mr. Roberts also found vegetable 

 remains. The Old Red, since the days when Hugh Miller wrote his admirable 

 little volume, "The Old Red Sandstone," has been so divided and subdivided 

 that it has had a narrow escape of dymg away altogether ; but fortunately for it, 

 the opmions which were for giving half of it to the Carboniferous system and the 

 other half to the Silurian, have changed, and the Old Red is still Old Red. 



Again, it is in Scotland that the most important work has been done. Sir 

 R. Murchison has finally classed the rocks in the north-east under three divisions : 

 the lowermost being conglomerates and sandstones, the equivalents of the For- 



