THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 13 
of the gap, and perhaps a little more ;—the geolcgy of Ar- 
ran wants, it is supposed, only the Upper New Red Sandstone 
to fill it entirely. 
One important truth I would fain press on the attention of 
my lowlier readers. There are few professions, however 
humble, that do not present their peculiar advantages of ob- 
servation ; there are none, | repeat, in which the exercise of 
the faculties does not lead to enjoyment. I advise the stone- 
mason, for instance, to acquaint himself with Geology. Much 
of his time must be spent amid the rocks and quarries of 
widely separated localities. The bridge or harbor is no soon- 
er completed in one district, than he has to remove to where 
the gentleman’s seat, or farm-steading is to be erected in an- 
other; and so, in the course of a few years, he may pass 
over the whole geological scale, even when restricted to Scot- 
land, from the Grauwacke of the Lammermuirs, to the 
Wealden of Moray, or the Chalk-flints of Banffshire and 
Aberdeen ; and this, too, with opportunities of observation, at 
every stage, which can be shared with him by only the gen- 
tleman of fortune, who devotes his whole time to the study. 
Nay, in some respects, his advantages are superior to those 
of the amateur himself. The latter must often pronounce a 
formation unfossiliferous when, after the examination of at 
most a few days, he discovers in it nothing organic ; and it 
will be found that half the mistakes of geologists have arisen 
from conclusions thus hastily formed. But the working-man, 
whose employments have to be carried on in the same forma- 
tion for months, perhaps years, together, enjoys better oppor- 
tunities for arriving at just decisions. There are, besides, a 
thousand varieties of accident which lead to discovery — 
floods, storms, landslips, tides of unusual height, ebbs of ex- 
traordinary fall: and the man who plies his labor at all seae 
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