16 THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 
own countrymen rested chiefly on his researches in the more 
ancient formations, — “* you must inevitably give up the Old 
Red Sandstone: it isa mere local deposit, a doubtful accu- 
mulation huddled up in a corner, and has no type or represen- 
tative abroad.” ‘* 1 would willingly give it up if nature would,” 
was the reply ; ‘¢ but it assuredly exists, and I cannot.’’” Ina 
recently published tabular exhibition of the geological scale 
by a continental geologist, I could not distinguish this system 
at all. There are some of our British geologists, too, who 
still regard it as a sort of debatable tract, entitled to no inde- 
pendent status. ‘They find, in what they deem its upper beds, 
the fossils of the Coal Measures, and the lower graduating 
apparently into the Silurian System; and regard the whole 
as a sort of common, which should be divided as proprietors 
used to divide commons in Scotland half a century ago, by 
giving a portion to each of the bordering territories. Even 
the better informed geologists, who assign to it its proper 
place as an independent formation, furnished with its own 
organisms, contrive to say all they know regarding it in a 
very few paragraphs. Lyell, in the first edition of his admi- 
rable elementary work, published only two years ago, devotes 
more than thirty pages to his description of the Coal Measures, 
and but two anda half to his notice of the Old Red Sandstone. * 
* As the succinct notice of this distinguished geologist may serve 
as a sort of pocket map to the reader in indicating the position of the 
system, its three great deposits, and its extent, I take the liberty of 
transferring it entire. 
‘OLD RED SANDSTONE. 
‘‘Tt was stated that the Carboniferous formation was surmounted 
by one called the ‘New Red Sandstone,’ and underlaid by another 
called the Old Red, which last was formerly merged in the Carbonifer- 
ous System but is now found to be distinguishable by its fossils. The 
