THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 30 
Lady Cumming of Altyre, all from the upper beds of that 
lower member of the Old Red Sandstone represented by the 
dark-colored schists and inferior sandstones of Caithness. 
He found forty-two new species more in a single collec- 
tion in Ireland, furnished by the Mountain Limestone of 
Armagh. 
Some of my humbler readers may possibly be repelled by 
his names; they are, like all names in science, unfamiliar in 
their respect to mere English readers, just because they are 
names not for England alone, but for England and the world. 
[ am assured, however, that they are all composed of very 
good Greek, and picturesquely descriptive of some pecu- 
liarity in the fossils they designate. One of his ichthyolites, 
with a thorn or spine in each fin, bears the name of Acan- 
thodes, or thorn-like ; another with a similar mechanism of 
spines attached to the upper part of the body, and in which 
the pectoral or hand-fins are involved, has been designated 
the Cheiracanthus, or thorn-hand ; a third covered with curi- 
ously-fretted scales, has been named the Glyptolepis, or 
carved-scale ; and a fourth, roughened over with berry-like 
tubercles, that rise from strong osseous plates, is known as the 
Coccosteus, or berry-on-bone. And such has been his principle 
of nomenclature. The name is a condensed description. 
But though all his names mean something, they cannot mean 
a great deal; and as learned words repel unlearned readers, 
I shal] just take the liberty of reminding mine of the humbler 
class, that there is no legitimate connection between Geology 
and the dead languages. The existences of the Old Red 
Sandstone had lived for ages, and had been dead for myriads 
of ages, ere there was Greek enough in the world to furnish 
them with names. ‘There is no working-man, if he be a per- 
