90 THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 
There is a general rudeness in the finish of the creature, 
if I may so speak, that reminds one of the tattooings of 
a savage or the corresponding style of art in which he orna- 
ments the handle of his stone-hatchet or his war-club. In the 
Cheiracanthus, on the contrary, there is much of a minute 
and cabinet-like elegance. The silvery smoothness of the 
fins, dotted with scarcely visible scales, harmonized with a 
similar appearance of head ; a style of sculpture resembling 
the parallel etchings of the line-engraver fretted the scales ; 
the fins were small, and the contour elegant. I have already 
described the appearance of the unnamed fossils — the seem- 
ing shell-work that covered the sides of the one — its mast- 
like spines and sail-like fins; and the Gothic-like peculiarities 
that characterized the other — its rodded, obelisk-like spines, 
and the external framework of bone that stretched along its 
pectorals. 
Till very lately, it was held that the Old Red Sandstone of 
Scotland contained no mollusca. Itseemed difficult, however, 
to imagine a sea abounding in fish, and yet devoid of shells, 
In all my explorations, therefore, I had an eye to the discov- 
ery of the latter, and on two several occasions | disinterred 
what I supposed might have formed portions of a cardium or 
terebratula. On applying the glass, however, the punctulated 
character of the surface showed that the supposed shells were 
but parts of the concave helmet-like plate that covered the 
snout of the Osteolepis. In the ichthyolite beds of Cromarty 
and Ross, of Moray, Banff, Perth, Forfar, Fife, and Berwick- 
shire, not a single shell has yet been found; but there have 
been discovered of late, in the upper beds of the Lower Old 
Red Sandstone in Orkney, the remains of a small, delicate 
bivalve, not yet described or figured but which very much 
resemblesa Venus. (See Plate V., fig 7.) In the Tilestones 
