106 THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 
quality and finer grain. The rock laid bare in the little bay 
is a stratified clay, of a gray color tinged with olive, and oc- 
curring in beds separated by indurated bands of gray, mica- 
ceous sandstone. They also abound in calcareous nodules. 
The dip of the strata, too, is very different from that of the 
beds which lean against the gneiss of the Sutor. Instead of 
an angle of eighty, it presents an angle of less than eight. 
The rocks of the littlke bay must have lain beyond the dis- 
turbing, uptilting influence of the granitic wedge. So 
thickly are the nodules spread over the surface of some of 
the beds, that they reminded me of floats of broken ice on 
the windward side of a lake after a few days’ thaw, when 
the edges of the fragments are smoothed and rounded, and 
they press upon one another, so as to cover, except in the 
angular interstices, the entire surface. 
I set myself carefully to examine. The first nodule I laid 
open contained a bituminous looking mass, in which I could 
trace a few pointed bones and a few minute scales. The 
next abounded in rhomboidal and finely enamelled scales, of 
much larger size and more distinct character. J wrought on 
with the eagerness of a discoverer entering for the first time 
in a terra incognita of wonders. Almost every fragment of 
clay, every splinter of sandstone, every limestone nodule, 
contained its organism — scales, spines, plates, bones, entire 
fish ; but not one organism of the Lias could I find — no am- 
monites, no belemnites, no gryphites, no shells of any kind: 
the vegetable impressions were entirely different; and not a 
single scale, plate, or ichthyodorulite could I identify with 
those of the newer formation. I had got into a different 
world, and among the remains of a different creation} but 
where was its proper place in the scale? The beds of the 
little bay are encircled by thick accumulations of diluvium 
