118 THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 
I still pursued my inquiries, and received a valuable aux- 
iliary in a gentleman from India, Dr. John Malcolmson, of 
Madras —a member of the London Geological Society, and 
a man of high scientific attainments and great general knowl- 
edge. Above all, 1 found him to possess, in a remarkable 
degree, that spirit of research, almost amounting to a pas- 
sion, which invariably marks the superior man. He had 
spent month after month under the burning sun of India, 
amid fever marshes and tiger jungles, acquainting himself 
with the unexplored geological field which, only a few years 
ago, that vast continent presented, and in collecting fossils 
hitherto unnamed and undescribed. He had pursued his in- 
quiries, too, along the coasts of the Red Sea, and far upwards 
on the banks of the Nile; and now, in returning for a time 
to his own country, he had brought with him the determina- 
tion of knowing it thoroughly as a man of science and a geol- 
ogist. I had the pleasure of first introducing him to the ich- 
thyolites of the Lower Old Red Sandstone, by bringing him 
to my first-discovered bed, and laying open, by a blow of the 
hammer, a beautiful Osteolepis. He was much interested in 
the fossils of my little collection, and at once decided that 
the formation which contained them could be no representa- 
tive of the Coal Measures. After ranging over the various 
beds on both sides the rectilinear ridge, and acquainting him- 
self thoroughly with their organisms, he set out to explore 
the Lower Old Red Sandstones of Moray and Banff, hitherto 
deemed peculiarly barren, but whose character too much re- 
sembled that of the rocks which he had now ascertained to 
be so abundant in fossils, not to be held worthy of further 
examination. He explored the banks of the Spey, and found 
the ichthyolite beds extensively developed at Dipple, in the 
middle of an Old Red Sandstone district. He pursued his 
