CHAPTER VIII. 
Upper Formations of the Old Red Sandstone. — Room enough for each 
and to spare. — Middle, or Cornstone Formation. — The Cepha- 
laspis its most characteristic Organism. — Description. — The Den 
of Balruddery richer in the Fossils of this middle Formation than 
any other Locality yet discovered. — Various Contemporaries of 
the Cephalaspis. — Vegetable Impressions. — Gigantic Crustacean. 
— Seraphim. — Ichthyodorulites. — Sketch of the Geology of For- 
farshire.—Its older Deposits of the Cornstone Formation. — The 
Quarries of Carmylie. — Their Vegetable and Animal Remains. — 
The Upper Formation. — Wide Extent of the Fauna and Flora of 
the earlier Formations. — Probable Cause. 
Hiruerto | have dwelt almost exclusively on the fossils of 
the Lower Old Red Sandstone, and. the history of their dis- 
covery : I shall now ascend to the organisms of its higher 
platforms. The system in Scotland, as in the sister kingdom, 
has its middle and upper groups, and these are in no degree 
less curious than the inferior group already described, nor do 
they more resemble the existences of the present time. 
Does the reader remember the illustration of the pyramid 
employed in an early chapter —its three parallel bars, and 
the strange hieroglyphics of the middle bar? Let him now 
imagine another pyramid, inscribed with the remaining and 
later history of the system. We read, as before, from the 
base upwards, but find the broken and half-defaeed characters 
of the second erection descending into the very soil, as in 
those obelisks of Egypt round which the sands of the desert 
have been accumulating for ages. Hence a hiatus in our his- 
tory for future excavators to fill; and it contains many such 
blanks, every unfossiliferous bar in either pyramid represent- 
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