THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 131 
Now, a few years since,I had the pleasure of introducing 
Professor Fleming to the Organisms of the Lower Old Red 
Sandstone, as they occur in the neighborhood of Cromarty ; 
and, notwithstanding his extensive acquaintance with the 
upper fossils of the system, he found himself, among the 
lower, in an entirely new field. His knowledge of the one 
group served but to show him how very different it was from 
the other. With the organisms of the lower he minutely 
acquainted himself; he collected specimens from Gamrie, 
His acquaintance with the organisms of the Scat-Craigis at once more 
extensive and minute than that of, perhaps, any other geologist ; and 
his collection of them very valuable, representing, as it does, a forma- 
tion of much interest, still little known. Mr. Duff is at present en- 
gaged on a volume descriptive of the Geology of the province of 
Moray, a district extensively explored of late years, and abundant in” 
its distinct groups of organisms, but of which general readers have 
still much to learn; and from no one could they learn more regarding 
itthan from Mr. Duff. It is still only a few months since the Upper 
Old Red Sandstones of the southern districts of Scotland were found 
to be fossiliferous ; and the writer is chiefly indebted for his acquaint- 
ance with their organisms to a tradesman of Berwickshire, Mr. Wil- 
liam Stevenson, of Dunse, who, on perusing some of the geological 
articles which appeared in the Witness newspaper during the course 
of the last autumn, sent him a parcel of fossils disinterred from out the 
deep belt of Red Sandstone which leans to the south in that locality, 
against the grauwacke of the Lammermuirs. Mr. Stevenson had 
recently discovered them, he stated, near Preston-haugh, about two 
miles north of Dunse, in a fine section of alternating Sandstone and 
conglomerate strata that lie unconformably onthe grauwacke. They 
consist of scales and occipital plates of the Holoptychius, with the re- 
mains of a bulky, but very imperfectly preserved ichthyodorulite ; 
and the coarse, arenaceous matrices which surround them seem iden- 
tical with the red gritty Sandstones of the Findhorn and the Scaé- 
Craig. 
