THE OLD RED SANDSTONE, 133 
oped, though more sparingly, in the northern extremity of 
Fife, in a line parallel to the southern shores of the Tay. 
But of all the localities yet known, the Den of Balruddery is 
that in which the peculiar organisms of the formation may be 
studied with best effect. The oryctology of the Cornstones of 
England seems restricted to four species of the Cephalaspis. 
In Fife, all the organisms of the formation yet discovered are 
exclusively vegetable — darkened impressions of stems like 
those of the inferior ichthyolite beds, confusedly mixed with 
what seem slender and pointed leaflets drawn in black, and 
numerous circular forms, which have been deemed the re- 
mains of the seed-vessels of some unknown sub-aerial plant. 
** These last occur,” says Professor Fleming, the original dis- 
coverer, ‘in the form of circular flat patches, not equalling 
an inch in diameter, and composed of numerous smaller con- 
” the tout ensemble resembling ** what 
tiguous circular pieces ; 
might be expected to result from a compressed berry, such as 
the bramble or the rasp.” In Forfarshire, the remains of the 
Cephalaspis are found associated with impressions of a differ- 
ent character, though equally obscure — impressions of pol- 
ished surfaces carved into seeming scales; but in Balruddery 
alone are the vegetable impressions of the one locality, and 
the scaly impressions of the other, together with the charac- 
teristic ichthyolites of England and Forfarshire, found asso- 
ciated with numerous fossils besides, many of them vbscure, 
but all of them of interest, and all of them new to Geology. 
One of the strangest organisms of the formation is a fossil 
lobster, of such huge proportions, that one of the average 
sized lobsters, common in our markets, might stretch its en- 
tire length across the continuous tail-flap in which the crea- 
ture terminated.* And it is a marked characteristic of the 
fossil, that the terminal flap should be continuous; in all the 
* See Note H. 
