144 THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 
crustacean of Balruddery. The plates of the Cephalaspis 
retain the color of the original bone; the plates of the crusta- 
cean, on the contrary, are of a deep red tint, which contrasts 
strongly with the cold gray of the stone. ‘They remind one, 
both in shape and hue, of pieces of ancient iron armor, fretted 
into semi-elliptical scales, and red with rust. I saw with one 
of the workmen what seemed to have been the continuous 
tail-flap of an individual of very considerable size. It seemed 
curiously puckered where it had joined to the body, much in 
the manner that a gown or Highlander’s kilt is puckered 
where it joins to the waistband ; and the outline of the whole 
plate was marked by what I may venture to term architectural 
elegance. The mathematician could have described it with 
his ruler and compasses. The superintendent pointed out to 
me another plate in a slab dressed for a piece of common 
pavement. It was a regularly formed parallelogram, and had 
obviously composed one of the jointed plates which had cov- 
ered the creature’s body. I could not so easily assign its 
place to yet a third plate in the possession of the Rey. Mr. 
Wilson, of Carmylie. It is colored, like the others, and like 
them, too, fretted into minute scales, but the form is exactly 
that of a heart — not such a heart as the anatomist would 
draw, but such a heart, rather, as we see at times on valen- 
tines of the humbler order, or on the ace of hearts in a pack 
of cards. Possibly enough it may have been the breastplate 
of this antique crustacean of the Cornstones. ‘The spawn of 
our common blue lobster is composed of spherical black 
grains, of nearly the size of mustard-seed. It struck me as 
not very improbable that the reticulated markings of the flag- 
stones of Carmylie may have been produced by the minute 
- eggs of this fossil crustacean, covered up by some hastily 
deposited layer of mingled mud and sand, and forced into the 
