THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 165 
the sandstones of the Findhorn, the tooth is still attached to a 
portion of the jaw, and shows, from the nature of the 
attachment, that the creature to which it belonged must have 
been a true fish, not a reptile. The same peculiarity is ob- 
servable in two other very fine specimens in the collection of 
Mr. Patrick Duff, of Elgin. Both in saurians and in toothed 
Drumdryan quarry, to the south of Cupar, situate in the higher strata 
of yellow sandstone, certain organisms, which I readily referred to 
the scales of vertebrated animals, probably those of a fish. The 
largest (see Plate IL., fig. 1, ‘figure of a scale of the Holoptychius’) was 
one inch and one tenth in length, about one inch and two tenths in 
breadth, and not exceeding the fiftieth of an inch in thickness. The 
part which, when in its natural position, had been imbedded in the 
cuticle, is comparatively smooth, exhibiting, however, in a very dis- 
tinct manner, the semicircularly parallel layers of growth with obso- 
lete diverging striz, giving to the surface, when under a lens, a reticu- 
lated aspect. The part naturally exposed is marked with longitudinal, 
waved, rounded, anastomosing ridges, which are smooth and glossy. 
The whole of the inside of the scale is smooth, though exhibiting 
with tolerable distinctness the layers of growth. The form and 
structure of the object indicated plainly enough that it had been a 
scale, a conclusion confirmed by the detection of the phosphate of 
lime inits composition. Atthis period I inserted a short notice of the 
occurrence of these scales in our provincial newspaper, the Fife Her- 
ald, for the purpose of attracting the attention of the workmen and 
others in the neighborhood, in order to secure the preservation of any 
other specimens which might occur. 
“Nearly a year after these scales had been discovered, not only in 
the upper, but even in some of the lower beds of the Yellow Sand- 
stone, I was informed that oyster shells had been found in a quarry in 
the Old Red Sandstone at Clashbennie, near Errol, in Perthshire, 
and that specimens were in the possession of a gentleman in Perth. 
Interested in the intelligence, I lost no time in visiting Perth, and was 
gratified to find that the supposed oyster shells were, in fact, similar 
to those which I had ascertained to occur in a higher part of the series. 
17 
