THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 175 
bed. The locality is rather poor in ichthyolites, though I have 
found in it, after minute search, a few scales of the Osteolepis, 
and on one occasion one of the better marked plates of 
the Coccosteus ; but in the vegetable impressions peculiar to 
the formation it is very abundant. These are invariably car- 
bonaceous, and are not unfrequently associated with minute 
patches of bitumen, which, in the harder specimens, present a 
coal-like appearance ; and the vegetable impressions and the 
bitumen seem to have misled the sagacious nobleman into the 
oelief that coal might be found on his new property. He 
accordingly brought miners from the south, and set them to 
bore for coal in the gorge of the ravine. ‘Though there was 
probably a register kept of the various strata through which 
they passed, it must have long since been lost; but from my 
acquaintance with this portion of the formation, as shown in 
the neighboring sections, where it lies uptilted against the 
granitic gneiss of the Sutors, I think I could pretty nearly 
restore it. ‘They would first have had to pass for about thirty 
feet through the stratified clays and shales of the ichthyolite 
bed, with here and there a thin band of gray sandstone, 
and here and there a stratum of lime; they would next 
have had to penetrate through from eighty to a hundred feet 
of coarse red and yellow sandstone, the red greatly predom- 
inating. They would then have entered the great conglom- 
erate, the lowest member of the formation; and in time, if 
they continued to urge their fruitless labors, they would arrive 
at the primary rock, with its belts of granite, and its veins and 
huge masses of hornblende. In short, there might be some 
possibility of their penetrating to the central fire, but none 
whatever of their ever reaching a vein of coal. Froma 
curious circumstance, however, they were prevented from 
ascertaining, by actuel experience, the utter barrenness of the 
formation. 
