CHAPTER XIV. 
The Cornstone Formation and its Organisms. — Dwarf Vegetation. — 
Cephalaspides. — Huge Lobster. — Habitats of the existing Crusta- 
cea. — No unapt representation of the Deposit of Balruddery, fur- 
nished by a land-locked Bay in the neighborhood of Cromarty. — 
Vast Space occupied by the Geological Formations. — Contrasted 
with the half-formed Deposits which represent the existing Crea- 
tion. — Inference. — The formation of the Holoptychius. — Probable 
origin of its Siliceous Limestone. — Marked increase in the Bulk of 
the Existences of the System. —Conjectural Cause.— The Coal 
Measures. — The Limestone of Burdie House. — Conclusion. 
THE curtain rises, and the scene is new. The myriads of 
the lower formation have disappeared, and we are surrounded, 
on an upper platform, by the existences of a later creation. 
There is sea all around, as before; and we find beneath a 
dark-colored, muddy bottom, thickly covered by a dwarf vege- 
tation. The circumstances differ little from those in which 
the ichthyolite beds of the preceding period were deposited ; 
but forms of life, essentially different, career through the 
green depths, or creep over the ooze. Shoals of Cephalas- 
pides, with their broad, arrow-like heads, and their slender, 
angular bodies, feathered with fins, sweep past like clouds of 
crossbow bolts in an ancient battle. We see the distant 
gleam of scales, but the forms are indistinct and dim: we can 
merely ascertain that the fins are elevated by spines of vari- 
ous shape and pattern; that of some the coats glitter with 
enamel; and that others — the sharks of this ancient period — 
bristle over with minute thorny points. A huge crustacean, 
of uncouth proportions, stalks over the weedy bottom or bur- 
rows in the hollows of the banks. 
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