ON THE 
ANCIENT GRAUWACKE ROCKS OF SCOTLAND. 
PART FIRST— HISTORICAL. 
“From Portpatrick on the west coast, to St. Abb’s Head on 
the east,” says Dr. James Hutton, in his far-famed Theory of 
the Earth, “there is a tract of schistus mountains, in which 
the strata are generally much inclined, or approaching to 
the vertical situation; and in these inclined strata,” he adds, 
“geologists allege there is not to be found any vestige of or- 
ganized body.” But the opinion can be “ proved,” he further 
states, “to be erroneous.” He himself, indeed, though he had 
been occasionally employed in examining the rocks of this 
“south Alpine country of Scotland” for more than forty years, 
had failed to find in them any traces of the organic; but his 
distinguished friend Sir James Hall, when travelling, in the 
summer of 1792, between Noblehouse and Crook, had de- 
tected sea-shells in “an Alpine limestone” by the wayside, 
at Wrae Hill, in the parish of Broughton, and thus demon- 
strated, as the limestone is intercalated with the schistus 
rocks, the fossiliferous character of the deposit. Even geo- 
logists had not yet become paleontological; and we find Sir 
James, in a passage quoted in the “ Theory,” describing the 
shells which he had detected simply as “forms of cockles.” 
