306 ON THE RED SANDSTONE, MARBLE, 
around; the distant hills, bald, verdureless, and hoary, seem 
the hills of a worn-out and desolate planet, and harmonize 
well with the deserted ruins and the dark, lonely lake beneath; 
and altogether so impressive and unique is the scene, that, 
when I first looked upon it through the lurid haze of a stormy 
evening, it seemed suggestive of universal death and extinc- 
tion, and the lifeless old age of creation. According to the 
poet,— %& 
“The sun’s eye had a lightless glare ; 
The earth with age was wan.” 
I have already referred to M’Culloch’s supposed organisms 
of the bed of quartz rock which underlies the Limestone. 
Other supposed organisms of, as has been thought, a less 
equivocal character, also occur in the deposit, though I failed 
to detect them in this neighborhood, where, however, they are 
said to be found, though more rarely than on the northern 
coast of Sutherland, on the shores of Loch Eriboll. I visited 
that locality in the previous year, mainly that I might acquaint 
myself with what at the time were deemed the most ancient of 
Scottish fossils,— these supposed organisms; but though, un- 
der the intelligent guidance of Mr. Clark, of Eriboll, I suc- 
ceeded in finding them, I found the evidence regarding both 
their place and character of a very unsatisfactory kind. They 
occur not 7 situ, but in detached boulders spread over a lime- 
stone district, though derived apparently from the neighboring 
quartz rock. Unlike, however, the quartz rock of Assynt, the 
stone yields to the weather, in consequence, it would seem, of 
a considerable admixture of iron in its composition. In break- 
ing open a boulder, we see an oxydized, discolored ring run- 
ning parallel to its outer surface; and it is almost always in 
the discolored ring that the supposed fossils occur. They are 
small tubular bodies, from one to three lines in length, by 
about half a line in breadth, of a grayish or brownish-white 
