390 THE FOSSILIFEROUS 
friends the anti-geologists, that they should much rather attempt 
making shillings by lecturing against the science, than run the 
risk of losing the shillings already made by becoming mzners 
in its despite. 
The Oolite of Sutherland, — famous for containing the only 
seam of coal in this formation, at least in Britain, which could 
have been wrought for years without much positive loss, — was 
elaborately described many years ago by Sir Roderick Murchi- 
son, in a memoir that gave rich earnest of his after contribu- 
tions to geologic science. It is impossible, however, to exhaust 
a great formation otherwise than slowly ; and not a few fossils 
have been added of late years to the list appended to Sir Rod- 
erick’s memoir. It is from the vegetable organisms of this 
deposit that we can now form our most adequate conceptions of 
the Oolitic Flora of Scotland. As in England and America, 
it had its numerous cycadacexw, — its ferns of simple undivided 
frond, unique in their venation, but resembling in their forms 
the hart’s-tongue genus (Scolopendra), its thuyites, its pines; and 
though they occupied a scarce appreciable space in the group, 
its dicotyledonous plants. When, after glancing over some 
of the vegetable productions of the system, such as its cyca- 
dace, now restricted to the warmer climates, or over its mas- 
sive corals, which attained to a size seldom rivalled in the pres- 
ent state of things, save in the intertropical seas, I have then 
examined some of its woods externally gnarled, and stunted, 
and marked internally by minute annual rings, as small as those 
of a Scotch fir or Norwegian pine that had grown on some 
exposed hill-side, it has occurred to me that some of the Oolitic 
districts in what is now Scotland must have had their lofty 
mountain ranges, which, while a genial climate prevailed at 
their bases, rose, mayhap, to nearly the snow-line, and bore on 
their bleak ridges the stunted slow-growing trees. The frame- 
work of this ancient land was composed —as we learn from 
