DEVONIAN ERA. 99 



tychius of the old red sandstone. Wonderful they are, as 

 all God's works are wonderful! but to dwell, as is too often 

 the case, on these ancient denizens of the deep as something 

 unusually strange and marvellous, is neither the way to 

 forward the interests of science, nor to teach the popular 

 mind a just appreciation of the world that surrounds it. 



Turning next to the higher order of reptiles, we have 

 as yet no undoubted instance of their existence, though 

 footprints, bones, teeth, and scutes, unquestionably rep- 

 tilian, have been detected in the sandstones of Elgin 

 sandstones till recently regarded as Devonian, but whose 

 relations have lately been questioned ; first, on account 

 of the obscurity of their stratigraphical relations to the 

 surrounding old red sandstone of the district ; and, second, 

 on account of the affinity of their reptilian remains to those 

 occurring in true triassic strata. Partaking in the doubt, 

 both on lithological and paleontological grounds, that the 

 place of these Elgin sandstones may yet be found to belong 

 to the dawn of the triassic, and not to the close of the Devon- 

 ian, epoch, we have transferred the small lizard-like teler- 

 peton, and the large " drop-scaled" crocodilian stayanolepis, 

 to the newer era a transposition already approved by some 

 of our leading palaeontologists. It is thus that paleonto- 

 logy often corrects the first impressions of physical geology, 

 and in this instance conformably so with all that we know 

 of the reptilian life of the carboniferous era, where forms 

 more lowly and fish-like in their character alone make their 

 appearance. In the mean time, therefore, the existence of 

 reptiles during the old red sandstone epoch must be held 

 as problematical, and paleontology constrained to date 

 their advent with the commencement of the carboniferous 

 era. If it shall be ultimately found that these Elgin sand- 

 stones are of true Devonian age, the occurrence of reptiles 

 having such high affinities as lizards and crocodiles, will 



