BT MBS MILLER. IIU. 



to be ir ade in our district. Among the Crustacess we have 

 numerous forms of the genera Pterygotus and EuvypteruSy of 

 the family of the Eurypteridse, and others unnamed. Of our 

 flora I can say nothing but that it is entirely unlike that of 

 the Caithness beds. Some of our genera range upwards, or 

 at least are found in the Caithness beds, — Acanthodes and 

 Diplacanthus, — thus binding them all together into one sys- 

 tem. You will remember how strenuously Hugh Miller 

 contended for the Old Red Sandstone being assigned a posi- 

 tion, not as a formation, but as a system, in the geological 

 scheme ; and I should think that the enormous depth of our 

 Forfarshire strata, — some 10,000 feet, — containing, besides, 

 an abundant and characteristic Palaeontology, fully estab- 

 lishes that opinion. 



" The effect, therefore, of recent discoveries is to confirm 

 in all respects the opinions of Hugh Miller, with the simple 

 substitution of Middle for Lower, and vice versa ; and in 

 his graphic descriptions — (and, alas ! from no other pen do 

 such descriptions come now) — he would have had to people 

 the waters of the period with other forms of life besides the 

 Cephalaspis and the Pterygotus." 



To one other novelty I shall allude before closing this part 

 of the subject, and that is, the discovery by that most invalu- 

 able pioneer of science, Mr Charles Peach, of true bony ver- 

 tebrae in other forms of ganoid fish besides the Coccosteus. 

 The reader will have observed that, in a quotation given from 

 a letter of Sir Philip Egerton's, he alludes to a passage in the 

 supplementary papers, as describing the true nature of the 

 vertebral anatomy of Coccosteus, — that is, it had not ossified 

 vertebral centra^ but a persistent notochord, with bony ayo- 



