STEOMNESS AND ITS ASTEKOLEPia 



THE LAKE OF STENKIS. 



HEN engaged in prosecuting the self-im- 

 posed task of examining in detail the 

 various fossiliferous deposits of Scotland, 

 I extended my exploratory ramble, about 

 two years ago, into the mainland of Ork- 

 ney, and resided for some time in the 

 vicinity of Stromness. This busy seaport town forms that spe- 

 cial centre, in this northern archipelago, from which the struc- 

 ture of the entire group can be most advantageously studied. 

 The geology of the Orkneys, like that of Caithness, owes its 

 chief interest to the immense development which it exhi- 

 bits of one formation, — the Old lied Sandstone, — and to the 

 extraordinary abundance of its vertebrate remains. It is not 

 too much to affirm that, in the comparatively small portion 

 which this cluster of islands contains of a system regarded only 

 a few years ago as the least fossiliferous in the geologic scale, 

 there are more fossil fish enclosed than in every other geologic 

 system in England, Scotland, and Wales, from the Coal Mea- 

 sures to the Chalk inclusive. Orkney is emphatically to the 

 geologist what a juvenile Shetland poetess designates her 



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