ITS STRUCTURE, BULK, AND ASPECT. 99 



maintained in their original integrity every scale, plate, and 

 bone. They may have been much broken ere they were first 

 committed to the keeping of the rock, or in disentangling them 

 from its rigid embrace ; but they have, we find, caught no 

 harm when under its care. Ere the skeleton of the Bruce, 

 disinterred after the lapse of five centuries, was re-committed 

 to the tomb, such measures were taken to secure its preser- 

 vation, that, were it to be again disinterred, even after as many 

 more centuries had passed, it might be found retaining unbroken 

 its gigantic proportions. There was molten pitch poured over 

 the bones, in a state of sufficient fluidity to permeate all the 

 pores, and fill up the central hollows, and which, soon har- 

 dening around them, formed a bituminous matrix, in which 

 they may lie unchanged for a thousand years. Now, exactly 

 such was the process to which nature resorted with these 

 gigantic skeletons of the Old Ked Sandstone. Like the bones 

 of the Bruce, they are bones steeped in pitch ; and so tho- 

 roughly is every pore and hollow still occupied, that, when 

 cast into the fire, they flame like torches. Though black as 

 jet, they still retain, too, in a considerable degree, the pecu- 

 liar qualities of the original substance. The late Mr George 

 ' Sanderson of Edinburgh, one of the most ingenious lapidaries 

 in the kingdom, and a thoroughly intelligent man, made se- 

 veral preparations for me, for microscopic examination, from 

 the teeth and bones ; and though they were by far the oldest 

 vertebrate remains he had ever seen, they exhibited, he in- 

 formed me, in the working, more of the characteristics of re- 

 cent teeth and bone than any other fossils of the kind he had 

 ever operated upon. Becent bone, when in the course of being 

 reduced on the wheel to the degree of thinness necessary to 

 secure transparency, is apt, under the heat induced by the 

 friction, to acquire a springy elasticity, and to start up from 

 the glass slip to which it had been cemented ; whereas bone 

 in the fossil state usually lies as passive, in such circumstances, 



