EVIDENCE OF THE FOSSIL FLORA. 185 



In the Upper Old Red Sandstone, — the formation of the 

 Holoptychius and the Stagonolepis, — the only vegetable re- 

 mains which I have yet seen are of a character so exceed- 

 ingly obscure and doubtful, that all I could venture to premise 

 regarding them is, that they seem to be the fragments of sorely 

 comminuted fucoids. In the formation of the Middle (Lower) 

 Old Red, — that of the Cephalaspis and the gigantic lobster 

 of Carmylie, — the vegetable remains are at once more nume- 

 rous and better defined. I have detected among the gray 

 micaceous sandstones of Forfarshire a fucoid furnished with a 

 thick, squat stem, that branches into numerous divergent leaf- 

 lets or fronds, of a slim parallelogrammical, grass-like form, 

 and which, as a whole, somewhat resembles the scourge of 

 cords attached to a handle with which a boy whips his top. 

 And Professor Fleming describes a still more remarkable ve- 

 getable organism of the same formation, "which, occurring 

 in the form of circular, flat patches, composed each of nume- 

 rous smaller contiguous circular pieces, is altogether not unlike 

 what might be expected to result from a compressed berry, 

 such as the bramble or rasp."* In the Lower (Middle) Old 

 Red, — the formation of the Coccosteus and Cheiracanthus, — 

 the remains of fucoids are more numerous still. There are 

 gray slaty beds among the rocks of Navity, that owe their 

 fissile character mainly to their layers of carbonized weed ; 

 and "among the rocks of Sandy Bay, near Thurso," says Mr 

 Dick, " the dark impressions of large fucoids are so nume- 

 rous, that they remind one of the interlaced boughs and less 

 bulky pine-trunks that lie deep in our mosses." A portion 

 cf a stem from the last locality, which I owe to Mr Dick, 

 measures three inches in diameter ; but the ill-compacted 



* The Parka decipiens, until of late doubtful whether animal or vege- 

 table, but now — from being found constantly associated in the Upper Si- 

 lurian and the Lower Old Red with the large crustacean the pterygotus 

 — considered to be the egg-packet belonging to that creature. — L. M. 



