HOTES. 



Note A, p. 3. 

 {From Sir Roderick MurchisorCs " Silvria" p. 196.) 



" When the firsb edition of this book was published, I en- 

 tertained the belief, in common with my early associate Sedg- 

 wick, and our precursor M'Culloch, that the striking mountain 

 masses of real conglomerate and hard grit on the north-west 

 coast of the Highlands, which rest in layers, more or less hori- 

 zontal, on low and gnarled bosses of very highly inclined and 

 ancient granitoid gneiss, were really a part of the Old Red 

 Sandstone of Scotland. A re-examination, however, of those 

 tracts in 1855 compelled me to abandon that view. I then 

 saw that portions at least of these conglomerates, often in a 

 semi-crystalline state, and resting on the oldest or granitoid 

 gneiss of the Highlands, as around Loch Assynt, were really 

 inferior to those quartz rocks and limestones in the prolonga- 

 tion of which to the north coast of Sutherland Mr C. Peach 

 had detected fossils, which enabled me to suggest that they 

 belonged to the older Silurian rocks. 



" Since the preceding sheet was printed, and during my 

 absence on a geological tour abroad, additional researches, 



