CHAP. xxr. ANCIENT BURYING-GROUND. 353 



" At this the man came running up the brae, and I 

 handed him a stone all covered with scales. ' Eh !' 

 said he, and then he took the stone. He looked at it. 

 'Weel,' he at length observed, 'that's trash nothing 

 but trash.' ' It's an auld burying-ground, I assure ye/ 

 said I; 'it's of great antiquity.' He threw down the 

 stone and walked away solemnly. I have no doubt he 

 thought me crazy perhaps something worse. 



" I got so many heads, jaws, Coccosteus bones, and 

 such like, that I nearly killed myself in carrying home 

 the stones. My arms are still sore, and my breast is 

 sore. For all that, I would carry as heavy a load to- 

 morrow." 



A few days later he says : 



" I have again been to the limestone quarry on the 

 hill, and have brought thence one fossil fish and some 

 half-dozen of broken bits of other fossils, and only one 

 moss from the waterfall. 



I half filled my hat with the Fern Blechnum, boreale, 

 or Northern Hard Fern, which I found growing in beauty 

 in sheltered spots. 



" I saw tree stumps in peat banks, molehills, muir- 

 fowl, and lapwings, and snow wreaths on hill-sides 

 and around lochs. I had a long, long, beautiful walk. 



" Hugh Miller, to his dying day, insisted that nothing 

 organic lived in the north of Scotland previous to the 

 deposition of the Old Red conglomerate. The Old Bed con- 

 glomerate was to him the fossiliferous base in the north. 

 He knew and acknowledged the Silurians of the south of 

 Scotland; but he argued that Durness limestone was of 



