THE COAL BEDS 



were evidently being deposited in an open sea at or about 

 the same time at which the Old Red Sandstone strata 

 were being laid down on the floors of inland fresh-water 

 lakes. 



In the west of England the Old Red Sandstone 

 stretches from Hereford and Monmouth into the neigh- 

 bouring Welsh counties of Brecknock and Glamorgan. 

 It is here at its greatest thickness of nearly two miles. 

 The lower part consists of red and yellow sandstones, 

 marls, and shales, with a certain kind of limestone con- 

 crete. The red colour is due to iron, and wherever this 

 is abundant fossils are scarce, though remains of fishes 

 have been found in it. Scotland is the classic ground of 

 the Old Red Sandstone, for it was here that Hugh Miller, 

 when a working mason at Cromarty, first collected its 

 wonderful fossil fishes. Hugh Miller's discovery is one 

 of the romances of geological annals. " Let any one picture 

 to himself,*" wrote the late Mr. Bristow, " the surprise he 

 would feel should he, on taking his first lesson in geology, 

 and on first breaking a stone a pebble, for instance, 

 exhibiting every external sign of a water-worn surface 

 find, to appropriate Archdeacon Paley's illustration, a 

 watch, or any other delicate piece of mechanism, in its 

 centre. Now this, many years ago, is exactly the kind 

 of surprise that Hugh Miller experienced in the sandstone 

 quarry opened in a lofty wall of cliff overhanging the 

 northern shore of the Moray Frith. He had picked up a 

 nodular mass of blue Lias limestone, which he laid open 

 by a stroke of the hammer, when, behold ! an exquisitely 

 shaped Ammonite was displayed before him. It is not 



213 



