110 AUTUMNS ON THE SPEY. 



circular gallery at the western extremity where 

 these trophies of the deer-stalker, reaching all round 

 to the very ceiling, form a perfect Golgotha that 

 the cabinets and their contents might easily 

 escape his observation. Yet to a student of fossil 

 ichthyology, or I may even say to a lover of 

 nature like myself, but " skin-deep " in the 

 science, this small collection is most interesting, 

 and doubly so from its having been procured in 

 the immediate neighbourhood. It was formed by 

 Mr. Arthur Lennox, a talented young geologist, 

 but a few years ago, during a summer visit here, 

 and consists of calcareous nodules of various sizes, 

 which, after having been split longitudinally, ex- 

 hibit in the centre of each section a more or less 

 perfect representation, in profile, of a fish of the 

 old red sandstone the formation developed in 

 this neighbourhood. The nodule, or matrix, con- 

 taining each is generally elliptical, that is to say, 

 of an oval form, but depressed instead of being 

 round, and when these are discovered in the 

 shallow stratum or fish-bed, are found lying on 

 their flat sides. They are of a drab colour, while 

 the fossils themselves that are imbedded in them 

 appear of a ferruginous Indian red, occasionally 

 tinged with purple, and thus the outline of the 

 latter is the more distinct from the contrast of its 



