1 4 ; THE CRUISE OF THE BETSEY ; OR, 



fluences, we find them delicately preserved, though after a 

 fashion that renders difficult their safe removal. Originally 

 the bed must have existed as a brown argillaceous mud, some- 

 what resembling that which forms in the course of years 

 under a scalp of muscles ; and it has hardened into a mere 

 silt-like clay, in which the fossils occur, not as petrifactions, 

 but as shells in a state of decay, except in some rare cases in 

 which a calcareous nodule has formed within or around them. 

 Viewed in the group, they seem of an intermediate character 

 between the shells of the Lias and Oolite. One of the first 

 fossils I disinterred was the Gryphsea obliquata, a shell cha- 

 racteristic of the Liasic formation ; and the fossil immediately 

 after, the Pholadomya sequalis, a shell of the Oolitic one. 

 There occurs in great numbers a species of small Pecten, 

 some of the specimens scarce larger than a herring scale ; a 

 minute Ostrea, a sulcated Terebratula, an Isocardia, a Pul- 

 lastra, and groupes of broken serpulae in vast abundance. The 

 deposit has also its three species of Ammonite, existing as mere 

 impressions in the clay ; and at least two species of Belemnite, 

 one of the two somewhat resembling the Belemnites ab- 

 breviatus, but smaller and rather more elongated ; while the 

 other, of a spindle form, diminishing at both ends, reminds 

 one of the Belemnites minimus of the Gault. The Red Sand- 

 stone in the centre of the village occurs detached, like this 

 Liasic bed, amid the prevailing trap, and may be seen in situ 

 beside the southern gable of the tall, deserted-looking house 

 at the hill-foot, that has been built of it. It is a soft, coarse- 

 grained, mouldering stone, ill fitted for the purposes of the 

 architect ; and more nearly resembles the New Red Sandstone 

 of England and Dumfriesshire than any other rock I have 

 yet seen in the north of Scotland. I failed to detect in it 

 aught organic. 



We weighed anchor about two o'clock, and -beat gallantly 

 out the Sound, in the face of an intermittent baffling wind 



