186 THE CRUISE OF THE BETSEY j OR, 



flourished in the days of the coal-money currency, had taken 

 a squandering fit at Sanday Bay, and tossed the dingy con- 

 tents of his treasure-chest by shovelfuls upon the rocks. Mr 

 Dick found in this locality some of his finest specimens, 

 one of which the inner side of the skull-cap of a Holopty- 

 chius, with every plate occupying its proper place, and the 

 large angular holes through which the eyes looked out still 

 entire I trust to be able by and by to present to the pub- 

 lic in a good engraving. There occur jaws, plates, scales, 

 spines, the remains of fucoids, too, of great size and in vast 

 abundance. Mr Dick has disinterred from among the rocks 

 of Sanday Bay flattened carbonaceous stems four inches in 

 diameter. We are still within an hour s walk of Thurso 

 but in that brief hour how many marvels have we witnessed ! 

 how vast an amount of the vital mechanisms of a perished 

 creation have we not passed over ! Our walk has been along 

 ranges of sepulchres, greatly more wonderful than those of 

 Thebes or Petrsea, and mayhap a thousand times more ancient. 

 There is no lack of life along the shores of the solitary little 

 bay. The shriek of the sparrow-hawk mingles from the cliffs 

 with the hoarse deep croak of the raven ; the cormorant on 

 some wave-encircled ledge hangs out his dark wing to the 

 breeze ; the spotted diver, plying his vocation on the shal- 

 lows beyond, dives and then appears, and dives and appears 

 again, and we see the silver glitter of scales from his beak ; 

 and far away in the offing the sun-light falls on a scull of sea- 

 gulls, that flutter upwards, downwards, and athwart, now on 

 the sea, now in the air, thick as midges over some forest-brook 

 in an evening of midsummer. 



But we again pass onwards, amid a wild ruinous scene of 

 abrupt faults, detached fragments of rock, and reversed strata : 

 again the ledges assume their ordinary position and aspect, 

 and we rise from lower to higher and still higher beds in the 

 formation, for such, as I have already remarked, is the gene- 



