RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 241 



him. " Know you aught of these ? said the stouter gentle- 

 man, pointing to the heap. " A little," I replied ; " but 

 your specimens are none of the finest. Here, however, is a 

 dorsal plate of Coccosteus ; and here a scattered group of 

 scales of Osteolepis ; and here the occipital plates of Cheiro- 

 lepis Cummingice ; and here the spine of the anterior dorsal 

 of Diplacanthus Striatus" My reading of the fossils was at 

 once recognised, like the mystic sign of the freemason, as 

 establishing for me a place among the geologic brotherhood ; 

 and the stout gentleman producing a spirit-flask and a glass, 

 I pledged him and his companion in a bumper. " Was I 

 not sure ?" he said, addressing his friend : "I knew by the 

 cut of his jib, notwithstanding his shepherd's plaid, that he 

 was a wanderer of the scientific cast." "We discussed the 

 peculiarities of the deposit, which, in its mineralogical cha- 

 racter, and generically in that of its organic contents, resem- 

 bles, I found, the fish-beds of Cromarty (though, curiously 

 enough, the intervening contemporary deposits of Moray and 

 the western parts of Banffshire differ widely, in at least their 

 chemistry, from both) ; and we were right good friends ere 

 we parted. To men who travel for amusement, incident is 

 incident, however trivial in itself, and always worth some- 

 thing. I showed the younger of the two geologists my mode 

 of breaking open an ichthyolitic nodule, so as to secure the 

 best possible section of the fish. " Ah," he said, as he marked 

 a style of handling the hammer which, save for the fifteen 

 years' previous practice of the operative mason, would be 

 perhaps less complete, "Ah, you must have broken open 

 a great many." His own knowledge of the formation and 

 its ichthyolites had been chiefly derived, he added, from a cer- 

 tain little treatise on the " Old Red Sandstone," rather popu- 

 lar than scientific, which he named. I of course claimed no 

 acquaintance with the work ; and the conversation went on. 

 The ill luck of my new friends, who had.been toiling among 

 Q 



