RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 257 



was still none of the best, kindly walked out with me, to bring 

 under my notice appearances which, in the haste of a first 

 examination, I might possibly overlook, and to show me yet 

 -another set of fossils which he kept at the works. He in- 

 formed me, as we went, that the Grauwacke (Lower Silurian) 

 deposits of the district, hitherto deemed so barren, had re- 

 cently yielded their organisms in a slate quarry at Gamrie- 

 head ; and that they belong to that ancient family of the Pen- 

 natularia which, in this northern kingdom, seems to have taken 

 precedence of all the others. Judging from what now ap- 

 pears, the Graptolite must be regarded as the first settler who 

 squatted for a living in that deep-sea area of undefined boun- 

 dary occupied at the present time by the bold wave-worn 

 headlands and blue hills of Scotland ; and this new Banff- 

 shire locality not only greatly extends the range of the fossil 

 in reference to the kingdom, but also establishes, in a general 

 way, the fossiliferous identity of the Lower Silurian deposits 

 to the north of the Grampians with that of Peebles-shire and 

 Galloway in the south, so far as I know, the only other two 

 Scottish districts in which this organism has been found. 



The argillaceous deposit of Blackpots occupies, in the form 

 of a green swelling bank, a promontory rather soft than bold 

 in its contour, that projects far into the sea, and forms, when 

 tipped with its slim column of smoke from the tile-kiln, a 

 pleasing feature in the landscape. I had set it down on the 

 previous day, when it first caught my eye from the lofty cliffs 

 of Gamrie-head, at the distance of some ten or twelve miles, 

 as different in character from all the other features of the 

 prospect The country generally is moulded on a framework 

 of primary rock, and presents headlands of hard, sharp out- 

 line, to the attrition of the waves ; whereas this single head- 

 land in the midst, soft-lined; undulatory, and plump, seems 

 suited to remind one of Burns' young Kirk Alloway beauty 

 disporting amid the thin old ladies that joined with her in 



