RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 259 



older sandstones, and were probably in the neighbourhood, in 

 their present rolled form, long ere the re-formation of the inclos- 

 ing mass ; while the shale and the septaria are, as shown by 

 their fossils, decidedly Liasic. I detected among the conchifers 

 a well-marked species of our northern Lias, figured by Sowerby 

 from Eathie specimens, the Plagiostoma concentrica ; and 

 among the Cephalopoda, though considerably broken, the Be- 

 lemnite elongatus and Belemnite lanceolata, with the Ammo- 

 nite Ko&nigi (mutabilisj, all Eathie shells. I, besides, found 

 in the bank a piece of a peculiar-looking quartzose sand- 

 stone, traversed by hard jaspedeous veins of a brownish-gray 

 colour, which I have never found, in Scotland at least, save 

 associated with the Lias of our north-eastern coasts. Further, 

 my attention was directed by Dr Emslie to a fine Lignite in 

 his collection, which had once formed some eighteen inches 

 or two feet of the trunk of a straight slender pine, pro- 

 bably the Pinites Eiggensis, in which, as in most woods 

 of the Lias and Oolite, the annual rings are as strongly 

 marked as in the existing firs or larches of our hill-sides.* 



* Since the above was written, I have seen an interesting paper in 

 " Hogg's "Weekly Instructor," in which the Rev. Mr Longmuir of Aber- 

 deen describes a visit to the Lias clay at Blackpots. Mr Longmuir seems 

 to have given more time to his researches than I found it agreeable, in a 

 very indifferent day, to devote to mine ; and his list of fossils is consider- 

 ably longer. Their evidence, however, runs in exactly the same tract with 

 that of the shorter list. He had been told at Banff that the clay contained 

 " petrified tangles ;" and the first organisms shown him by the workmen, 

 on his arrival at the deposit, were some of the "tangles" in question. 

 " These," he goes on to say, " we found, as may have already been antici- 

 pated, to be pieces of Belemnites, well known on the other side of the Frith 

 as * thunderbolts,' and esteemed of sovereign efficacy in the cure of be- 

 witched cattle." Though still wide of the mark, there is here an evident 

 descent from the supernatural to the physical, from the superstitious to 

 the true. ' ' Satisfied that we had a mass of Lias clay before us, we set vigo- 

 rously to work, in order either to find additional characteristic fossils, or 

 obtain data on which to form a conjecture as to the history of this out-of- 

 the-way deposit ; and our labour was not without its reward. We shall 

 now present a brief account of the specimens we picked up. Observing a 

 number of stones of different sizes, that had been thrown out, as they 



