396 RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 



of this species that I first determined the true position of 

 the eyes of the Coccosteus, a position which some of my 

 lately-found ichthyolites conclusively demonstrate, and which 

 Agassiz, in his restoration, deceived by ill-preserved speci- 

 mens, has fixed at a point considerably more lateral and pos- 

 terior, and where eyes would have been of greatly less use 

 to the animal. About a field's breadth below this quarry of 

 the Coccosteus minor, if I may take the liberty of extem- 

 porizing a name, until such time as some person better qua- 

 lified furnishes the creature with a more characteristic one, 

 there are the remains, consisting of fosse and rampart, 

 with a single cannon lying red and honeycombed amid the 

 ruins, of one of Cromwell's forts, built to protect the town 

 against the assaults of an enemy from the sea. In the few 

 and stormy years during which this ablest of British gover- 

 nors ruled over Scotland, he seems to have exercised a sin- 

 gularly vigilant eye. The claims on his protection of even 

 the remote ELirkwall did not escape him. 



The antiquities of the burgh next engaged me ; and, as 

 became its dignity and importance, I began with the Cathe- 

 dral, a building impftsing enough to rank among the most 

 impressive of its class anywhere, but whose peculiar setting 

 in this remote northern country, joined to the associations of 

 its early history with the Scandinavian Hollos, Sigurds, Einars, 

 and Hacos of our dingier chronicles, serve greatly to enhance 

 its interest. It is a noble pile, built of a dark-tinted Old 

 Red Sandstone, a stone which, though by much too sombre 

 for adequately developing the elegancies of the Grecian or 

 Roman architecture, to which a light delicate tone of colour 

 seems indispensable, harmonizes well with the massier and 

 less florid styles of the Gothic. The round arch of that an- 

 cient Norman school which was at one time so generally re- 

 cognised as Saxon, prevails in the edifice, and marks out its 

 older portions. A few of the arches present on their ring- 



