466 RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 



think I can show you one disinterred here some years ago." 

 It interested me to find, from Mr Clouston's specimen, that 

 the palatal grinders of this recent fish of Orkney very near- 

 ly resemble those of its Dipterus of the Old Eed Sandstone. 

 The group is of nearly the same size in the modern as in 

 the ancient fish, and presents the same angular form ; but 

 the individual teeth are more strongly set in the Bergil than 

 in the Dipterus, and radiate less regularly from the inner rect- 

 angular point of the angle to its base outside. I could fain 

 have procured an Orkney Bergil, in order to determine the 

 general pattern of its palatal dentition with what is very pe- 

 culiar in the more ancient fish, the form of the lower jaw ; 

 and to ascertain farther, from the contents of the stomach, 

 the species of shell-fish or crustaceans on which it feeds ; but, 

 though by no means rare in Orkney, where it is occasionally 

 used as food, I was unable, during my short stay, to possess 

 myself of a specimen. 



Mr Clouston had, I found, chiefly directed his palseontolo- 

 gical inquiries on the vegetable remains of the flagstones, as 

 the department of the science in which, in relation to Ork- 

 ney, most remained to be done ; and his collection of these 

 is the most considerable in the number of its specimens that 

 I have yet seen. It, however, serves but to show how very 

 extreme is the poverty of the flora of the Lower Old Red 

 Sandstone. The numerous fishes of the period seem to have 

 inhabited a sea little more various in its vegetation than in 

 its molluscs. Among the many specimens of Mr Clouston's 

 collection I could detect but two species of plants, an im- 

 perfectly preserved vegetable, more nearly resembling a club- 

 moss than aught I have seen, and a smooth-stemmed fucoid, 

 existing as a mere coaly film on the stone, and distinguished 

 chiefly from the other by its sharp-edged, well-defined out- 

 line, and from the circumstance that its stems continue to re- 

 tain the same diameter for a considerable distance, and this, 



