RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 467 



too, after throwing off at acute angles numerous branches, 

 nearly equal in bulk to the parent trunk. In a specimen 

 about two and a half feet in length, which I owe to the kind- 

 ness of Mr Dick of Thurso, there are stems continuous 

 throughout, that, though they ramify into from six to eight 

 branches in that space, are quite as thick atop as at bottom. 

 They are the remains, in all probability, of a long flexible 

 fucoid, like those fucoids of the intertropical seas that, stream- 

 ing slantwise in the tide, rise not unfrequently to the sur- 

 face in fifteen and twenty fathoms water. I saw among Mr 

 Clouston's specimens no such lignite as the fragment of true 

 coniferous wood which I had found at Cromarty a few years 

 previous, and which, it would seem, is still unique among the 

 fossils of the Old Red Sandstone. In the chart of the Paci- 

 fic attached to the better editions of " Cook's Voyages," there 

 are several entries along the track of the great navigator 

 that indicate where, in mid-ocean, trees, or fragments of trees, 

 had been picked up. The entries, however, are but few, 

 though they belong to all the three voyages together : if I 

 remember aright, there are only five entries in all, two in 

 the Northern and three in the Southern Pacific. The float- 

 ing tree, at a great distance from land, is of rare occurrence 

 in even the present scene of things, though the breadth of 

 land be great, and trees numerous ; and in the times of the 

 Old Red Sandstone, when probably the breadth of land was 

 not great, and trees not numerous, it seems to have been of 

 rarer occurrence still. But it is at least something to know 

 that in this early age of the world trees there were. 



I walked on to Stromness, and on the following morning, 

 that of Saturday, took boat for Hoy, skirting, on my pas- 

 sage out, the eastern and southern shores of the intervening 

 island of Grsemsay, and, on the passage back again, its west- 

 ern and northern shores. The boatman, an intelligent man, 

 one of the teachers, as I afterwards ascertained, in the Free 



