REVIEW OF THE SYSTEM. 139 



Beyond fishes, we know for certain of no higher life dur- 

 ing the period of the Old Red Sandstone. It is true that 

 remains of reptiles and reptilian footprints have been found 

 in the sandstones of Lossiemouth and Cummingstone in 

 Morayshire, but there are doubts about the age of these 

 strata whether they be truly uppermost Old Red, or be- 

 long perhaps to the ISTew Red or Triassic. In this state of 

 uncertainty it may be generalised (provisionally, of course, 

 and having this doubtful instance fully in view) that the 

 flora of the Old Red period, scantily and obscurely de- 

 veloped, consists mainly of sea-weeds, marsh-plants, club- 

 mosses, ferns, and coniferous-looking trees ; and that its 

 fauna, on the other hand, taking all the divisions of the 

 system as known in Europe and America, consists of corals, 

 encrinites, star-fishes, polyzoa, shell-fish, Crustacea, and fishes. 

 We have thus no insects, no undoubted instance of reptiles, 

 no birds, no mammals. No doubt the record is imperfect, 

 and it cannot for a moment be supposed that geologists in 

 the few scattered patches they have examined have detected 

 all, or nearly all of the Old Red Sandstone organisms. In- 

 deed, the existence of those already discovered necessarily 

 implies the presence of others on whom they preyed, or by 

 whom they were in turn preyed upon ; and the links we 

 have discovered in the chain of life, separated as they are, 

 prove the existence of the missing ones as clearly as if they 

 had been displayed before us. Still, notwithstanding all 

 these facts and logical inferences, the flora and fauna of the 

 Old Red Sandstone curiously coincide in the main with all 

 that geology knows of the chronological development of life 

 on our globe, and we perceive in its discovered forms the 

 gradually-ascending steps in the great systemal scale of 

 vitality. 



Such is a brief review of the Old Red Sandstone a 



