Achanarras Revisited. 283 
cream colour, while exposed bones and scales, black at first, 
frequently become pale blue, as in the well-known case of 
the Banniskirk fishes. 
Throughout the whole thickness the rock is abundantly 
micaceous, the mica being in very minute grains And 
while the upper beds show by their weathering a large 
amount of iron in their composition, the presence, in 
the bottom rock, of a good deal of lime is indicated by 
a very decided effervescence on the application of an 
acid. 
Finally, in addition to the beds noted above, several feet 
of dark crumply flags were explored last summer in one part 
of the quarry, their position indicating that they passed 
below the so-called “bottom” rock (C). They contained no 
fossils, and as I did not clearly see their junction with the 
beds above, I have left them out of the diagram. 
FOSSILS. 
The fossils occurring in this quarry consist of plants and 
fishes, but the former are rare, and in so poor a state of 
preservation, that it can scarcely be possible to identify 
them. 
Fishes and fish-remains occur throughout the whole 
thickness of the beds A, B, and C, below which quarrying 
operations are not ordinarily carried. They are, indeed, 
scanty in the uppermost fissile layers (A); in the hard pale 
flags (B) they are more common, and principally represented 
by Coccosteus; but it is in the bottom bed (C) that they are 
most abundant, and in the best state of preservation. There 
all the species in the list occur almost indiscriminately, but 
Paleospondylus seems to be especially characteristic of the 
upper part of this bed, beginning to appear about 6 feet 
from the surface, while Dipterus is more especially common 
in the lower part. I have said in my previous paper that I 
know of no other fish-bearing schist in Caithness which has 
precisely the external characters of any of the varieties seen 
in this section; and taking also into account the appearance 
of the fossils themselves, it is not difficult, in examining 
