TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION C. 997 
Murchison’s confident assertion that this Torridon Sandstone was simply the ‘Old 
Red,’ Nicol pointed out that the only possible way of harmonising these two views 
was to suppose that the quartzites and limestones were of Carboniferous age; and 
he showed that the imperfect fossils which had been up to that time obtained at 
Durness were not sufficient to negative such a supposition. 
But during the summers of 1857 and 1858, Nicol continued his labours in the 
Western Highlands, with the result of clearing away many of his difficulties and 
perplexities. Murchison, too, had revisited the district, and seen that his idea of 
the ‘Old-Red’ age of the Torridon Sandstone would have to be finally abandoned, 
and that Macculloch’s views, as amended by Nicol, concerning the relations of the 
Highland rock-masses must be accepted. Salter, too, examining more perfect 
specimens of fossils, which had in the meanwhile been obtained from the Durness 
limestone by the indefatigable Mr. Charles Peach, showed that they were 
certainly of lower Palzeozoic age (Silurian of Murchison). 
The position taken up by Murchison, and on which he made his final stand, 
was simply arrived at by combining the stratigraphical conclusions of Macculloch 
and Nicol with the paleontological results of Peach and Salter. 
Murchison attended the meetings of this Association at Dublin in 1857, and at 
Leeds in 1858, on both occasions making use of the opportunity for explaining in 
detail his ideas concerning the age and succession of the Highland rocks. On the 
latter occasion, he challenged his old friend Nicol to meet him at the forthcoming 
meeting at Aberdeen to discuss the question, and the challenge was accepted. 
When Murchison arrived at this city, in September 1859, he brought with him 
a redoubtable champion in the person of Professor (now Sir Andrew) Ramsay, the 
director of the Geological Survey, who had been conducted to Assynt and shown 
the section there. It may perhaps serve as a caution against hasty generalisations, 
drawn from a single section imperfectly examined, to remember that so excellent a 
field-geologist, as Ramsay undoubtedly was, not only failed to see the weakness of 
Murchison’s position, but threw all the weight of his great authority into the 
scale against Nicol in this memorable controversy. 
Nicol, however, laid before this meeting a paper which, afterwards published 
in detail in the Journal of the Geological Society,? must be admitted to have really 
established the main facts concerning the geology of the Highlands as accepted by 
all geologists at the present day ; though his views, as is not uncommonly the case 
with great and original discoveries, were met for a long time with nothing but 
bitter opposition or cold neglect. Permit me to state, as briefly as possible, the 
conclusions which Nicol, as the result of three years of patient work in the Western 
Highlands, was able to announce in this place, just twenty-six years ago. 
1. He maintained with Macculloch and Hay Cunningham, and in opposition to 
the views originally propounded by Sedgwick and Murchison, that there exists in 
the Western Highlands an enormously thick series of red sandstones, quartzites, 
and limestones, which rest uncomformably upon the ancient gneisses and schists, 
and belong to a far older geological period than the Old Red Sandstone. 
2. He showed that this series of strata really constitutes ¢wo distinct formations, 
and that the older of these, the Torridon Sandstone, consists of red sandstones and 
conglomerates, in which no organic remains could be detected. 
3. The younger of these formations was shown by him to lie unconformably upon 
the Torridon Sandstone, and to consist of three members, which Nicol named the 
Quartzite, the Fucoid Beds, and the Limestone.* It is this formation which has 
yielded the interesting fossils of Lower Paleozoic age. 
4, The apparent repetition of beds of quartzite and limestone, which was insisted 
upon by Murchison, was shown to be due to faulting and overthrow, and thus the 
1 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xiii. (1857), p. 36. 
2» Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xvii. (1861), pp. 85-113. This paper was read on 
December 5, 1860; although its title is slightly different, the whole course of the 
argument is the same with that of the paper read here in the September of the 
previous year. 
8 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soe. vol. xvii. (1861), p. 92, &e. 
