456 
Most completely have these anticipations of Nicol been ful- 
filled. During the last seven years many of the sections of the 
Western Highlands have been visited by different geologists, 
Dr. Hicks leading the way, and not a few papers have been pub- 
lished embodying the results of these new studies of some of the 
disputed points. Such an able review of this recent work has 
been lately drawn up by my friend, Prof. Bonney, in his 
Anniversary Address to the Geological Society, that I need not 
go over the ground again, but will content myself by referring 
to that address and to two exhaustive papers read by Dr. Hicks 
before the Geologists’ Association for full details concerning this 
later work. It will be seen that while new methods of study 
have enabled them to improve or correct Nicol’s petrological 
nomenclature, the principal conclusions of nearly all these writers 
concerning the relations of the several rock-masses entirely 
support his views on the subject. 
But very recently Nicol’s work has been tested in the way 
which he himself so earnestly desired. Prof. Lapworth, who, 
like Nicol, was especially prepared for the task by Jong and 
patient study of the crumpled Silurian rocks of the Borderland, 
taking advantage of the newly published Ordnance maps of 
Sutherland, proceeded in the summer of 1882 to Eriboll, bent 
on the task of unravelling the complicated rocks and of mapping 
them upon the large scale of 6 inches to the mile. Prof. 
Lapworth’s detailed maps and sections were exhibited to the 
Geological Society on May 9, 1883, during the reading of a 
paper by Dr. Callaway, in which the views of Nicol also received 
a considerable amount of valuable support. 
In the same year, 1883, a detachment of the Geological Survey 
of Scotland, under the superintendence of Messrs. B. N. Peach 
and J. Horne, commenced the detailed mapping of the Durness- 
Eriboll district. How admirably these gentlemen have per- 
formed their task we all know, and I hope that some interesting 
information concerning their conclusions will be laid before the 
present meeting. In offering them—as I am sure that I am 
empowered by you to do—the hearty congratulations of the 
Geological Section of the British Association upon the auspicious 
commencement of this great undertaking, I cannot refrain from 
reminding you that, of the leaders in this important enterprise, 
one is the son of the discoverer of the Durness fossils, the 
veteran Mr. Charles Peach to whom we owe so much, while 
the other is a very active and efficient local secretary of this 
Section. 
Nor should I do justice to my own sentiments on the subject 
if I failed to bear tribute to the judgment displayed by the 
present chief of the Geological Survey in his choice of a base 
from which to attack this difficult problem, to his loyalty in 
accepting results so entirely opposed to his published opinions, 
and to his promptitude in making his fellow-workers in geology 
acquainted with these important discoveries. Unfortunately 
called upon while still young, and with but little of that ripe 
experience which he has since gained, to grapple with the most 
intricate of problems—problems which the most practised of 
field-geologists might be forgiven for failing to solve—his own 
judgment yielded, though not without serious misgivings (see 
““Memoirs of Sir oderick Murchison” (1875), vol. ii. p. 238) 
when opposed to the ardent confidence of a companion and 
friend whose reputation in the scientific world commanded his 
respect, and whose previous achievements had won his complete 
reliance. If, like your own Randolph at Bannockburn, he has 
““Jost a rose from his chaplet’’ at the commencement of this 
great Highland campaign, we are well assured that the error will 
be worthily repaired in its subsequent stages. 
The conclusions arrived at by Nicol, by Professor Lapworth, 
and by the officers of the Geological Survey, are, in all their 
main features, absolutely identical ; and the Murchisonian theory 
of Highland succession is now, by universal consent, abandoned. 
In the second of the great controversies to which we have 
alluded as having occupied the attention of this Geological 
Section in 1859—that concerning the age and relations of the 
Reptiliferous Sandstone of Elgin—the combatants were found 
ranged in quite a different order. Nicol is seen battling shoulder 
to shoulder with Murchison, Ramsay, and Harkness, in favour 
of the Paleszoic age of the beds in question ; while Lyell, sup- 
ported by Symonds of Pendock and Moore of Bath, is as stoutly 
maintaining their Secondary age. 
The finding by Mr. Patrick Duff, in the year 1852, of the 
to refer to them} but in the third of this series of papers, published in 1878 
(Quart. Fourn. Geol. Soc. vol. xxxiv. p. 660), I had no hesitation in aban- 
doning this terminology for that of Nicol. 
NARS ia. 
[Sep¢. 10, 1885 
little fossil lizard called Ze/erpfeton, and the determination of its 
true nature by Mantell and Owen, constitute a discovery com- 
parable in importance and fruitfulness to Mr. Peach’s detection 
of the fossiliferous character of the limestone of Durness ; up to 
that time no doubt had ever been entertained as to the ‘‘ Old 
Red” age of the yellow sandstone of Elgin. For bringing 
together the remarkable fossils of these rocks, geologists are 
indebted to the untiring labours of Dr, Gordon of Birnie—whom, 
full of years and honours, and the object of such universal respect 
and love as indeed make grey hairs a ‘‘crown of glory,” we 
rejoice to have still in our midst. Studying Dr. Gordon’s im- 
portant collections, Professor Huxley was able, shortly before 
the previous meeting of the Association in this city, to announce 
that a crocodilian (.S¢agonolepis), and a second lizard of Triassic 
affinities (Hyferodapedon), existed at the period when these beds 
were deposited, so that even in 1859 the palzontological evidence 
in favour of the Mesozoic age of these rocks was admitted to be 
almost overwhelming. 
But this evidence has been very greatly strengthened since that 
date ; for Professor Huxley has shown that the genus //yferoda- 
pedon is represented in the Trias of Warwickshire, of Devon- 
shire, and of India. In the same reptiliferous sandstone, with 
its abundant footprints, the teeth of Ceratodus, a fish unknown 
in the Paleeozoic rocks, have been found, together with the re- 
mains of a reptile which Professor Huxley permits me to state is, 
in his opinion, probably Dixosauriax. Iam sure that you will 
all join with me in the hope that the health of the President of 
the Royal Society may soon be so far restored that he may be 
able to return to the examination of these fossil reptiles of Elgin, 
in the study of which some of the earliest of his great palzeonto- 
logical discoveries were achieved. 
The manner in which the yellow sandstones, which have 
yielded these reptilian remains, are at many different points 
found associated with beds containing Holoptychius and other 
Old Red Sandstone fish, appeared to many geologists altogether 
inexplicable on any other hypothesis than that the strata are all 
of the same geological age. 
In spite, however, of these appearances, and the interesting 
observations of Dr. Gordon and Dr. Joass on the rocks of the 
Tarbet peninsula, which seemed to support the hypothesis just 
referred to, I am able to announce that proof of the most clear 
and convincing character now exists of the distinction between 
the fish-bearing ‘‘ Old Red” and the reptiliferous ‘‘ New Red” 
of the neighbourhood of Elgin. In the year 1873 I showed that 
rocks, identical in character with the reptiliferous sandstone of 
Elgin, and the overlying calcareous and cherty rock of Stotfield, 
exist on the northern side of the Moray Firth, in the county of 
Sutherland, and that they there conformably underlie Rheetic 
and Liassic strata. Very recently Dr. Gordon has added a 
crowning discovery to his long list of previous ones, by detecting 
in the same quarry the rocks containing the reptilian and fish 
remains respectively. I find, however, that while the two series 
of beds present well-marked differences in their ; mineral 
characters, the yellow sandstones with fish remains clearly over- 
lie the undoubted Upper Old Red, and are separated from it by 
a well-marked bed of conglomerate. In other quarries in the 
district, the manner in which these two series of strata have 
been thrown side by side by the action of great faults is very 
clearly exhibited. I hope that full details of the evidence on 
this interesting subject will be laid before you during the present 
meeting. ; 
The facts relied upon by the Palzontologist and the Strati- 
graphist respectively are thus found to be no longer opposed to 
one another. By a complicated series of parallel faults, the 
Devonian and Triassic sandstones, which happen to have a 
general resemblance in their mineral characters, are found again 
and again thrown side by side with one another in the Elgin dis- 
trict, so that the error into which geologists fell before the 
discovery of the distinctive fossils of the two sets of rocks, was 
a very pardonable one. 
A retrospect of these two controversies, now so happily laid 
at rest, is not, I think, without its uses for the student of High- 
land geology, for it may serve to furnish him with some useful 
warnings which are in great danger of being overlooked at the 
present time. 
The discovery of a few fossil remains in strata where they 
were previously unknown, has completely revolutionised our 
ideas concerning the age of rock-masses of enormous extent and 
