Roberts— Scotland. 25a 
the Town-Council of Inverness as the site for their new cemetery; 
and a more beautiful spot for the repose of the dead could not be 
chosen. A fay-tale is out of its place in a scientific paper, how- 
ever ‘chatty’ the character of that paper may be ; but as most geo- 
logists care for fay-folk that can walk and talk and love and be 
good, I may, perhaps, be allowed to say, before passing on to my next 
note, that some time before Tomnahuirich was made a cemetery, an 
author of fairy-tales, hearing that the hill was a spot sacred to the 
Fays as their great Meeting-place, wrote a story of an imaginary 
Meeting-day, at which a child, the noblest gift the fays could offer 
at the throne of their King, was sought for and offered, as a proof that 
goodness had not departed from the world. My note-book gives 
me a corollary to this fayland-fancy, in one sense a sad one—two 
children were the first burials in Tomnahuirich. 
Tnow come toa study which has, more than any other in Scotland, 
challenged the best wits which have been brought to bear upon it ; 
that of the so-called Elgin beds. ‘Upper Old Red,’ say one school 
of geologists; ‘ Trias,’ or ‘ Lias,’ say the other disputants. I plead 
myself entire incapacity to decide as the matter now stands; for the 
paleontological contents of the series of beds (apparently conform- 
able) which are exhibited in the Lossiemouth, Tarbotness, and other 
sections, received last year a considerable and very important addition 
through the labours of Mr. Smith, a most intelligent officer on the 
staff of the Highland Railway, who carefully watched the progress 
of the cuttings through the disputed land, and collected from the 
‘Yellow Beds’ some very remarkable cephalic plates of Fishes, 
probably belonging to a genus having alliances with Coccosteus and 
Asterolepis. Now, these fossils were met with in the rock which 
has long been known as bearing remains, more or less perfect (the 
finest yet discovered being those exhibited last year in illustration 
of my paper on the genus), of the largest yet-known Paleozoic Fish, 
Bothriolepis. These are certainly in the Holoptychius-zone of the 
Upper Old Red, typified by the rocks quarried so extensively at the 
Bishops’ Mill quarry, near Elgin, at Alves, and at other places to 
which I accompanied Prof. Harkness in 1863; and the desideratum 
has always been to obtain Holoptychius associated with a reptile-bone. 
I have very carefully examined the large collection made by Mr. 
Smith, with the hope that the question may be settled; but although 
I could find no good evidence of the association of the two orders of 
vertebrate life in the same rock, some very puzzling fragments of 
bones strengthened my hopes that, at some early day, the Yellow 
Sandstones generally of NE. Scotland, with their reptilian remains, 
Stagonolepis, Telerpeton, &c., will be regarded as the representa- 
tives (though probably during a somewhat more advanced period) 
of the well-known ‘ Yellow Sandstones’ which cap our English and 
Trish ‘Old Reds.’ The specimens obtained through the watchfulness 
of Mr. Smith are now in the National Collection. As yet they are 
unique. 
_ I scarcely understand why either paleontologists or stratigra- 
phical geologists should not concede these ‘Elgin beds’ to the Old 
