TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 263 



peared to him to be magnesian limestone. The origin of these fragments was either 

 to be referred to the drift, or denudation. If drifted, the question whence naturally 

 presented itself. It was true, in Denmark they had chalk in situ, but that was in 

 the wrong direction. He would venture to suggest that, from the appearance of the 

 ground and the position of the flints, these flints had been rolled on a beach which 

 had afterwards been elevated. 



On the Restoration of Pterichthys in ' The Testimony of the Rocks' 

 By the Rev. Dr. Longmuir. 



Dr. Longmuir stated that it was with emotions of the deepest sorrow that he ven- 

 tured to do what, in all probability, would have been done by his friend Mr. Miller, 

 had he been among them. The many-sided mind of that eminent man was such, 

 that one beholder was struck with one aspect of it as the most extraordinary, another 

 with a second, and another with yet a third. Thus one is astonished at his memory, 

 that seemed to retain everything; another admires his powerful imagination and in- 

 domitable perseverance ; but, from an intimacy of many years, as well as from the 

 study of his works, he (Dr. L.) would advert to his sagacity as the most striking 

 characteristic of his gifted mind. Hence he seemed intuitively to perceive what would 

 have cost others no small amount of careful investigation. Those who were present 

 at the meeting of the British Association in 1850. would remember his demonstration 

 of what had previously appeared to him to be teeth in the ends of the jaws of the 

 Coccosteus, although that opinion had originally been "written down a blunder on 

 the very highest authority ;" and so in his ' Testimony of the Rocks,' those who 

 were familiar with his restoration of the Pterichthys in his ' Old Red Sandstone ' 

 must have been struck with the attachment of a triangular fin to the upper edge of 

 the caudal extremity in his new representation of that remarkable fish, with which 

 his name will be indissolubly connected. In one of the earliest specimens of Pte- 

 richthys which his " busy hammer " laid open, he thought he detected indications of 

 this fin on the lengthy and angular tail ; but, either deeming the evidence insufficient, 

 or hoping one day to lay open a nodule that would less equivocally display the ap- 

 pendages of the tail, he did not venture to represent this caudal fin. This specimen 

 he presented to his friend the Rev. John Swanson, who afterwards transmitted it, 

 among several other fossils, to the Museum of King's College. As illustrative at 

 once of his powerful memory and ardent perseverance, Mr. Miller, remembering the 

 appearance and history of that specimen, came to Aberdeen on the last day of July, 

 1856, and consequently but a few months before his lamented death, to examine that 

 specimen, and left a card upon it, on which he had pencilled, " Pterichthys oblongus, 

 Cromarty (second specimen ever found) ;" together with a reference to his * Schools 

 and Schoolmasters,' for a notice of the specimen. Through the kindness of Lieut. 

 Paterson, R.N., Cromarty, he (Dr. L.) was indebted for a beautiful specimen of the 

 same fossil, in which the tail, bent along the side of the body, showed distinctly the 

 small fins which Mr. Miller had restored along the edge of the tail, whilst other 

 specimens from Lethenbar left no doubt as to the existence of the larger triangular 

 fin, together with the spine on its upper edge by which it had been extended. (Dr. 

 Longmuir illustrated his paper by diagrams of the former and later restorations of 

 Pterichthys, and exhibited the interesting specimens to which he had referred.) 



On Fossil Remains found at Urquhart, near Elgin. 

 By the Rev. James Morrison. Communicated by the Rev. Dr. Longmuir. 



These fossil shells, of well nigh 150 species, have all been found in a bank of 

 clay having a frontage of a few yards and a depth of two : the clay, of a deep 

 dark-blue colour, is regularly stratified. Some of the bands near the top have 

 small stones and gravel mixed with them ; some are arenaceous, and others purely 

 aluminous. The shells are found in the lower beds, in irregular and rounded water- 

 worn masses of no great size. These masses are of the same hue and material 

 as the beds in which they lie, and are plainly unwasted fragments of the rocks 

 from which the clay has been formed. The deposit can be traced for some two 

 miles towards the sea, from which it is about four miles distant, though only a few 



