1852.] 



BRICKENDEN ON DEVONIAN FOOT-TRACK. 



99 



the sandstone strata irom which the slab was obtained are unques- 

 tionably referable to the Devonian formation, to which they had 

 always been considered to belong ; the occurrence of foot-prints, ap- 

 parently of Chelonians, in rocks in which no vestiges of the class 

 Reptilia had ever been observed in any part of the world, having led 

 some persons to doubt whether they might not be connected with 

 the Permian Series. The discovery of the Reptile at Spynie, by Mr. 

 Patrick Duif, dispels, however, all doubts on this point, for the sand- 

 stones of Cummingston and Spynie are identical, and at Spynie are 

 overlaid by the cherty limestone peculiar to the upper division of the 

 Devonian in this district. 



Figs. 1 and 2. — Sections showing the Relation of the Sandstone and 

 Limestone Rocks in the neighbourhood of Elgin. 



Fig. L 



N.E. 



. Fig. 2. 



Stotfield Point. 



S.W. 



a, a. Sandstone \ T.„„„„;„„ 

 bib. Limestone P^^^'^^^"- 



The sandstone quarry from which the 

 fossil reptile was obtained. 



The yellow sandstone of Stotfield is a continuation of that of Covesea, from which 

 latter the Foot-prints were obtained. 



The relative position of the strata in the two localities above re- 

 ferred to is shown in the accompanying figs. 1 & 2. The quarry from 

 which the reptile was obtained is situated on the Hill of Spynie ; the 

 locality whence I extracted the slab with foot-prints is to the north- 

 west, and separated from the former beds by Loch Spynie. 



I am reminded, by the accomplished editor of * The Witness/ 

 Mr. Hugh Miller, "that the Dipterian family, in which M. Agassiz 

 places that unique ichthyolite the Stagonolepis Robertsoni, is em- 

 phatically an Old Red Sandstone family, represented in the coal-mea- 

 sures only by a Biplopterus, and in the Permian series it is without 

 a representative at all." 



By the discovery, therefore, of the foot-prints at Cummingston, 

 and of the Reptilian skeleton at Spynie, Morayshire, we have now 

 obtained indisputable evidence in our own country (I believe for the 

 first time) that the class Reptilia existed at that very remote period 



