Anniversary Address. 331 



formed at the bottom of the sea, in planes nearly horizontal, 

 were raised so as to become almost vertical, while they were 

 yet covered by the ocean, and before the sandstone had been 

 deposited upon them. And he saw too, that as fragments of 

 the primary rock included in the sandstone, are many of 

 them rounded and worn, the deposition of the latter must 

 have been separated from the elevation of the former by such 

 an interval of time, as gave room for the action of waste and 

 decay.* 



Since the period when Hutton uttered his bold generaliza- 

 tions. Sir Roderick Murchison has unfolded additional 

 evidence of the long lapse of time between these two forma- 

 tions, for he has shown, that there intervenes the era, during 

 which were deposited the thick silurian beds with their 

 numerous organisms. Though these beds are absent from 

 Roxburghshire, they are largely developed along the Welsh 

 Borders. Excepting " morsels of black vegetable matter " 

 noticed by Mr. D. M. Home in his geological account of Rox- 

 burghshire, no fossils have been found in the Cambro-silurian 

 rocks of Roxburghshire, though films of metallic oxides, as- 

 suming a dentritic form have been mistaken for " very distinct 

 impressions of plants." In the same formation, however, 

 in Berwickshire, Mr. Stevenson has found Graptolites. 

 The soft friable condition of this red sandstone, caused it at 

 one time to be grouped with the new red sandstone ; but in 

 Mr. D. Milne Home's Memoir, it is rightly classified as the 

 old red or Devonian; for the question as to its age was de- 

 cisively determined by the discovery of Holoptychius nohi- 

 lissimus and Pterichthys major, characteristic Devonian 

 fishes, in Fernihirst quarry and elsewhere in Roxburgh- 

 shire. 



Following the Jed upward, the party wandered through 

 scenery of great beauty, heightened at this season in gorge- 

 ousness, by the rich blossoms of the fruit trees. They lingered 

 for awhile beneath the Capon Tree, a very large old oak tree, 



* Playfaii's Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory, p. 51. 



