336 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



1. On the Relations of the different parts of the Old Red Sandstone 

 in which Organic Remains have recently been discovered, in the 

 Counties of Moray, ISTairn, Banff, and Inverness. By J. G. 

 Malcolmson, M.D., F.G.S. 



[Read Jmie 5tli, 1839.] 

 (Plate XI.) 



[This communication was received June 4, 1839 ; read June 5, 1839 ; re- 

 ferred November 6, 1839 ; and reported upon favourably May 27, 1840 ; but 

 the determination to print the paper was deferred by the Council until Prof. 

 Agassiz should have supplied the description of the fossil fishes which are men- 

 tioned in it, and which had been sent to the Continent for examination. The 

 Memoir, prepared to a great extent for press, with its illustrative sections ar- 

 ranged for engraving, thus remained unpublished. In May 1844, the death of 

 Dr. Malcolmson was announced; and in June and November 1844, inquiry 

 was made respecting the Memoir, which, apparently, still waited for the descrip- 

 tion of the specimens. About this time the ' Monographie des Poissons Fos- 

 siles du Yieux Grres Rouge ' was published, containing an account of the fossil 

 fishes referred to in the Memoir ; but those who had been interested in the de- 

 termination of Dr. Malcolmson' s specimens, and who had apparently under- 

 taken to finish the preparation of portions of the Memoir, had long before left 

 England, — Sir Roderick Murchison for Russia and the Ural, in 1840, — Dr. 

 Falconer for India. On Dr. Falconer's return he made inquiries for the paper, 

 but not in the right direction ; and both Sir Roderick Murchison and Dr. Fal- 

 coner came to the conclusion that it was lost. When Sir R. Murchison was oc- 

 cupied, in the winter of 1858, with his description of the Elgin Sandstones, and 

 after he had received a communication from the Rev. G. Gordon respecting Dr. 

 Malcohnson's MSS., supposed by him to be lost, his attention was drawn, at the 

 apartments of the Geological Society, to Dr. Malcolmson's MS. sections ; and, 

 on inquiry, he ascertained, to his surprise, that Dr. Malcolmson's MS. Memoir 

 was not missing, but in its place in the Society's archives. 



The Rev. G-. Gordon had informed Sir R. Murchison that a paper by him, on 

 the geology of the northern part of Moray, would appear in the Edinburgh 

 New Philosophical Journal for January 1859, and that this paper would com- 

 prise a large portion of the original Memoir by Malcolmson (of which Mr. 

 Gordon possesses a copy), together with some observations on the non-publica- 

 tion of the Memoir referred to. Sir Roderick had just time, after learning that the 

 paper and its sections were in good preservation, to communicate to Mr. Gordon 

 the explanatory note which appears at pages 59* and 60* of the Journal above 

 referred to ; and he immediately drew the attention of the Council of the Geolo- 

 gical Society to the delay that had occurred in the publication of Dr. Malcolm- 

 son's Memoir and Sections. 



On January 19 and Feb. 23, 1859, the Council took into consideration the 

 publication of Dr. Malcolmson's Memoir, and came to the resolution, " That all 

 the details of that paper which are not given in Mr. Lonsdale's abstract (Pro- 

 ceed. Geol. Soc. vol. iii. p. 141) or in the recent paper of Mr. Gordon, referred 

 to above, be printed in full, together with a lithograph plate of sections in illus- 

 tration of the same." 



Plate XI. contains all the sections that accompanied the MS. Memoir. One 

 coloured drawing of a fish, too obscure for determination, a pencil-sketch of a 

 vegetable fragment resembling those figured by Mr. Salter in Quart. Journ.' 

 Geol. Soc. vol. xiv. pi. 5, figs. 3-5, and a topographical map are the remaining 

 illustrations. 



Since the date of this Memoir, considerable modifications have been made in 

 the nomenclature of the several members of the Old Red Sandstone, giving rise 

 to a systematic arrangement different from that here advanced by Dr. Malcolm- 



