!|.858.] ; / MUBCgiSON-^ANDSTONES OF ELGIN. 433 



which contain the Elgin reptiles. Now, as those Oolitic and Liassic 

 beds of Sutherland and Eoss are perhaps better known to myself 

 than to most other geologists, and as I have twice revisited them 

 since I described them in the ' Geological Transactions' thirty-two 

 years ago, I unhesitatingly affirm that in no one respect do they 

 resemble the reptile-bearing sandstones of Elgin. The following 

 reasons will place this inference clearly before the reader : — 



1st. The Oolitic and Liassic strata in Sutherland and Ross are 

 everywhere discordant to the strike, range, and dip of the Old Red 

 Sandstone, whilst the yellow sandstones and cornstones of Elgia are 

 (as has been shown) apparently conformable to the red sandstone 

 with characteristic ichthyoUtes, on which they rest, and into which 

 they graduate downwards; so that, just like the equally yellow 

 sandstones of Dornoch in Sutherlandshire and Tain ia Ross-shire, 

 they seem to form an integral part of the Old Red deposits. 



2nd. The prevailing masses of the northern Oolitic and Liassic 

 formations of Sutherland and Ross consist of numerous alternations 

 of dark shale and deep-bluish-grey calcareous grits, with carbona- 

 ceous and ferruginous sandstones, like those of the eastern moor-- 

 lands of Yorkshire, and of finely laminated, thin-bedded Liassic lime- 

 stones, — the whole series being charged with shells and plants 

 characteristic of such deposits. Not one of these strata resembles in 

 any way the Reptiliferous sandstones and the cornstones, whether in 

 lithological character or fossil contents. 



3rd. There is, however, in the OoKtic rocks of Sutherland a 

 peculiar band of building-stone — that of Braambury Hill, near 

 Brora (and out of which Dunrobin Castle has been built), which, 

 from its white colour only, might by a superficial observer be assimi- 

 lated to the yellowish-white sandstones of Elgin and the coast-range 

 of Burgh Head and Lossiemouth. But a close comparison com- 

 pletely dissipates this hypothesis. The rock of Braambury Hill is 

 much more siliceous and closer-grained than the yellow sandstones 

 of Dornoch, Tain, and Morayshire, and, unlike them, offers scarcely 

 a trace of mica, whilst it is laden with exquisitely-preserved casts 

 of numerous fossil shells of the Calcareous Grit or Oxford Oolite. 

 This white bmlding- stone is also charged with the casts of many 

 large stems of plants of Oohtic age, whilst the underlying shale and 

 sandstone with the Equisetum colum7iare contain thick beds of the 

 Brora coal, — the brecciated masses of the group at Helmsdale being 

 charged with a great variety of the plants noticed by Hugh Miller, 

 the Duke of Argyll, and others. 



It is enough, then, to say that no one of these features is to 

 be recognized in the Reptiliferous Sandstones of Morayshire, in 

 which neither an Oolitic shell nor a land-plant has yet been detected. 

 These, on the contrary, are associated with cornstones and pebble- 

 beds, and contain reptiles of genera which have never, as Professor 

 Huxley assures me, been found in any other deposit, whether of palaeo- 

 zoic or mesozoic age ; whilst the rocks seem to be linked on conform- 

 ably to strata laden with known ichthyohtes of the Old Red Sandstone. 



As then it is impossible to refer these Reptile-bearing. Sandstones 



2i2 



