434 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIEIT. [DoC. 15, 



of Elgin to a Jurassic age, — and, seeing, from their relations to the Old 

 Eed fish-beds, that it is scarcely possible to assimilate them to the 

 Trias* or New Red Sandstone (of which there is no trace whatever 

 on the N.E. coast of Scotland), still it might be contended that, as 

 in many parts of the world the Devonian rocks pass up into the 

 Lower Carboniferous, the sandstones of Elgin with Eeptilian re- 

 mains may be classed with the strata forming the base of the 

 Coal-formation. 



In estimating the evidences before us, it would unquestionably be 

 wrong to dogmatize on this point, and peremptorily to separate the 

 strata in question from the lowest Carboniferous zone. Euture 

 discoveries of other fossils may lead to such a classification, though 

 in the present state of our knowledge no reason can be offered for 

 the adoption of this view. 



The mere fact that cornstones underlie and overlie the fish-beds, 

 and also underlie and overhe the yellow sandstones, would seem to 

 demonstrate that all these strata constitute one united mineral series. 

 Although no trace of Carboniferous plants has been detected in these 

 beds, it is to be remembered that the light- coloured sandstones of 

 Duncansby Head, Tarbet I^ess, and the Shetland Islands have 

 afforded a rare land-plant or two, which^ though apparently of 

 genera that occur in the Coal-period, are unquestionably of very 

 distinct species, and thus far favour the view, to which I stiU 

 adhere, that these yeUow sandstones (often, as before stated, of 

 reddish colours in their northern extension in Caithness and the 

 Orkney Islands) form really the natural upward termination of the 

 Old Red or Devonian group — that great intermedium between the 

 Silurian and Carboniferous systems of life. 



Here, then, I close this sketch of the structure and succession of 

 the older rocks of the North of Scotland, leaving to my associate in 

 the Government School of Mines, Professor Huxley, the description 

 of the reptile which is most characteristic of the youngest of the 

 deposits under consideration on this occasion. 



The only merit I claim in respect to these reptilian remains, 

 besides the discovery, with Mr. G. Gordon, of some of their bones, 

 is the having earnestly preferred the request to Mr. Patrick Duff 

 to allow me to select from his choice cabinet a most curious hollow 

 cast, which I believed to belong to a vertebrate animal, and also for 

 having induced the gentlemen of Elgin and the neighbourhood to 

 send up, from their instructive museum and their private stores, 

 every remarkable fossil, the examination of which could throw light 

 on this interesting subject. 



Hote on the Fossils frcyni nem' Elgin. — The following account of the successive 

 discoveries of the remains of Reptiles and their footsteps in Sandstones near 

 Elgin is abstracted from a memoir recently communicated by Mr. Patrick Duif 

 to " the Local Scientific Society of Elgin." 



The first cast of scutes (scales) of the Stagonolepis was found in 1 844, in the 



■ * For the entire dissimilarity of the so-called New Bed of the North-west 

 Coast of the Highlands, see p. 416. 



