418 OLD EED OF NORTH OF SCOTLAND. [Ca XXVI. 



of my specimens (see fig. 547) to a small bundle of the dried-up eggs of 

 the common English frog, which he had obtained in a black and car- 

 bonaceous state (see fig. 548) from the mud of a pond near London, that 

 he suggested a batrachian origin for the fossil ; and Mr. Newport con- 

 curred in the idea, adding that other larger and more circular fossils (fig. 

 549), which I procured from shale in the same " Old Red," occurring 

 singly or in pairs, and attached to the leaves of plants, might possibly be 

 the ova of some gigantic triton or salamander. 



The general absence of reptilian remains from strata of the Devonian 

 period Avill weigh strongly with many geologists against such conjectures. 



" Old Red" in the North of Scotland. — The whole of the northern part 

 of Scotland, from Cape Wrath to the southern flank of the Grampians, has 

 been well described by Mr. Hugh Miller as consisting of a nucleus of 

 granite, gneiss, and other hypogene rocks, which seem as if set in a sand- 

 stone frame.* The beds of the Old Red Sandstone constituting this frame 

 may once perhaps have extended continuously over the entire Grampians 

 before the upheaval of that mountain range ; for one band of the sand- 

 stone follows the course of the Moray Frith far into the interior of the 

 great Caledonian valley, and detached hills and island-like patches occur 

 in several parts of the interior, capping some of the higher summits in 

 Sutherlandshire, and appearing in Morayshire like oases among the granite 

 rocks of Strathspey. On the western coast of Ross-shire, the Old Red 

 forms those three immense insulated hills before described (p. 67), where 

 beds of horizontal sandstone, 3000 feet high, rest unconformably on a base 

 of gneiss, attesting the vast denudation which has taken place. 



As the mineral character of the " Old Red" north of the Grampians 

 differs considerably from that of the south, especially in the middle and 

 lower divisions, I shall now allude to it separately. The upper portion, 

 consisting of light-colored sandstones, and containing the Telerpeton of 

 Elgin, has been already classed, A., p. 412, as the equivalent of the yel- 

 low sandstone of Fife. That upper member passes downwards into red 

 and variegated sandstone and conglomerate, which may correspond with 

 the beds called B., in the same section at p. 412. To the above succeeds, 

 in the descending order, " the middle formation" of Mr. Hugh Miller, com- 

 posed of thin, fissile, gray sandstone, in which, in Morayshire, Dr. Malcolm- 

 son found a species of Ccphalaspis ; but whether these beds are of the 

 age of the paving-stone of Arbroath (C. Table, p. 412) is as yet uncertain. 



Next below is the " inferior division" of Hugh Miller, comprising — 



a. Med and variegated sandstones. 



b. Bituminous schists. 



c. Coarse sandstone. 



d. Great conglomerate. 



In the schists b, a great variety of fish are met with in the counties of 

 Banff, Nairn, Moray, Cromarty, and Caithness, and also in Orkney, be- 

 longing to the genera Pterichthys (fig. 550), Coccosleus, Diplopterus, 

 Dipterus, C heir acanthus, Asterolepis, and others described by Agassiz. 



* « Old Red Sandstone," 1841. 



