Oh. XXVI] 



OLD RED SANDSTONE. 



529 



The late Dr. Mautell was so much struck with the resemblance of 

 one of my specimens (see fig. 595) to a small bundle of the dried-up 

 eggs of the common English frog, which he had obtained in a black 

 and carbonaceous state (see fig. 596) from the mud of a pond near 



Fig. 595. 



Fisr. 



Fossil.— Old Red. 



Recent. 



Fig. 595. Slab of Old Red Sandstone, 

 Forfarshire, with bodies like the ova 

 of Batrachians. 



a. Ova ? in a carbonized state. 



b. Egg-cells ? the ova shed. 



Fig. 596. Eggs of the common frog, 

 Eana temporaries, in a carbonized 

 state, from a dried-up pond in Clap- 

 ham Common. 

 a. The ova. 



o. A transverse section of the 

 mass, exhibiting the form of the 

 egg-cells. J 



London, that he suggested a batrachian origin for the fossil ; and Mr. 

 Newport concurred in the idea, adding that other larger and more 

 circular fossils (fig. 597), 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 Sala- 

 mander. 



Fig. 597. Shale of Old Red Sandstone, or 

 Devonian. Forfarshire, with impres- 

 sion of plants and eggs of Crustaceans. 



a. Two pair of ova? resembling 

 of large Salamanders or Tritons. 



b, o. Detached ova. 



The general absence of reptilian remains from strata of the Devonian 

 period always weighed strongly with most geologists against such con- 

 jectures, and Mr. Salter in 1859, and more lately Mr. Powrie, have 

 suggested that Parka decipiens occurs too often associated with Ptery- 

 gotus not to incline one to suspect that they are the eggs of that crus- 

 tacean. They have not only been found with P. anglicus in Forfar- 

 shire and Perthshire, but also with P. problematicus at Ludlow, and 

 with P. ludensis at Kidderminster, in the uppermost Silurian strata. 

 Against the hypothesis of these bodies being seed-vessels, it is urged 

 that there is no trace of a style nor of a leafy involucrum. They are 

 supposed to have constituted a single layer of ova enclosed in a mem- 

 brane, and not a number of eggs lying crowded one over the other in 

 a sack. 



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

 part of Scotland, from Cape Wrath to the southern flank of the Gram- 

 34 



