530 "OLD RED" IN THE NORTH OF SCOTLAND. [Ch. XXVI. 



pians, lias been well described by the late Hugh Miller as consisting 

 of a nucleus of granite, gneiss, aud other hypogene rocks, -which seem 

 as if set in a sandstone 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 sandstone 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. 



As the mineral character of the " Old Eed " 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- 

 most portion was formerly supposed to include certain light-colored 

 sandstones near Elgin containing reptilian remains (Telerpeton, &c), 

 which we have now good reason to suspect are of much newer or 

 Triassic date ; * but, besides these whitish sandstones, there are others 

 of a yellowish color near Elgin, which are perhaps the true equivalents 

 of the yellow sandstone of Fife (A, p. 524). This upper division 

 passes downwards into red and variegated sandstone and conglomerate, 

 which may correspond with the beds called B of the same table, 

 p. 524. 



In this part of the series certain bituminous schists and flagstones 

 occur in the Orkneys and Caithness, Cromarty, Moray, Nairn, and 

 Banff, which are very rich in fossil fishes. Below the fish-beds are 

 sandstones and shales, barren of organic remains, several hundred and 

 sometimes nearly a thousand feet thick. As the ichthyolitic zone was 

 the lowest in which fossils had been discovered in the North, it was 

 classed palseontologically by Hugh Miller as the base of the Old Red 



* Supposed Reptilian Remains of the Old Red. — In a former edition of this work 

 I noticed the discovery of the bones of a reptile found in some white sandstone 

 charged with carbonate of lime forming the upper part of a long series of conform- 

 able strata in the neighborhood of Elgin. To this reptile the late Dr. Mantell gave 

 the name of Telerpeton Elginense ; it was associated with scales or scutes supposed 

 by Agassiz to be those of a fish, and called by him JStagonolepis, but which Prof. 

 Huxley has since shown to be crocodilian, and of the Teleosaurian type. The jaw, 

 teeth, femur, and some caudal vertebras have now been found, and they indicate an 

 animal about eight feet long. Another reptile, Hyperodapedon, Huxley, closely 

 allied to the triassic Rhynchosaitrus, has also been met with in the same beds, so 

 that it appears highly probable that the light-colored stones near Elgin containing 

 these fossils are referable to the Triassic, and not, as was formerly imagined, to the 

 " Old Red," or Devonian period. 



The strata in question have been shown in 1863 by Prof. Harkness to be per- 

 fectly conformable, both near Elgin and in Ross-shire, with sandstones containing 

 unequivocal " Old Red " fishes, but between these and the reptiliferous strata there 

 intervenes everywhere a conglomerate, and Mr. C. Moore has justly remarked 

 (Harkness, Geol. Quart. Journ., vol, xx. p. 429, 1864), that the destruction of older 

 rocks attested by such pebble beds may imply a break in the series, and^a lapse of 

 unrepresented time of indefinite extent. 



