Royal Physical Society. 23 



one-third) must have been present in the metallic state ; the total quan- 

 tity calculated as metal is 52*370 ; the manganese he did not separate 

 from the iron, because the quantity was small, and could not in any way 

 affect the decision that the substance was a slag. 



Upon the whole, the opinion of Dr Fleming, as stated at last meeting, 

 seemed to be established, that the substance in question was neither an 

 ore of manganese nor a bog iron ore, but a slag arising from the burning 

 of a bed of peat during a dry season, melting a ferruginous soil. 



VIT. Notice of the Discovery of Fossils in the Limestones of Durness, in 

 the County of Sutherland. By Charles W. Peach, Esq., Wick, 

 Corresponding Member of the Royal Geographical Society of Cornwall. 

 (The Fossils were exhibited.) 



The author, after stating that the limestone beds of West Sutherland- 

 shire had been referred by Mr Hugh Miller to the old red sandstone for- 

 mation, although the absence of fossils had prevented his asserting this 

 positively, stated that he had been fortunate enough to detect in the lime- 

 stone of Durness distinct traces of spiral shells, probably Gonatites or 

 Clymenise, which exist, though not abundantly, between Balnakiel and 

 the Kyle of Durness. He had found these fossils from the Auld Kirk 

 yard of Balnakiel, to nearly a mile towards the Kyle of Durness, and 

 some distance inland, as well from the level of the beach to 200 feet above. 

 In the field wherever the limestone showed, he found them. It was true he 

 got but few, — the hardness and splintery fracture of the limestones, with 

 the short time he had to spend there, prevented him from doing more. He 

 ventured no opinion as to the age of the rocks, nor any speculation regard- 

 ing them, for it would require much more information than he at present 

 possessed, before doing so. Besides the whorled shells, coral- like markings 

 were very abundant, as well as the pipe-like forms found by Mr Miller 

 in the quartz rocks of Assynt. He found amongst the blocks scattered 

 over the face of the country around Durness, and on the tops of the dykes, 

 several containing these strange forms, and he immediately detected their 

 similarity to those he had found at Goran Haven, Cornwall, in the quartz 

 rocks. The Cornish ones he described in a paper published by the Royal 

 Geological Society of Cornwall, as like the sandy tubes made by the Sa- 

 bellaria alveolata, so abundant on that coast, and occasionally found on 

 all the coasts he was acquainted with. He still saw the resemblance in 

 the Sutherland ones, and it would be a very interesting fact if, besides 

 these "pipes," Trilobites, Orthidse, &c, should be found in the Assynt 

 quartz, as well as the Cornish. 



Mr Hugh Miller stated at the close of Mr Peach's paper, that he had 

 twice visited the north and west of Sutherland, in order to acquaint him- 

 self with the character and relations of the formation in which Mr Peach 

 had been so successful. But though he had examined with some little 

 care the cherty concretions of the limestone of Durness, he had found 

 no such decided organisms as one at least of the specimens on the table, 



