24 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



The apparent whorls in the rock had attracted his notice ; but the region 

 was one in which mistakes had already been made ; Macculloch had re- 

 garded the white cylinders of Stonechrubie as organic ; and the late Mr 

 Hay Cunningham had fallen into what was deemed a similar mistake re- 

 specting the supposed tubes of Loch Erribol ; and as he could get no such 

 unequivocal organisms as the one on the table, he did not venture to come 

 to any conclusion regarding them. One well-preserved fossil, however, 

 serves to throw light on many obscure ones, and such was the cast spe- 

 cially referred to by Mr Peach, now before the Society. It was evidently 

 that of a whorled shell, though, as its whorls were not on the same plane, 

 neither a Clymenia nor a Goniatite. It was not, improbable, however 

 that the other whorled shells on the table belonged to the former genus — 

 a genus of which no fewer than forty-three species had been found in the 

 old red sandstone of other countries. Mr Miller then went on to show 

 the stratigraphical relations of the Durness limestone. It was overlaid, 

 he stated, by a vast deposit of quartz rock, corresponding apparently to 

 the sandstone of Tarbat Ness and Dunnet Head, and underlaid by a 

 coarse-grained red sandstone, the analogue, it would seem, of the Great 

 Conglomerate ; while the limestone itself appeared to belong to the same 

 geologic horizon as the flagstones of Caithness and Orkney, and the fish- 

 beds of Cromarty and Ross. No very decisive finding, however, could 

 be based on the organisms yet found ; and Mr Miller concluded by re- 

 marking, that he trusted Mr Peach would have some farther opportunity 

 furnished him of following up a course of discovery so interesting in itself, 

 and on which he had entered with such decided success. 



VIII. Dr John Alex. Smith exhibited two adult specimens of the 

 Water Rail, Rallus aquaticus, Penn., captured by his friend Dr John 

 Messer, R.N., on board H.M.S. Arrogant in the southern entrance of the 

 British Channel ; one on the 12th October 1853, in lat. 49° 27' N., long. 

 8° 3' W. ; the other on the 13th, in lat, 48° 55' N., long. 5° 22' W. ; facts 

 probably of some interest in favour of at least a partial migration of this 

 bird taking place. A remarkably pale-coloured or nearly white speci- 

 men of the Ring-dove which had just been shot in Fife, was also ex- 

 hibited ; and a curious piebald variety of the Mole, recently caught near 

 Cramond. 



The Society then adjourned to the fourth Wednesday of November. 



