Royal Physical Society. 441 



has thus been identified in the argillaceous schists of Argyle- 

 shire, where hitherto no traces of organic remains have been 

 discovered. Whether this coal, in geological position, belongs 

 to the so-called primary argillaceous schists, or to the grey 

 limestone, or the " coarser-grained graywacke," which appears 

 to alternate with this schist, it would be difficult, from the 

 report of the finders, exactly to determine ; but still, to which- 

 ever of them it may, by subsequent and more careful dis- 

 covery of specimens, be appropriated, it must still form an in- 

 teresting link in the history of organic life, as connected with 

 the azoic, or, at all events, the lowest beds of the palseozoic 

 strata. Supposing the grey limestone and coarser-grained 

 schist to be the lowest beds of the Silurian strata, interstra- 

 tifying with the upper beds of the azoic slates, it proves what, 

 indeed, a priori reasoning must have indicated, that vegetable 

 forms must have preceded the very oldest and lowest classes 

 of animal life ; for as no animal, even the most simple, can 

 derive direct nourishment from the mineral kingdom alone, 

 so the existence of animal life presupposes the existence of 

 vegetable. 



[Since this notice was read, the locality has been visited 

 and inspected by Professor Nicol of Aberdeen. He traced 

 a line of crack or fissure extending from the place where the 

 coal was found, up towards the surface, indicating, as he sup- 

 poses, a separation of the continuity of the strata at this 

 point during some convulsive movement posterior to the 

 original deposition of the clay slate. Into this fissure he con- 

 jectures the piece of coal may have been insinuated and after- 

 wards closed up. The absence of all traces of coal, or the 

 carboniferous formation, in the wide surrounding districts, and 

 the improbability of the supposed convulsion having occurred 

 during so recent a period as the working of the quarries by 

 man, still leaves the explanation of the appearance of the coal 

 —of the true nature of which there seems no doubt — a 

 geological mystery.] 



II. Remarks, on a Baleen Whale captured off the Bell Rock on the 7th 

 of September 1857. By James M'Bai.v, M.D., E.N. 



Dr M'Bain began by stating that the history of the fin- 



