146 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



leave the best half in the bed, as the halves of the nodules are generally rounded 

 at the edges, and would easily pass as perfect nodules. 



Lign, 2.— Disjointed nodules, with the pieces lying apart in the rock, 



Orossing the river at Eochabers, and bearing a little to the left, we come to 

 DiPPLE. The fishes from thence are now found in nodules, scattered over the 

 fields of the neighbourhood, the original bed discovered by Dr. Malcolm- 

 son, about twenty-three years ago, being covered up with soil, and seem- 

 ingly quite exhausted of its fossiliferous nodules. These nodules have a 

 botryoidal form, and are of a deep red colour ; the fossils are entii-ely in frag- 

 ments, and very few. The rocks on the Dipple side of the Spey, seen from 

 Pochabers, near the bridge, are of a deep red colour, very hard, compact, and 

 granular iu texture, and much used in the neighbourhood for building-purposes. 



Gamrie is about eight miles from Banff, and forty from Elgm, and is a rich 

 locality in many species of fishes; some of them, especially the JPteric/ithj/s 

 ohloiir/Ks, are there in a very good state of preservation. The Cheirolepis 

 urafj'm is rather rare, and many of the nodules contain what seem to be 

 coprolites. 



These nodules are extremely hard and difficult to open, and have the fibrous 

 crystalUne structure at the edges more distinct than those at other places. 

 They are of a brownisli colour, the fishes as generally preserved being of a 

 darker brown. These nodules are embedded in the same kind of laminated 

 clayey marl, as in the other localities ; the bed containing them is situated 

 about a quarter of a mile from the sea-coast. 



In many of the nodules the centre, instead of containing a fish, is filled with 

 small rhoniboidal crystals of calcspar, also with a dark brown bituminous matter 

 iu a tliin oily form. 



DritA is much more to the south than all the last -mentioned localities, 



being al)()u1 two miles from Cupar, in Eifeshii'e, and is celeljrated for its finely- 

 preserved fishes, which are all dilferent from those in the other fossiliferous 

 deposits of tlie Old Ked. Two new species have very lately been discovered 

 there, the riuiiicioplci'roii A/ulersoi/ii and GIj/pfohp„u's Kimicirdii. 



Some of \ slal)s o1)tained from this locality contain a dozen or even twenty 

 lislics, but Wwsv iii'i' ;dnu)s1 (^itirely of one kind — JIu/opfj/c//l/{s A/fderso////, a, 

 species which wril cxhihils ilu- peculiar characters of the genus. One of the 

 most interesting li.>h discovt'rcd here is the Famiilirnctcs ^h/derso/ii, a fish much 

 resembling the r/rrich/ lii/s. This sandstone is of a yellowish or greyish white 

 colour, similar to the roek at Lossiemouth. 



Clasubinnie is nearly opposite to jS\^wburgh, on the north side of the Tay, 

 and is the locality where that magnificent specimen of the Ilolopty chins nohi- 

 Hssi/i///.s, in the British Museum, was found. Scales of F//////o/('jjis concent ricits 

 and Ilolopfi/chiini }[iirchisoni are also fotmdhere. The matrix is of a deep red, 

 whiU^ tlie fossils are of a whitish colour. 



The deposits of the Lower Old lied in the Orkneys and at Caithness are 



