NOTES AND QUERIES. 



387 



successively sunk for upwards of a century, and the belief generally prevails 

 in the district that the combustible substance is there. 



2. What, and where, are the correlates of the fossils now detected here for 

 the first time ? I have lying on the table while I write a specimen from Links- 

 field, near Elgin, of the "Cypris globosa bed" of marls, and which, from these 

 and other organisms, are generally regarded as belonging to the Triassic and 

 the .Wealden. My eye detects no difference in either the character of the 

 matrix or the forms and contour of the Crustacea organisms in the Dron and 

 the Elgin specimens. Both are of the same thickness, the same colour, the 

 same shelly texture, and the Entromostraca are numerically the same in the 

 composition of the respective deposits. Further researches may possibly unfold 

 more resemblances. 



3. The student of physical geology will find much to interest him in the 

 district ; in the general structure and variety of the trappean formations, the 

 vast accumulations of drift in the strath, the boulder clays along the slopes of 

 the hills and in the lateral valleys, and the various ravines formed by the moun- 

 tain streams by the incessant and ever-wearing action of ages. But Glenfarg 

 will form one of his chief attractions, from its many natural beauties and ex- 

 uberant richness in many rare minerals. The entire family of Zeolites are 

 there : — Thomsonite, Stilbite, Datholite, Heulandite, Analcime, Prehnite, and 

 the newly analized Fargite, long described as Galeatite from its extreme 

 whiteness. — Dr. Anderson, Newburgh, Eifeshire. 



Eossil Trees at Haughland. — A short time since when Mr. William Young, 

 builder, Bishopmill, was digging a well at Haughland, near Palmercross, a very 

 unexpected discovery was made. Eirst, in digging the well, the workmen cut 

 through two feet of good mould, a depth of soil of which many of our farms 

 would be glad. There was then soft sand mixed with some clay for other five 

 feet downwards. This was followed by six inches of moss, then six inches of 

 sand underlying the moss, and these, three strata were followed by a bed of 

 strong blue clay eighteen inches or so in thickness. Next came two feet and 

 a-half of black moss at the depth of nearly ten feet from the surface, and here 

 was found a birch tree with its branches, some of them four inches in diameter, 

 embedded in the moss, lying along as they had been laid when the tree was 

 uprooted. A great part of the tree was in a comparatively good state 

 of preservation, and when pressed the water oozed through it like a sponge. 

 It is hard, black, and of course very heavy. We may remark that this fossil- 

 tree grew ten feet beneath what is now the river Lossie, which flows within 

 two hundred yards of the spot where it was found. Geologists are agreed that 

 the great plain extending from Aldroughty to Birnie was once covered by a 

 lake, but the tree found beneath the bed of blue clay shows it was a forest 

 before it was a lake, and the bed of sand both above and beneath the moss in 

 which the tree was found strongly favours the belief that the land in the plain 

 mentioned has been oftener than once submerged by the sea. 



The Minerals of tee Metallic Yeins op Erieberg. (Extract in the 

 Annates des Mines, by M. Delesse, from the article " Die mineralien der Erei- 

 berger Erzgange Zusammengestellt, von C. Weiss, mit Bemerkungen von Bern- 

 hard Cotta," in the Bergund Hiittenmannische Zeitung, 1860. Translated from 

 the Erench by H. C. Salmon, E.G.S., E.C.S.) — I have proposed to myself to 

 compare the mineralogical composition of the metalliferous veins of Freiberg 

 —a task which has been accomplished by the aid of the numerous documents 

 posseesed on this subject, and by the assistance of one of my pupils, M. Weiss. 

 It is summed up in the following table, which gives the mineralogical composi- 

 tion of our four systems of metalliferous veins. The minerals most frequently 

 met with are inserted in italics. 



