BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING. 



499 



Caithness and the Orkneys, with their numerous fossil fishes, constitute the 

 central member of the Old Bed series, the lower part of which is made up of 

 powerful conglomerates and a very great thickness of thin-bedded red sand- 

 stone, the whole resting on the crystalline rocks ; whilst the central flagstones 

 are surmounted by other sandstones, rarely red, and usually of yellow colour, 

 which occupy the promontories of Holy Head, Dunnet Head, &c. In quitting this 

 part of his subject. Sir Roderick passed a warm eulogium on his countryman, Hugh 

 Miller (both natives of the same tract), and stated that he had specially visited Cro- 

 marty to see the progress which was made in expecting a monument to his eminent and 

 lamented friend ; and he had the gratification to announce, that when the British 

 Association met next year at Aberdeen, the work would be completed ; the only point 

 on which he earnestly insisted being, that the column, which is to stand on a green 

 knoll behind the house in which Miller was born, should be one of true " Old Red 

 Sandstone." In Morayshire Sir Roderick made transverse sections, in company 

 with the Rev. Gr. Gordon, of Birnie, from the edge of the crystalline rocks (there 

 micaceous flagstone, in part used as slates) to the maritime promontories of Burg 

 Head and Lossie Mouth, and was convinced that the yellow sandstones in which 

 the air-breathing reptile, Telerpeton Elginense, was found, are truly part and 

 parcel of the Old Red or Devonian series. In exploring the coast range from 

 Burg Head to Lossie Mouth, he observed that the strata had been thrown up on 

 an anticlinal, trending parallel to the more inland ridge with the Telerpeton ; and 

 that, whilst the inland ridges are associated with hard subcrystalline cornstones 

 (limestones), first described by Professor Sedgwick and himself as analogou^s to 

 the Old Red of England, so the coast-ridge, folding over, dips on the sea-shore 

 beneath another band of similar cornstone, which in its turn is overlaid by flag- 

 like, deep red sandstone, clearly seen in reefs at low water. In this Morayshire 

 series there is not a trace of a carboniferous plant, and the strata are so 'iouud 

 together by mineral cliaracters and fossil remains that they must all be grouped 

 as Old Red or Devonian. Where fossil plants have been found in strata of this 

 series, as in Caithness, and where the formation puts on a very different mineral 

 aspect, the plants, which have been described by Hugh Miller and Salter, are dis- 

 tinct from those of the coal-period. 



The chief additional data which had been gained by Sir Roderick during his 

 last visit were owing to the discovery by Mr, Martin, of Elgin, of a large bone in 

 the very beds at Lossie Mouth which had formerly afforded the huge scales of 

 the supposed fish, called Staganolepis by Agassiz. On visiting these quarries with 

 Mr. Gr. Gordon, he was so fortunate as to discover other portions of this large 

 animal ; so that couiparative anatomists may now determine whether it belongs to 

 fishes or reptiles. However this point may be decided, the existence of reptiles 

 during the formation of this deposit is established beyond a doubt ; since many 

 slabs have been found in the coast quarries of Cummingstone and Covesea Hill, 

 belonging to Mr. Alexander Young, in which are the footprints of both large and 

 small animals, each footprint having the impression of three or four claws to it. 

 A specimen, from Captain Brickenden, is in the Geological Society's Museum, 

 and others have been sent to the Museum of Practical Geology, London ; some of 

 them having been contributed by Mr. Patrick Duff, of Elgin. The presence of 

 large reptiles, as well as of the little Telerpeton, in this upper member of the 

 Old Red Sandstone is therefore established. 



After noting certain fossil fishes which occur in parts of the Duke of Rich- 

 mond's estates in Banffshire, the author proceeded to review the great masses of 

 sedimentary deposit lying along the eastern and southern faces of the crystalline 

 rocks of the Grampians, which have been hitherto all classed as pertaining to the 

 Old Red Sandstone, though he does not pretend as yet to be competent to describe 

 their detailed relations. On these points, however, which Mr. D. Page is working 

 out with ability, he begs to offer the following suggestion. The true base of the 

 Old Red Sandstone, properly so called, is seen in Sliropshire and Herefordshire to 

 be a red rock, containing Cephalaspis and Pteraspis, which gradually passes down 

 into the grey Ludlow rock ; and in both of these contiguous and united strata, 

 remains of large Pterygoti, but of different species in the two bands, are found. 



