Chap. XL] UPPER SANDSTONE OF ELGIN, AND ROSS TRIASSIC. 267 
form a natural and conformable cover of the Old Red Sandstone and its 
Ichthyolites. Professors Ramsay and Harkness have sanctioned this view, 
as well as the Rev. Gr. Gordon, the Rev. J". M. Joass, and others who have 
examined that coast *. 
Stratigraphically, therefore, the evidence seemed almost conclusive'; and 
as I had been assured by Professor Huxley that the Reptiles found in these 
rocks were unique and wholly distinct from any known Mesozoic forms, I 
was prepared to suggest that, inasmuch as they were purely of terrestrial 
or fiuviatile origin, it might be that creatures of this high organization 
were in existence when the earliest prolific flora flourished of which we 
have evidence. 
Rut all such speculation has been set aside by a palaeontological dis- 
covery which Professor Huxley has made. A fossil Reptilian bone, con- 
taining teeth, found in the Keuper Sandstone f at Coten End, south-east 
of Warwick, was recently brought to him by Mr. Lloyd, F.G.S., of that 
town. On inspecting this additional relic, Professor Huxley was unable 
to distinguish it from the corresponding part of the Reptile from the 
Upper Elgin Sandstone (Lossie Mouth), which he had described and 
named Hyperodapedon. 
To such fossil evidence as this the field-geologist must bow ; and instead, 
therefore, of any longer connecting these reptiliferous sandstones of Elgin 
and Ross with the Old Red Sandstones beneath them, I willingly adopt the 
view established by such fossil evidence, and consider that these overlying 
sandstones and limestones are of Upper Triassic age, and must once have 
formed the natural base of those Liassic and Oolitic deposits of the north- 
east coast of Scotland which I described forty years ago J. 
The accidental conformity of two deposits of very different age is not new 
to geologists. In Russia, for example, Postpliocene deposits with Arctic 
shells of existing species are found lying conformably on the surface of 
horizontal rocks of Carboniferous Limestone; and any elevation of the whole 
* See Quart. Journ. G-eol. Soc. vol. xix. p. 508, view was communicated to the Meeting of the 
and vol. xx. p. 429. British Association held that year at Aberdeen, 
t This is the formation which my friend the and was supported by Sir Charles Lyell and Pro- 
late Hugh Strickland and myself first separated fessor Nicol. Since then Professor Kupert Jones 
on a map from the underlying Bunter Sandstone, has corroborated Mr. Moore's view of the Lower 
and showed to be the equivalent of the German Mesozoic age of these Lihksfield Shales. (See the 
Keuper (Trans. Geol. Soc. vol. v. p. 331, an. 1837, Monograph of Fossil Estherise, Palaeontogr. Soc. 
with map and plate of Fossils and footprints of 1863, p. 74 &c.) The possibility of the existence 
Eeptiles). Several curious Fish-remains, then con- of New Eed Sandstone or Trias in these northern 
fided to us by our intelligent friend Dr. Lloyd, tracts was suggested by me in the earliest of 
were figured as derived from the quarries at Coten my memoirs, as above cited. After pointing out 
End. We also figured footprints of Eeptiles ob- the absence of the Carboniferous series in this 
served by ourselves at Shrewley Common, in the region, and the difficulty of drawing conclusions 
Upper Keuper. from slight differences in the lithological struc- 
l ' On the Coal-field of Brora, Sutherlandshire, ture between the Old and New Eed Sandstones, 
and some other stratified deposits in the North of there is this observation : — " The great fertility of 
Scotland,' Trans. Geol. Soc. Lond., 2nd ser., vol. ii. the plains of Easter-Boss (these extend to Tarbet 
p. 293. In admitting the value of the decisive evi- Ness) affords also some slight ground for pre- 
sence of the Hyperodapedon in establishing the suming that this great deposit may be referred to 
Triassic age of the uppermost sandstones and the age of the newer red sandstone." This was 
limestones of Morayshire, it is my bounden duty written in 1826, before Sedgwick and myself de- 
to do justice to Mr. Charles Moore, who in 1859 scribed the Old Eed of the Highlands, when we 
was the first to recognize fossils of Ehsetic age in spoke of a sandstone at Loch Greinord, on the 
the shales of Linksfield, near Elgin, and to suggest west coast, as being of the New Eed period, 
a Triassic age for the underlying limestone, which Trans. Geol. Soc, 2nd ser., vol. iii. p. 156. 
I had classed as Upper Old Eed Sandstone. This 
