Chap. XI.] 
PLANTS OF OLD RED SANDSTONE. 
269 
The most striking, perhaps, of these fossil Plants are very large, long, 
flattened bodies, which, from their state of preservation, were clearly 
woody stems (Foss. 73. f. 6). They were fluted longitudinally, and pos- 
sessed a central pith. One specimen found by Mr. Peach was several 
feet in length and 16 inches broad. 
Fossils (73). Plants of the Old Red Sandstone of Caithness. 
i. Branched rootlets of some (Lycopodiaceous?) plant. 2. Dichotomous roots (very 
common) of Lepidodendron ?, upon a surface marked with double Annelide-burrows. 
3. Lycopodites Milleri, Salter ; one-third nat. size. 4. Lepidodendron nothum, linger ?, 
one-third nat. size. 5. Flattened root, and 6. Fluted stem, of Coniferous Tree ; about 
one-sixth nat, size. [A portion of a Tree-fern (Caulopteris? Peachii, Salter) is figured 
in the Quart. Journ. G-eol. Soc. vol. xv. p. 408.] 
Though these plants have often been converted into thin plates of crystal- 
line coaly matter, their forms remain distinct; and under the careful micro- 
scopic scrutiny of the late Professor Quekett, they exhibited a true Conife- 
rous structure. In the arrangement and number of the disks upon the 
fibres they approach near to the Araucarian group. In general appearance, 
and even in the mode of preservation, they strikingly resemble certain fossil 
forms from the Upper Devonian rocks of Saalfeld in Germany, collected by 
M. Eichter, and hereafter to be noticed, — such, for instance, as the Apo- 
roxylon of Professor Linger ; but this differs in being of simpler structure, 
and in possessing neither pores nor disks. 
These fluted fragments are doubtless stems; and similar but more slender 
specimens found with them are as clearly the branches, which have borne 
was a baker, ever much engaged in hard manual I rejoice to know that it has been resolved to erect 
labour. On one of my visits to Thurso, when we a monument to his memory at Thurso, 
were lamenting over the want of a map of Caith- Most of Mr. Dick's specimens were communi- 
ness, he prepared for my instruction a model in cated to the late Hugh Miller ; and, when last in 
flour, which he manipulated into hills, valleys, Caithness, I induced Mr. John Miller, of Thurso, 
and watercourses, and thus brought out in relief to send up all his valuable specimens to London 
all the surrounding country. He was as well ac- for examination. They have been described by 
quainted with every living British plant as he was Mr. Salter, in the Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, Nov. 
with all the Caithness fossils. Admiring as I did 1857, vol. xiv. p. 72. pi. 5. 
such energy and ability in a modest working man, 
