74 
REVIEWS. 
means of their fossil flora ; indeed, “ the club mosses—reed-like casts and 
impressions, streaked longitudinally, like the interior of the calamite, but 
apparently without joints”—of the Scotch geologists, remind us strongly of 
Lycopodiaceous-like remains we have seen from Kiltorcan, and of the 
Sigillaria dichotoma described by Professor Haughton, from Tallow- 
bridge. 
We pass over—recommending it, however, to the earnest investigation 
of geologists who may have the opportunity of examining for themselves—- 
the curious doubt which hangs over the true age of the famous Telerpeton 
Elginense; which, according to Mr. Miller, may belong to an outlier of the 
lias formation, such outliers being common in the part of Scotland in 
which this interesting fossil was discovered. If this conjecture should 
prove correct, and the Telerpeton be found not to be of Devonian age, it 
should serve as a caution to theorists not to press too hastily into the 
service of their systems supposed facts, the evidence for which may prove 
very doubtful. Our readers will remember the celebrated case of the sup¬ 
posed Chelonian footprints from the Potsdam (Silurian) sandstone of North 
America, which proved, on investigation, to be the traces of the passage 
of Crustaceans. 
We pass on to the drift gravels of Scotland, in which Mr. Miller dis¬ 
tinguishes three epochs. Of the shells found in the gravels of Banffshire, 
the oldest of these groups of gravels, Mr. Miller observes— 
“ The only peculiarity of the shells themselves, viewed in the group, is their in¬ 
tensely boreal character. The sole species of Astarte which I have yet found at either 
Gamrie or Castleton King Edward—and I have now visited these deposits five seve¬ 
ral times—is the Greenland shell (Astarte Arctica); Natica clausa —a shell of 
Spitzbergen and the North Cape—is the prevailing Natica; and the most abundant 
shell, of at least the Gamrie deposit, is a bivalve not yet found living in our seas, 
but common ten degrees farther to the north, Tellina proximo. Even the great size 
to which the latter shell attained in this locality is not without its bearing on the 
question. ‘ The few specimens which have been dredged [dead] in Britain,’ says 
the late Professor Edward Eorbes, in his admirable history of the British Mollusca, 
1 are much smaller than the exotic ones, none which we have seen exceeding three- 
quarters of an inch in length, and about half an inch in breath.’ The mollusc is 
one of those which attain to their fullest development amid the frosts and snows of 
the higher latidudes ; and it is a curious fact, that in the Gamrie and Castleton de¬ 
posits we find it of a considerably greater size than anywhere else in Scotland. My 
largest specimens from the Clyde beds hardly exceed an inch in length; whereas 
my largest Gamrie specimens are nearly two inches long, and their breadth very 
considerably exceeds the length given as British by Professor Eorbes.” 
Of the boulder clays of Caithness, the second of the groups of gravel 
beds, Mr. Miller states—■ 
“The prevailing molluscs of the deposit are Cyprina Islandica and Turritella 
communis , especially the former ; the prevailing Astarte , though the Arctica also 
occurs, is Astarte elliptical the prevailing Tellina, Tellina solidula. Tellina prox¬ 
imo is of smaller size than in the Gamrie beds; and Natica clausa less common. 
