t curious markings, which have been regarded as impressions
made by vegetables that had themselves disappeared, have been detected
during the last twelvemonth in a quarry of the Lower Old Red Sandstone
near Huntly, by the Rev. Mr. Mackay of Rhynie. They are very curious and
very puzzling; but though some of the specimens present the appearance
of a continuous midrib, that throws off, with a certain degree of
regularity, apparent leaflets, I am inclined to regard them rather as
lying within the province of the ichnologist than of the fossil
botanist. They bear the same sort of resemblance to a long,
thickly-leaved frond, like that of the "hard fern," that the cast of a
many-legged annelid does to a club moss; and I was struck, on my first
walk along the Portobello beach, after examining a specimen kindly sent
me by Mr. Mackay, to see how nearly the tract of a small shore crab
(_Carcinus Maenas_) along the wet sand resembled them, in exhibiting what
seemed to be an obscure midrib fringed with leaflets.

But the genuine vegetable organism of the formation, indicative of the
highest rank of any yet found in it, is a true wood of the cone-bearing
order. I laid open the nodule which contains this specimen, in one of
the ichthyolite beds of Cromarty, rather more than eighteen years ago;
but though I described it, in the first edition of my little work on the
Old Red Sandstone, in 1841, as exhibiting the woody fibre, it was not
until 1845 that, with the assistance of the optical lapidary, I
subjected its structure to the test of the microscope. It turned out, as
I had anticipated, to be the portion of a tree; and on my submitting the
prepared specimen to one of our highest authorities,--the late Mr.
William Nicol,--he at once decided that the "reticulated texture of the
transverse section, though somewhat compressed, clearly indicated a
coniferous origin." I may add, that this most ancient of Scottish
lignites presents several peculiarities of structure. Like some of the
Araucarians of the warmer latitudes, it exhibits no lines of yearly
growth; its medullary rays are slender, and comparatively inconspicuous;
and the discs which mottle the sides of its sap-chambers, when viewed in
the longitudinal section, are exceedingly minute, and are ranged, so far
as can be judged in their imperfect state of keeping, in the alternate
order peculiar to the Araucarians. On what perished land of the early
Palaeozoic ages did this venerably ant