dozens from a common root, like the fronds of
Zostera, and somewhat resembled a scourge of cords fastened to a handle.
Contemporary with this organism of the gray flagstone formation, and
thickly occupying the planes on which it rests, there occur fragments of
twisted stems, some of them from three to four inches in diameter
(though represented by but mere films of carbonaceous matter), and
irregularly streaked, or rather _wrinkled_, longitudinally, like the
bark of some of our forest trees, though on a smaller scale. With these
we find in considerable abundance irregularly-shaped patches, also of
carbonaceous matter, reticulated into the semblance of polygonal, or, in
some instances, egg-shaped meshes, and which remind one of pieces of ill
woven lace. When first laid open, these meshes are filled each with a
carbonaceous speck; and, from their supposed resemblance, in the
aggregated form, to the eggs of the frog in their albuminous envelop,
the quarriers term them "puddock [frog] spawn." The slabs in which they
occur, thickly covered over with their vegetable impressions, did
certainly remind me, when I first examined them some fifteen years ago,
of the bottom of some stagnant ditch beside some decaying hedge, as it
appears in middle spring, when paved with fragments of dead branches and
withered grass, and mottled with its life-impregnated patches of the
gelid substance regarding which a provincial poet tells his readers, in
classical Scotch, that

"Puddock-spue is fu' o' e'en,
An' every e'e 's a pu-head."[49]

Higher authorities than the quarriers,--among the rest, the late Dr.
Mantell,--have been disposed to regard these polygonal markings as the
fossilized spawn of ancient Batrachians; but there now seems to be
evidence enough from which to conclude that they are the remains, not of
the eggs of an animal, but of the seed of a plant. Such was the view
taken many years ago by Dr. Fleming,--the original discoverer, let me
add, of fossils both in those Upper and Middle Old Red Sandstone
deposits that lie in Scotland to the south of the Grampians. "These
organisms," we find him saying, in a paper published in "Cheek's
Edinburgh Journal" (1831), "occur in the form of circular flat patches,
not equalling an inch in diameter, and composed of numerous smaller
contiguous pieces. They are not unlike what might be expected to result
from a compressed berry, such as the bramble or the rasp. As, however,
they are found adja