, is as well defined as it could have been in the
living plant." Mr. Duncan accompanies his description with a figure of
the organism described, which, however, rather resembles the bulb of a
liliaceous plant than the root of a calamite, which in all the better
preserved, specimens contracts, instead of expanding, as it descends.
The apparent expansion, however, in the Old Red specimen may be simply a
result of compression in its upper part: the under part certainly much
resembles, in the dome-like symmetry of its outline, the radical
termination of a solitary calamite.

[52] "Though the coal of Sabero is apparently included in Devonian
rocks," says Sir Roderick Murchison, "M. Casiano de Prado thinks that
this appearance may be do to inverted folds of the strata." On the other
hand, M. Alcide D'Orbigny regards it us decidedly Old Red; and certainly
its Sphenopteris and Lepidodendron bent much more the aspect of Devonian
than of Carboniferous plants.

[53] Now, alas! no more. In Mr. Gourlay the energy and shrewd business
habits of the accomplished merchant were added to an enlightened zeal
for general science, and no inconsiderable knowledge in both the
geologic and botanic provinces. The marked success, in several respects,
of the brilliant meeting of the British Association which held in
Glasgow in September 1855, was owing in no small measure to the
indefatigable exertions and well calculated arrangements of Mr. Gourlay.

[54] Trees must have been very abundant in what is now Scotland in these
Secondary ages. Trunks of the common Scotch fir are of scarce more
frequent occurrence in our mosses than the trunks of somewhat resembling
trees among the shales of the Lower Oolite of Helmsdale. On examining in
that neighborhood, about ten years since, a huge heap of materials which
had been collected along the sea shore for burning into lime in a
temporary kiln, I found that more than three fourths of the whole
consisted of fragments of coniferous wood washed out of the shale beds
by the surf, and the remainder of a massive Isastrea. And only two years
ago, after many kilnfuls had been gathered and burnt, his grace the Duke
of Argyll found that fossil wood could still he collected by cartloads
along the shore of Helmsdale. The same woods also occur at Port Gower,
Kintradwell, Shandwick, and Eathie. In the Island of Eigg, too, in an
Oolite deposit, locked up in trap, and whose stratigraphical relations
cannot in consequence