ently ascertained, does in some of its
beds contain fossils. It was, however, not to the quarry itself that my
first-found organisms belonged. There lies in the Firth beyond, an
outlier of the Lias, which, like the Marcus' Cave one referred to in a
preceding chapter, strews the beach with its fragments after every storm
from the sea; and in a nodular mass of bluish-grey limestone derived
from this subaqueous bed I laid open my first-found ammonite. It was a
beautiful specimen, graceful in its curves as those of the Ionic volute,
and greatly more delicate in its sculpturing; and its bright
cream-coloured tint, dimly burnished by the prismatic hues of the
original pearl, contrasted exquisitely with the dark grey of the matrix
which enclosed it. I broke open many a similar nodule during our stay at
this delightful quarry, and there were few of them in which I did not
detect some organism of the ancient world--scales of fishes, groups of
shells, bits of decayed wood, and fragments of fern. At the dinner hour
I used to show my new-found specimens to the workmen; but though they
always took the trouble of looking at them, and wondered at times how
the shells and plants had "got into the stones," they seemed to regard
them as a sort of natural toys, which a mere lad might amuse himself in
looking after, but which were rather below the notice of grown-up people
like themselves. One workman, however, informed me, that things of a
kind I had not yet found--genuine thunderbolts--which in his father's
times were much sought for the cure of bewitched cattle--were to be
found in tolerable abundance on a reach of the beach about two miles
further to the west; and as, on quitting the quarry for the piece of
work on which we were to be next engaged, Uncle David gave us all a
half-holiday, I made use of it in visiting the tract of shore indicated
by the workman. And there, leaning against the granitic gneiss and
hornblend slate of the Hill of Eathie, I found a Liassic deposit,
amazingly rich in its organisms--not buried under the waves, as at
Marcus' shore, or as opposite our new quarry, but at one part underlying
a little grass-covered plain, and at another exposed for several hundred
yards together along the shore. Never yet did embryo geologist break
ground on a more promising field; and memorable in my existence was this
first of the many happy evenings that I have spent in exploring it.

The Hill of Eathie, like the Cromarty Sutors,