lk; clusters of a minute undescribed bivalve are still plated with
thin films of the silvery nacre; the mytilaceae usually bear a warm tint
of yellowish brown, and must have been brilliant shells in their day;
gryphites and oysters are always of a dark grey, and plagiostomae
ordinarily of a bluish or neutral tint. On some of the leaves curious
pieces of incident seem recorded. We see fleets of minute terebratulae,
that appear to have been covered up by some sudden deposit from above,
when riding at their anchors; and whole argosies of ammonites, that
seemed to have been wrecked at once by some untoward accident, and sent
crushed and dead to the bottom. Assemblages of bright black plates, that
shine like pieces of Japan work, with numerous parallelogrammical scales
bristling with nail-like points, indicate where some armed fish of the
old ganoid order lay down and died; and groups of belemnites, that lie
like heaps of boarding-pikes thrown carelessly on a vessel's deck on the
surrender of the crew, tell where _skulls_ of cuttle-fishes of the
ancient type had ceased to trouble the waters. I need scarce add, that
these spear-like belemnites formed the supposed thunderbolts of the
deposit. Lying athwart some of the pages thus strangely inscribed we
occasionally find, like the dark hawthorn leaf in Bewick's well-known
vignette, slim-shaped leaves coloured in deep umber; and branches of
extinct pines, and fragments of strangely-fashioned ferns, form their
more ordinary garnishing. Page after page, for tens and hundreds of feet
together, repeat the same wonderful story. The great Alexandrian
library, with its tomes of ancient literature, the accumulation of long
ages, was but a meagre collection--not less puny in bulk than recent in
date--compared with this marvellous library of the Scotch Lias.

Who, after once spending even a few hours in such a school, could avoid
being a geologist? I had formerly found much pleasure among rocks and in
caves; but it was the wonders of the Eathie Lias that first gave
direction and aim to my curiosity. From being a mere child, that had
sought amusement in looking over the _pictures_ of the stony volume of
nature, I henceforth became a sober student desirous of reading and
knowing it as a book. The extreme beauty, however, of the Liassic
fossils made me pass over at this time, as of little interest, a
discovery which, if duly followed up, would have probably landed me full
in the midst of the O