ents of coprolitic matter, and the scales
and teeth of fishes. Night was coming on, and the tide had risen on the
beach; but I hammered lustily, and laid open in the dark red shale a
vertebral joint, a rib, and a parallelogramical fragment of solid bone,
none of which could have belonged to any fish. It was an interesting
moment for the curtain to drop over the promontory of _Ru-Stoir_; I had
thus already found in connection with it well nigh as many reptilian
remains as had been found in all Scotland before,--for there could exist
no doubt that the bones I laid open were such; and still more
interesting discoveries promised to await the coming morning, and a less
hasty survey. We found a hospitable meal awaiting us at a picturesque
old two-story house, with, what is rare in the island, a clump of trees
beside it, which rises on the northern angle of the Oolitic meniscus;
and after our day's hard work in the fresh sea-air, we did ample justice
to the viands. Dark night had long set in ere we reached our vessel.

Next day was Saturday; and it behooved my friend, the minister,--as
scrupulously careful in his pulpit preparations for the islanders of
Eigg as if his congregation were an Edinburgh one,--to remain on board,
and study his discourse for the morrow. I found, however, no unmeet
companion for my excursion in his trusty mate John Stewart. John had not
very much English, and I had no Gaelic; but we contrived to understand
one another wonderfully well; and ere evening I had taught him to be
quite as expert in hunting dead crocodiles as myself. We reached the
_Ru-Stoir_, and set hard to work with hammer and chisel. The fragments
of red shale were strewed thickly along the shore for at least three
quarters of a mile; wherever the red columnar rock appeared, there lay
the shale, in water-worn blocks, more or less indurated; but the beach
was covered over with shingle and detached masses of rock, and we could
nowhere find it _in situ_. A winter storm powerful enough to wash the
beach bare might do much to assist the explorer. There is a piece of
shore on the eastern coast of Scotland, on which for years together I
used to pick up nodular masses of lime containing fish of the Old Red
Sandstone; but nowhere in the neighborhood could I find the ichthyolite
bed in which they had originally formed. The storm of a single night
swept the beach; and in the morning the ichthyolites lay revealed _in
situ_ under a stratum of shingle