fossils of the grit are few and ill
preserved; but we occasionally find in it a coral similar to the Astrea
of the bed below, and, a little higher up, in an impure limestone,
specimens, in rather indifferent keeping, of a genus of polypifer which
somewhat resembles the Turbinolia of the Mountain Limestone. It presents
in the cross section the same radiated structure as the _Turbinolia
fungites_, and nearly the same furrowed appearance in the longitudinal
one; but, seen in the larger specimens, we find that it was a branched
coral, with obtuse forky boughs, in each of which, it is probable, from
their general structure, there lived a single polype. It may have been
the resemblance which these bear, when seen in detached branches, to the
older Caryophyllia, taken in connection with the fact that the deposit
in which they occur rests on the ancient Red Sandstone of the district,
that led M'Culloch to question whether this fossiliferous formation had
not nearly as clear a claim to be regarded as an analogue of the
Carboniferous Limestone of England as of its Lias; and hence he
contented himself with terming it simply the Gryphite Limestone. Sir R.
Murchison, whose much more close and extensive acquaintance with fossils
enabled him to assign to the deposit its true place, was struck,
however, with the general resemblance of its polypifers to "those of the
Madreporite Limestone of the Carboniferous series." These polypifers
occur in only the lower Lias of Skye.[5] I found no corals in its higher
beds, though these are charged with other fossils, more characteristic
of the formation, in vast abundance. In not a few of the middle strata,
composed of a mud-colored fissile sandstone, the gryphites lie as
thickly as currants in a Christmas cake; and as they weather white,
while the stone in which they are embedded retains its dingy hue, they
somewhat remind one of the white-lead tears of the undertaker mottling a
hatchment of sable. In a fragment of the dark sandstone, six inches by
seven, which I brought with me, I reckon no fewer than twenty-two
gryphites; and it forms but an average specimen of the bed from which I
detached it. By far the most abundant species is that not inelegant
shell so characteristic of the formation, the _Gryphaea incurva_. We find
detached specimens scattered over the beach by hundreds, mixed up with
the remains of recent shells, as if the _Gryphaea incurva_ were a recent
shell too. They lie, bleached whi