ertain from the
descriptions and prints its family and name. Shall I confess that the
circumstance gratified me exceedingly? There are many elements of
Discord among mankind in the present time, both at home and abroad,--so
many, that I am afraid we need entertain no hope of seeing an end, in at
least our day, to controversy and war. And we should be all the better
pleased, therefore, to witness the increase of those links of
union,--such as the harmonizing bonds of a scientific sympathy,--the
tendency of which is to draw men together in a kindly spirit, and the
formation of which involves no sacrifice of principle, moral or
religious. I do not think that the foreigner, after geologizing in my
company, would have had any very vehement desire, in the event of a war,
to cut me down, or to knock me on the head. I am afraid this chapter
would require a long apology, and for a long apology space is wanting.
But there will be no egotism, and much geology, in my next.

CHAPTER XI.

Ichthyolite Beds--An interesting Discovery--Two Storeys of Organic
Remains in the Old Red Sandstone--Ancient Ocean of Lower Old
Red--Two great Catastrophes--Ancient Fish Scales--Their skilful
Mechanism displayed by examples--Bone Lips--Arts of the Slater and
Tiler as old as Old Red Sandstone--Jet Trinkets--Flint
Arrow-heads--Vitrified Forts of Scotland--Style of grouping Lower
Old Red Fossils--Illustration from Cromarty Fishing
Phenomena--Singular Remains of Holoptychius--Ramble with Mr. Robert
Dick--Color of the Planet Mars--Tombs never dreamed of by
Hervey--Skeleton of the Bruce--Gigantic Holoptychius--"Coal money
Currency"--Upper Boundary of Lower Old Red--Every one may add to
the Store of Geological Facts--Discoveries of Messrs. Dick and
Peach.

I spent one long day in exploring the ichthyolite beds on both sides the
Cromarty Frith, and another long day in renewing my acquaintance with
the Liasic deposit at Shandwick. In beating over the Lias, though I
picked up a few good specimens, I acquired no new facts; but in
re-examining the Old Red Sandstone and its organisms I was rather more
successful. I succeeded in eliciting some curious points not yet
recorded, which, with the details of an interesting discovery made in
the far north in this formation, I may be perhaps able to weave into a
chapter somewhat more geological than my last.

Some of the readers of my little wo