ects the Inverness road; and struck down the
rocky ravine, in the line of the descending strata and the falling
streamlet, towards the point at which I had crossed it so many years
before. First I passed along a thick bed of yellow stone,--next over a
bed of stratified clay. "The little boy," I said, "took correct note of
what he saw, though without special aim at the time, and as much under
the guidance of a mere observative instinct as Dame Quickly, when she
took note of the sea-coal fire, the round table, the parcel-gilt goblet,
and goodwife Keech's dish of prawns dressed in vinegar, as adjuncts of
her interview with old Sir John when he promised to marry her. These
are unequivocally the ichthyolitic beds, whether they contain
ichthyolites or no." The first nodule I laid open presented inside
merely a pale oblong patch in the centre, which I examined in vain with
the lens, though convinced of its organic origin, for a single scale.
Proceeding farther down the stream, I picked a nodule out of a second
and lower bed, which contained more evidently its organism,--a
finely-reticulated fragment, that at first sight reminded me of some
delicate festinella of the Silurian system. It proved, however, to be
part of the tail of a Cheiracanthus, exhibiting--what is rarely
shown--the interior surfaces of those minute rectangular scales which in
this genus lie over the caudal fin, ranged in right lines. A second
nodule presented me with the spines of _Diplacanthus striatus_; and
still farther down the stream,--for the beds are numerous here, and
occupy in vertical extent very considerable space in the system,--I
detected a stratum of bulky nodules charged with fragments of
Coccosteus, belonging chiefly to two species,--_Coccosteus decipiens_
and _Coccosteus cuspidatus_. All the specimens bore conclusive evidence
regarding the geologic place and character of the beds in which they
occur; and in one of the number, a specimen of _Coccosteus decipiens_,
sufficiently fine to be transferred to my knapsack, and which now
occupies its corner in my little collection, the head exhibits all its
plates in their proper order, and the large dorsal plate, though
dissociated from the nail-like attachment of the nape, presents its
characteristic breadth entire. It was the plates of this species, first
found in the flagstones of Caithness, which were taken for those of a
fresh-water tortoise; and hence apparently its specific name,
_decipiens_;--it