Note AM — Chapter VIII

The Upper Old Red Sandstones of Moray were ascertained to be fossiliferous at nearly the same time by Mr. Martin, of the Anderson Institution, Elgin. There is a mouldering conglomerate precipice termed the Scat-Craig, about four miles to the south of the town, more abundant in remains than perhaps any of the other deposits of the formation yet discovered; and in this precipice Mr. Martin first commenced his labors in the lied Sandstone of the district, and found it a mine of wonders. It is a place of singular interest—a rock of sepulchres; and its teeth, scales, and single bones occur in a state of great entireness; though, ere the deposit was formed, the various ichthyolites whose remains it contains seem to have been broken up, and their fragments scattered. Accumulations of larger and smaller pebbles alternate in the strata; and the bulkier bones and teeth are found invariably among the bulkier pebbles, thus showing that they were operated upon by the same laws of motion which operated on the inorganic contents of the deposit. At a considerably later period the fossils of the upper group were detected in the precipitous and romantic banks of the Findhorn, by Dr. Malcolmson, of Madras, when prosecuting his discoveries of the organisms of the lower formation. He found them, also, though in less abundance, in a splendid section exhibited in the Burn of Lethen, a rivulet of Moray, and yet again in the neighborhood of Altyre. The Rev. Mr. Gordon, of Birnie, and Mr. Robertson, of Inverugie, have been also discoverers in the district. To the geological labors of Mr. Patrick Duff, of Elgin, in the same field, I have already had occasion incidentally to refer. The patient inquiries of this gentleman have been prosecuted for years in all the formations of the province, from the Weald of Linksfield, with its peculiar lacustrine remains—lignites, minute fresh-water shells, and the teeth, spines, and vertebræ of fish and saurians—down to the base of the Old Red Sandstone, with its Coccostei, Dipteri, and Pterichthyes. His acquaintance with the organisms of the Scat-Craig is at once more extensive and minute than that of, perhaps, any other geologist; and his collection of them very valuable, representing, as it does, a formation of much interest, still little known. Mr. Duff is at present engaged on a volume descriptive of the Geology of the province of Moray, a district extensively explored of late years, and abundant in its distinct groups of organisms, but of which general readers have still much to learn; and from no one could they learn more regarding it than from Mr. Duff. It is still only a few months since the Upper Old Red Sandstones of the southern districts of Scotland were found to be fossiliferous; and the writer is chiefly indebted for his acquaintance with their organisms to a tradesman of Berwickshire, Mr. William Stevenson, of Dunse, who, on perusing some of the geological articles which appeared in the Witness newspaper during the course of the last autumn, sent him a parcel of fossils disinterred from out the deep belt of Red Sandstone which leans to the south in that locality, against the grauwacke of the Lammermuirs. Mr. Stevenson had recently discovered them, he stated, near Preston-haugh, about two miles north of Dunse, in a fine section of alternating Sandstone and conglomerate strata that lie unconformably on the grauwacke. They consist of scales and occipital plates of the Holoptychius, with the remains of a bulky, but very imperfectly preserved ichthyodorulite; and the coarse, arenaceous matrices which surround them seem identical with the red gritty Sandstones of the Findhorn and the Scat-Craig,