Note AR — Chapter IX

These organisms, if in reality such, are at once very curious and very puzzling. They occur in some localities in great abundance. A piece of Clashbennie flagstone, somewhat more than two feet in length, by fifteen inches in breadth, kindly sent me for examination by the Rev. Mr. Noble, of St. Madoes, bears no fewer than twelve of them on its upper surface, and presents the appearance of a piece of rude sculpture, not very unlike those we sometimes see in country churchyards, on the tombstones of the times of the Revolution. All the twelve vary in appearance. Some of them are of a pear shape—some are irregularly oval—some resemble short cuts of the bole of a tree—some are spread out like ancient manuscripts, partially unrolled—one of the number seems a huge, though not over neatly formed acorn, an apprentice mason's first attempt—the others are of a shape so irregular as to set comparison and description at defiance. They almost all agree, however, when cut transversely, in presenting flat, elliptical arcs as their sectional lines—in having an upper surface comparatively smooth, and an under surface nearly parallel to it, thickly corrugated—and in being all coated with a greasy, shining clay, of a deeper red than the surrounding stone. I was perhaps rather more confident of their organic character after I had examined a few merely detached specimens, than now that I have seen a dozen of them together. It seems at least a circumstance to awaken doubt, that though they occur in various positions on the slab—some extending across it, some lying diagonally, some running lengthwise—the corrugations of their under surfaces should run lengthwise in all—furrowing them in every possible angle, and giving evidence, not apparently to the influences of an organic law, internal to each, but of the operation of some external cause, acting on the whole in one direction.