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THE OLD EED SANDSTONE.

and whose celebrity among his own countrymen rested chieflyon his researches in the more ancient formations,—" youmust inevitably give up the Old Red Sandstone : it is a merelocal deposit, a doubtful accumulation huddled up in a cor-ner, and has no type or representative abroad.” “ I wouldwillingly give it up if Nature would,” was the reply; “ butit assuredly exists, and I cannot.” In a recently publishedtabular exhibition of the geological scale by a continentalgeologist, I could not distinguish this system at all. Thereare some of our British geologists, too, who still regard it asa sort of debateable tract, entitled to no independent status.They find, in what they deem its upper beds, the fossils ofthe Coal Measures, and the lower graduating apparently intothe Silurian System; and regard the whole as a sort ofcommon, which should be divided as proprietors used todivide commons in Scotland half a century ago, by giving aportion to each of the bordering territories. Even the better-informed geologists, who assign to it its proper place as anindependent formation, furnished with its own organisms,contrive to say all they know regarding it in a very fewparagraphs. Eyell, in the first edition of his admirableelementary work, published only two years ago, devotesmore than thirty pages to his description of the Coal Mea-sures, and but two and a half to his notice of the Old RedSandstone.*

* As the succinct notice of this distinguished geologist may serve as asort of pocket-map to the reader in indicating the position of the system,its three great deposits, and its extent, I take the liberty of transferringit entire.

“ OLD RED SANDSTONE.

“ It was stated that the Carboniferous formation was surmounted byone called the New Red Sandstone, and underlaid by another called theOld Red, which last was formerly merged in the Carboniferous System ,but is now found to be distinguishable by its fossils. The Old Red Sand-stone is of enormous thickness in Herefordshire , "Worcestershire , Shrop-