THE OLD BED SANDSTONE.

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CHAPTER VII.

Further Discoveries of the IchthyoHte Beds—Pound in one locality undera Bed of Peat—Discovered in another beneath an ancient Burying-Ground—In a Third underlying the Lias Formation—In a Fourth over-topped by a still Older Sandstone Deposit—Difficulties in ascertainingthe True Place of a Newly-Discovered Formation—Caution against draw-ing too hasty Inferences from the mere Circumstance of Neighbourhood—The Writer receives his First Assistance from without—“ GeologicalAppendix” of the Messrs Anderson of Inverness—Further Assistancefrom the ^Researches of Agassiz—Suggestions—Dr John Malcohnson—His Extensive Discoveries in Moray—He submits to Agassiz a Drawingof the Pterichthys —Plaoe [of the Ichthyolites in the Scale at length de-termined—Two Distinct Platforms of Being in the Formation to whichthey belong.

I commenced forming a small collection, and set myself care-fully to examine the neighbouring rocks for organisms of asimilar character. The eye becomes practised in such re-searches, and my labours were soon repaid. Directly abovethe little bay there is a corn-field, and beyond the field awood of forest-trees; and in this wood, in the bottom of awater-course scooped out of the rook through a bed of peat,I found the stratified clay charged with scales. A fewhundred yards further to the west there is a deep woodedravine cut through a thick bed of red diluvial clay. The topof the bank directly above is occupied by the mins of anancient chapel and a group of moss-grown tomb-stones ; andin the gorge of this ravine, underlying the little field ofgraves by about sixty feet, I discovered a still more ancientplace of sepulture,—that of the ichthyolites. I exploredevery bank, rock, and ravine on the northern or Cromarty