[49] "Frogspawn is full of eyes [that is, black eye-like points], and every eye is a tadpole."
[50] Mr. Page figures, in his "Advanced Text Book of Geology" (p. 127), a few circular markings from the Forfarshire beds, which he still regards as spawn, probably that of a Crustacean, and which certainly differ greatly in appearance from the markings found enclosed in the apparent spathes.
[51] Since these sentences were written I have seen a description of both the plants of the Upper Old Red to which they refer, in an interesting sketch of the geology of Roxburgshire by the Rev. James Duncan, which forms part of a recent publication devoted to the history and antiquities of the shire. "In the red quarry of Denholm Hill there occurs," says Mr. Duncan, "a stratum of soft yellowish sandstone, which contains impressions of an apparent fucoid in considerable quantity. One or several linear stems diverge from a point, and throw off at acute angles, as they grow upwards, branches or leaves very similar to the stem, which are in turn subdivided into others. The width of the stalks is generally about a quarter of an inch, the length often a foot. The color is brown, blackish-brown, or grayish. The same plant also occurs in the whitestone quarry [an overlying bed] in the form of Carbonaceous impressions. There can be little doubt that it is a fucoid. The general mode of growth greatly resembles that of certain seaweeds; and in some specimens we have seen the branches dilated a little at the extremities, like those of such of the living fuci as expand in order to afford space for the fructification. It is deserving of remark, that the plant is seldom observed lying horizontally on the rock in a direction parallel to its stratification, but rising up through the layers, so as only to be seen when the stone is broken across; as if it had been standing erect, or kept buoyant in water, while the stony matter to which it owes its preservation was deposited around it." Mr. Duncan, after next referring to the remains of what he deems a land plant, derived from the same deposit, and which, though sadly mutilated, presents not a little of the appearance of the naked framework of a frond of Cyclopterus Hibernicus divested of the leaflets, goes on to describe the apparent calamite of the formation. "The best preserved vegetable remain yet found in Denholm Hill quarry," he says, "is the radical portion of what we cannot hesitate to call a species of calamite. The lower part is regularly and beautifully rounded, bulging and prominent, nearly four inches in diameter. About an inch from the bottom it contracts somewhat suddenly in two separate stages, and, from the uppermost sends up a stem about an inch in diameter, and nearly of the same length, where it is broken across. At the origin of this stem the small longitudinal ridges are distinctly marked; and the whole outline of the figure, though converted into stone, is as well defined as it could have been in the living plant." Mr. Duncan accompanies his description with a figure of the organism described, which, however, rather resembles the bulb of a liliaceous plant than the root of a calamite, which in all the better preserved, specimens contracts, instead of expanding, as it descends. The apparent expansion, however, in the Old Red specimen may be simply a result of compression in its upper part: the under part certainly much resembles, in the dome-like symmetry of its outline, the radical termination of a solitary calamite.
[52] "Though the coal of Sabero is apparently included in Devonian rocks," says Sir Roderick Murchison, "M. Casiano de Prado thinks that this appearance may be do to inverted folds of the strata." On the other hand, M. Alcide D'Orbigny regards it us decidedly Old Red; and certainly its Sphenopteris and Lepidodendron bent much more the aspect of Devonian than of Carboniferous plants.
[53] Now, alas! no more. In Mr. Gourlay the energy and shrewd business habits of the accomplished merchant were added to an enlightened zeal for general science, and no inconsiderable knowledge in both the geologic and botanic provinces. The marked success, in several respects, of the brilliant meeting of the British Association which held in Glasgow in September 1855, was owing in no small measure to the indefatigable exertions and well calculated arrangements of Mr. Gourlay.
[54] Trees must have been very abundant in what is now Scotland in these Secondary ages. Trunks of the common Scotch fir are of scarce more frequent occurrence in our mosses than the trunks of somewhat resembling trees among the shales of the Lower Oolite of Helmsdale. On examining in that neighborhood, about ten years since, a huge heap of materials which had been collected along the sea shore for burning into lime in a temporary kiln, I found that more than three fourths of the whole consisted of fragments of coniferous wood washed out of the shale beds by the surf, and the remainder of a massive Isastrea. And only two years ago, after many kilnfuls had been gathered and burnt, his grace the Duke of Argyll found that fossil wood could still he collected by cartloads along the shore of Helmsdale. The same woods also occur at Port Gower, Kintradwell, Shandwick, and Eathie. In the Island of Eigg, too, in an Oolite deposit, locked up in trap, and whose stratigraphical relations cannot in consequence be exactly traced, great fragments of Pinites Eiggensis are so abundant, that, armed with a mattock, I have dug out of the rock, in a few minutes, specimens enough to supply a dozen of museums. In short, judging from its fossiliferous remains, it seems not improbable that old Oolitic Scotland was as densely covered with coniferous trees as the Scotland of Roman times, when the great Caledonian forest stretched northwards from the wall of Antoninus to the furthest Thule.
WORKS BY HUGH MILLER,
PUBLISHED BY
GOULD AND LINCOLN,