t the resembling deposits of the neighbouring shires
of Banff, Moray, and Nairn. And in little more than a fortnight he had
detected the ichthyolites in numerous localities all over an Old Red
Sandstone tract, which extends from the primary districts of Banff to
near the field of Culloden. The Old Red Sandstone of the north, hitherto
deemed so poor in fossils, he found--with the Cromarty deposits as his
key--teeming with organic remains. In the spring of 1838, Dr. Malcolmson
visited England and the Continent, and introduced some of my
Cephalaspean fossils to the notice of Agassiz, and some of the evidence
which I had laid before him regarding their place in the scale, to Mr.
(now Sir Roderick) Murchison. And I had the honour, in consequence, of
corresponding with both these distinguished men; and the satisfaction of
knowing, that by both, the fruit of my labours was deemed important. I
observe that Humboldt, in his "Cosmos," specially refers to the judgment
of Agassiz on the extraordinary character of the new zoological link
with which I had furnished him; and I find Murchison, in his great work
on the Silurian System, published in 1839, laying no little emphasis on
the stratigraphical fact. After referring to the previously formed
opinion that the Gamrie deposit, with its ichthyolites, was not an Old
Red one, he goes on to say--"On the other hand, I have recently been
informed by Dr. Malcolmson, that Mr. Miller of Cromarty (who has made
some highly interesting discoveries near that place) pointed out to him
nodules resembling those of Gamrie, and containing similar fishes, in
highly-inclined strata, which are interpolated in, and completely
subordinate to, the great mass of Old Red Sandstone of Ross and
Cromarty. This important observation will, I trust, be soon communicated
to the Geological Society, for it strengthens the inference of M.
Agassiz respecting the epoch during which the _Cheiracanthus_ and
_Cheirolepis_ lived." All this will, I am afraid, appear tolerably weak
to the reader, and somewhat more than tolerably tedious. Let him
remember, however, that the only merit to which I lay claim in the case
is that of patient research--a merit in which whoever wills may rival or
surpass me; and that this humble faculty of patience, when rightly
directed, may lead to more extraordinary developments of idea than even
genius itself. What I had been slowly deciphering were the _ideas_ of
God as developed in the mechanism a