ossiliferous beds are
still very numerous, and largely charged with remains. We see dermal
bones, spines, scales, and jaws, projecting in high relief from the
sea-worn surface of the ledges below, and from the weatherworn faces of
the precipices above; for an uneven wall of crags some thirty or forty
feet high, now runs along the shore. We have reached what seems a large
mole, that sloping downwards athwart the beach from the precipices, like
a huge boat-pier, runs far into the surf. We find it composed of a
siliceous bed, so intensely compact and hard, that it has preserved its
proportions entire, while every other rock has worn from around it. For
century after century have the storms of the fierce north-west sent
their long ocean-nursed waves to dash against it in foam; for century
after century have the never-ceasing currents of the Pentland chafed
against its steep sides, or eddied over its rough crest; and yet still
does it remain unwasted and unworn,--its abrupt wall retaining all its
former steepness, and every angular jutting all the original sharpness
of edge. As we advance the scenery becomes wilder and more broken: here
an irregular wall of rock projects from the crags towards the sea; there
a dock-like hollow, in which the water gleams green, intrudes from the
sea upon the crags; we pass a deep lime-encrusted cave, with which
tradition associates some wild legends, and which, from the supposed
resemblance of the hanging stalactites to the entrails of a large animal
wounded in the chase, bears the name of Pudding-Gno; and then, turning
an angle of the coast, we enter a solitary bay, that presents at its
upper extremity a flat expanse of sand. Our walk is still over
sepulchres charged with the remains of the long-departed. Scales of
Holoptychius abound, scattered like coin over the surface of the ledges.
It would seem--to borrow from Mr. Dick--as if some old lord of the
treasury, who flourished in the days of the coal-money currency, had
taken a squandering fit at Sanday Bay, and tossed the dingy contents of
his treasure-chest by shovelfuls upon the rocks. Mr. Dick found in this
locality some of his finest specimens, one of which--the inner side of
the skull-cap of a Holoptychius, with every plate occupying its proper
place, and the large angular holes through which the eyes looked out
still entire--I trust to be able by and by to present to the public in a
good engraving. There occur jaws, plates, scales spine