ve miles south of Elgin, not far distant
from where the palaeozoic deposits of the coast-side lean against the
great primary nucleus of the interior. We pass from the town, through
deep rich fields, carefully cultivated and well inclosed: the country,
as we advance on the moorlands, becomes more open; the homely cottage
takes the place of the neat villa; the brown heath, of the grassy lea;
and unfenced patches of corn here and there alternate with plantings of
dark sombre firs, in their mediocre youth. At length we near the
southern boundary of the landscape,--an undulating moory ridge,
partially planted; and see where a deep gap in the outline opens a way
to the upland districts of the province, a lively hill-stream descending
towards the east through the bed which it has scooped out for itself in
a soft red conglomerate. The section we have come to explore lies along
its course: it has been the grand excavator in the densely occupied
burial-ground over which it flows; but its labors have produced but a
shallow scratch after all,--a mere ditch, some ten or twelve feet deep,
in a deposit the entire depth of which is supposed greatly to exceed a
hundred fathoms. The shallow section, however, has been well wrought;
and its suit of fossils is one of the finest, both from the great
specific variety which they exhibit, and their excellent state of
keeping, that the Upper Old Red Sandstone has anywhere furnished.

So great is the incoherency of the matrix, that we can dig into it with
our chisels, unassisted by the hammer. It reminds us of the loose
gravelly soil of an ancient graveyard, partially consolidated by a
night's frost,--a resemblance still further borne out by the condition
and appearance of its organic contents. The numerous bones disseminated
throughout the mass do not exist, as in so many of the Upper Old Red
Sandstone rocks, as mere films or impressions, but in their original
forms, retaining bulk as well as surface: they are true graveyard bones,
which may be detached entire from the inclosing mass, and of which, were
we sufficiently well acquainted with the anatomy of the long-perished
races to which they belonged, entire skeletons might be reconstructed.
I succeeded in disinterring, during my short stay, an occipital plate of
great beauty, fretted on its outer surface by numerous tubercles,
confluent on its anterior part, and surrounded on its posterior portion,
where they stand detached, by punctulated marki