ly
extends the range of the fossil in reference to the kingdom, but also
establishes, in a general way, the fossiliferous identity of the Lower
Silurian deposits to the north of the Grampians with that of
Peebles-shire and Galloway in the south,--so far as I know, the only
other two Scottish districts in which this organism has been found.

The argillaceous deposit of Blackpots occupies, in the form of a green
swelling bank, a promontory rather soft than bold in its contour, that
projects far into the sea, and forms, when tipped with its slim column
of smoke from the tile-kiln, a pleasing feature in the landscape. I had
set it down on the previous day, when it first caught my eye from the
lofty cliffs of Gamrie-head, at the distance of some ten or twelve
miles, as different in character from all the other features of the
prospect. The country generally is moulded on a framework of primary
rock, and presents headlands of hard, sharp outline, to the attrition of
the waves; whereas this single headland in the midst,--soft-lined,
undulatory, and plump,--seems suited to remind one of Burns's young Kirk
Alloway beauty disporting amid the thin old ladies that joined with her
in the dance. And it _is_ a greatly younger beauty than the Cambrian and
mica-schist protuberances that encroach on the sea on either side of it.
The sheds and kilns of a tile-work occupy the flat terminal point of the
promontory; and as the clay is valuable, in this tile-draining age, for
the facility with which it can be moulded into pipe-tiles (a purpose
which the ordinary clays of the north of Scotland, composed chiefly of
re-formations of the Old Red Sandstone, are what is technically termed
too _short_ to serve), it is gradually retreating inland before the
persevering spade and mattock of the laborer. The deposit has already
been drawn out into many hundred miles of cylindrical pipes, and is
destined to be drawn out into many thousands more,--such being one of
the strange metamorphoses effected in the geologic formations, now that
that curious animal the Bimana has come upon the stage; and at length it
will have no existence in the country, save as an immense system of
veins and arteries underlying the vegetable mould. Will these veins and
arteries, I marvel, form, in their turn, the _fossils_ of another
period, when a higher platform than that into which they have been laid
will be occupied to the full by plants and animals specifically
different f