it partially imbedded, with many other nodules half-disinterred by the sea, in an ichthyolitic deposit, a few hundred yards to the east of the town of Cromarty, which occurs more than four hundred feet over the Great Conglomerate base of the system. A nodule that lay immediately beside it contained a well-preserved specimen of the Coccosteus decipiens; and in the nodule in which the lignite itself is contained the practised eye may detect a scattered group of scales of Diplacanthus, a scarce less characteristic organism of the lower formation. And what, asks the reader, is the character of this ancient vegetable, - the most ancient, by three whole formations, that has presented its internal structure to the microscope? Is it as low in the scale of development as in the geological scale? Does this venerable Adam of the forest appear, like the Adam of the infidel, as a squalid, ill-formed savage, with a rugged shaggy nature which it would require the suggestive necessities of many ages painfully to lick into civilization? Or does it appear rather like the Adam of the poet and the theologian, independent, in its instantaneously-derived perfection, of all after developments, "Adam, the goodliest man of men since born Is this tissue vascular or cellular, or, like that of some of the cryptogamia, intermediate? Or what, in fine, is the nature and bearing of its mute but emphatic testimony on that doctrine of progressive development of late so strangely resuscitated? In the first place, then, this ancient fossil is a true wood, 1 This alludes, of course, to the development theory of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation." a dicotyledonous or polycotyledonous Gymnosperm, that, like the pines and larches of our existing forests, bore naked seeds, which, in their state of germination, developed either double lobes to shelter the embryo within, or shot out a fringe of verticillate spikes, which performed the same protective functions, and that, as it increased in bulk year after year, received its accessions of growth in outside layers. In the transverse section the cells bear the reticulated appearance which distinguish the coniferæ; the lignite had been exposed in its bed to a considerable degree of pressure; and so the openings somewhat resemble the meshes of a net that has been drawn a little awry; but no general obliteration of their original character has taken place, save in minute patches, where they have been injured by compression or the bituminizing process. All the tubes. indicated by the openings are, as in recent coniferæ, of nearly the same size; and though, as in many of the more ancient lignites, there are no indications of annual rings, the direction of the medullary rays is distinctly traceable. The longitudinal sections are rather less distinct than the transverse one: in the section parallel to the radius of the stem or bole the circular disks of the conifere were at first not at all detected; and, as since shown by a very fine microscope, they appear simply as double and triple lines of undefined dots, that somewhat resemble the stippled markings of the miniature painter; nor are the openings of the medullary rays frequent in the tangental section (i. e. that parallel to the bark); but nothing can be better defined than the peculiar arrangement of the woody fibre, and the longitudinal form of the cells. Such is the character of this the most ancient of lignites yet found that yields to the microscope the peculiarities of its original structure. We find in it an unfallen Adam-not a halfdeveloped savage.1 The olive-leaf which the dove brought to Noah established at least three important facts, and indicated a few more. It showed most conclusively that there was dry land, that there were olive-trees, and that the climate of the surrounding region, whatever change it may have undergone, was still favorable to the development of vegetable life. And, further, it might be safely inferred from it, that if olive-trees had survived, other trees and plants must have survived also; and that the dark muddy prominences round which the ebbing currents were fast sweeping to lower levels would soon present, as in antediluvian times, their coverings of cheerful green. The olive-leaf spoke 1 On a point of such importance I find it necessary to strengthen my testimony by auxiliary evidence. The following is the judgment, on this ancient petrifaction, of Mr. Nicol, of Edinburgh, confessedly one of our highest living authorities in that division of fossil botany which takes cognizance of the internal structure of lignites, and decides, from their anatomy, their race and family: "Edinburgh, 19th July 1845. "DEAR SIR, -I have examined the structure of the fossil-wood which you found in the Old Red Sandstone at Cromarty, and have no hesitation in stating, that the reticulated texture of the transverse sections, though somewhat compressed, clearly indicates a coniferous origin; but as there is not the slightest trace of a disc to be seen in the longitudinal sections parallel to the medullary rays, it is impossible to say whether it belongs to the pine or araucarian division. I am, etc. WILLIAM NICOL." It will be seen that Mr. Nicol failed to detect what I now deem the discs of this conifer, - those stippled markings to which I have referred. But even were this portion of the evidence wholly wanting, we would be left in doubt, in consequence, not whether the Old Red lignite formed part of a true gymnospermous tree, but whether that tree is now represented by the pines of Europe and America, or by the araucarians of Chili and New Zealand. Were I to risk an opinion in a department not particularly my province, it would be in favor of an araucarian relationship. not of merely a partial, but of a general vegetation. Now, the coniferous lignite of the Lower Old Red Sandstone we find charged, like the olive-leaf, with a various and singularly interesting evidence. It is something to know, that in the times of the Coccosteus and Asterolepis there existed dry land, and that that land wore, as at after periods, its soft, gay mantle of green. It is something also to know, that the verdant tint was not owing to a profuse development of mere immaturities of the vegetable kingdom,crisp, slow-growing lichens, or watery spore-propagated fungi, that shoot up to their full size in a night, - nor even to an abundance of the more highly organized families of the liverworts and the mosses. These may have abounded then, as now; though we have not a shadow of evidence that they did. But while we have no proof whatever of their existence, we have conclusive proof that there existed orders and families of a rank far above them. On the dry land of the Lower Old Red Sandstone, on which, according to the theory of Adolphe Brogniart, nothing higher than a lichen or a moss could have been expected, the ship-carpenter might have hopefully taken axe in hand to explore the woods for some such stately pine as the one described by Milton, "Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast SIR RODERICK MURCHISON ON THE RECENT GEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES IN MORAYSHIRE. Ar a meeting of the Geological Society of London, held on the 15th December 1858, Part III. of a paper by Sir Roderick Murchison, on "the Geological Structure of the North of Scotland,” was read. Referring to his previous memoir for an account of the triple division of the Old Red Sandstone of Caithness and the Orkney Islands, Sir Roderick showed how the chief member of the group in those tracts diminished in its range southwards into Ross-shire, and how, when traceable through Inverness and Nairn, it was scarcely to be recog nized in Morayshire, but reäppeared, with its characteristic ichthyolites, in Banffshire (Dipple, Tynet, and Gamrie). He then prefaced his description of the ascending order of the strata belonging to this group in Morayshire by a sketch of the successive labors of geologists in that district; pointing out how, in 1828, the sandstones and cornstones of this tract had been shown by Professor Sedgwick and himself to constitute, together with the inferior Red |