nature, which it would require the suggestive necessities of many ages painfully to lick into civilisation? Or does it appear rather like the Adam of the poet and the theologian, independent, in its instantaneously-derived perfection, of all after development,—

'Adam, the goodliest man of men since born

His sons?'

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, -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 verticillated 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

1 This alludes, of course, to the development theory of the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation.

the section parallel to the radius of the stem or bole the circular disks of the coniferæ 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 (ie. 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 half-developed savage.1

The olive-leaf which the dove brought to Noah established

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 disk 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 disks 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 favour of an araucarian relationship.

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 might have undergone, was still
favourable to the development of vegetable life. And, fur-
ther, it might be very 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 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 immaturi-
ties 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 Sand-
stone, on which, according to the theory of Adolphe Bron-
gniart, 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
Of some great ammiral.'

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 recognised in Morayshire, but re-appeared, 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 labours 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 Sandstone and conglomerate, one natural geological assemblage; that in 1839 the late Dr. Malcolmson made the important additional discovery of fossil fishes, in conjunction with Lady Gordon Cumming; and also read a valuable memoir on the structure of the tract, before the Geological Society, of which, to his the author's regret, an abstract only had been published (Proc. Geol. Soc. vol. iii. p. 141). Sir Roderick revisited the district in the autumn of 1840, and made sections in the environs of Forres and Elgin. Subsequently, Mr. P. Duff of Elgin published a 'Sketch of the Geology of

Moray,' with illustrative plates of fossil-fishes, sections, and a geological map, by Mr. John Martin; and afterwards Mr. Alexander Robertson threw much light upon the structure of the district, particularly as regarded deposits younger than those under consideration. All these writers, as well as Sedgwick and himself, had grouped the yellow and whitish-yellow sandstones of Elgin with the old Red Sandstone; but the discovery in them of the curious small reptile, the Telerpeton Elginense, described by Mantell in 1851 from a specimen in Mr. P. Duff's collection, first occasioned doubts to arise respecting the age of the deposit. Still, the sections by Captain Brickenden, who sent that reptile up to London, proved that it had been found in a sandstone which dipped under 'Cornstone,' and which passed downwards into the Old Red series. Captain Brickenden also sent to London natural impressions of the foot-prints of an apparently reptilian animal in a slab of similar sandstone, from the coast-ridge extending from Burghead to Lossiemouth (Cummingston). Although adhering to his original view respecting the age of the sandstones, Sir R. Murchison could not help having misgivings and doubts, in common with many geologists, on account of the high grade of reptile to which the Telerpeton belonged; and hence he revisited the tract, examining the critical points, in company with his friend the Rev. G. Gordon, to whose zealous labours he owned himself to be greatly indebted. In looking through the collections in the public Museum of Elgin, and of Mr. P. Duff, he was much struck with the appearance of several undescribed fossils, apparently belonging to reptiles, which by the liberality of their possessors, were, at his request, sent up for inspection to the museum of Practical Geology. He was also much astonished at the state of preservation of a large bone (ischium) apparently belonging to a reptile, found by Mr. Martin in the same sandstone quarries of Lossiemouth