Transcriber Note
Text emphasis denoted as _Italics_ and =Bold=.
[Illustration: Sections]
THE
OLD RED SANDSTONE;
OR,
NEW WALKS IN AN OLD FIELD.
BY
HUGH MILLER,
AUTHOR OF "FOOT-PRINTS OF THE CREATOR," ETC.
ILLUSTRATED WITH NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS.
FROM THE FOURTH LONDON EDITION.
BOSTON: GOULD AND LINCOLN, 59 WASHINGTON STREET. 1851.
STEREOTYPED AT THE BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY.
Printed by G. C. Rand & Co. No. 3 Cornhill.
DEDICATION.
TO
RODERICK IMPEY MURCHISON, Esq., F. R. S., Etc.,
PRESIDENT OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY.
In the autumn of last year, I sat down to write a few geological
sketches for a newspaper; the accumulated facts of twenty years
crowded upon me as I wrote, and the few sketches have expanded into
a volume. Permit me, honored Sir, to dedicate this volume to you.
Its imperfections are doubtless many, for it has been produced under
many disadvantages; but it is not the men best qualified to decide
regarding it whose criticisms I fear most; and I am especially
desirous to bring it under your notice, as of all geologists the
most thoroughly acquainted with those ancient formations which it
professes partially to describe. I am, besides, desirous it should
be known, and this, I trust, from other motives than those of
vanity, that, when prosecuting my humble researches in obscurity and
solitude, the present President of the Geological Society did not
deem it beneath him to evince an interest in the results to which
they led, and to encourage and assist the inquirer with his advice.
Accept, honored Sir, my sincere thanks for your kindness.
Smith, the father of English Geology, loved to remark that he had
been born upon the Oolite--the formation whose various deposits he
was the first to distinguish and describe, and from which, as from
the meridian line of the geographer, the geological scale has been
graduated on both sides. I have thought of the circumstance when,
on visiting in my native district the birthplace of the author of
the _Silurian System_, I found it situated among the more ancient
fossiliferous rocks of the north of Scotland--the Lower Formation
of the Old Red Sandstone spreading out beneath and around it, and
the first-formed deposit of the system, the Great Conglomerate,
rising high on the neighboring hills. It is unquestionably no slight
advantage to be placed, at that early stage of life, when the mind
collects its facts with greatest avidity, and the curiosity is most
active, in localities where there is much to attract observation that
has escaped the notice of others. Like the gentleman whom I have now
the honor of addressing, I too was born on the Old Red Sandstone, and
first broke ground as an inquirer into geological fact in a formation
scarce at all known to the geologist, and in which there still
remains much for future discoverers to examine and describe. Hence an
acquaintance, I am afraid all too slight, with phenomena which, if
intrinsically of interest, may be found to have also the interest of
novelty to recommend them, and with organisms which, though among the
most ancient of things in their relation to the world's history, will
be pronounced new by the geological reader in their relation to human
knowledge. Hence, too, my present opportunity of subscribing myself,
as the writer of a volume on the Old Red Sandstone,
Honored Sir,
With sincere gratitude and respect,
Your obedient humble Servant,
HUGH MILLER.
Edinburgh, _May_ 1, 1841.
PREFACE.
Nearly one third of the present volume appeared a few months ago
in the form of a series of sketches in the _Witness_ newspaper. A
portion of the first chapter was submitted to the public a year or
two earlier, in _Chambers's Edinburgh Journal_. The rest, amounting
to about two thirds of the whole, appears for the first time.
Every such work has its defects. The faults of the present
volume--faults all too obvious, I am afraid--would have been
probably fewer had the writer enjoyed greater leisure. Some of them,
however, seem scarce separable from the nature of the subject:
there are others for which, from their opposite character, I shall
have to apologize in turn to opposite classes of readers. My facts
would, in most instances, have lain closer had I written for
geologists exclusively, and there would have been less reference to
familiar phenomena. And had I written for only general readers, my
descriptions of hitherto undescribed organisms, and the deposits of
little-known localities, would have occupied fewer pages, and would
have been thrown off with, perhaps, less regard to minute detail than
to pictorial effect. May I crave, while addressing myself, now to the
one class, and now to the other, the alternate forbearance of each?
Such is the state of progression in geological science, that the
geologist who stands still for but a very little, must be content
to find himself left behind. Nay, so rapid is the progress, that
scarce a geological work passes through the press in which some
of the statements of the earlier pages have not to be modified,
restricted, or extended in the concluding ones. The present volume
shares, in this respect, in what seems the common lot. In describing
the _Coccosteus_, the reader will find it stated that the creature,
unlike its contemporary the _Pterichthys_, was unfurnished with
arms. Ere arriving at such a conclusion, I had carefully examined
at least a hundred different _Coccostei_; but the positive evidence
of one specimen outweighs the negative evidence of a hundred; and
I have just learned from a friend in the north, (Mr. Patrick Duff,
of Elgin,) that a Coccosteus lately found at Lethen-bar, and now in
the possession of Lady Gordon Gumming, of Altyre, is furnished with
what seem uncouth, paddle-shaped arms, that project from the head.[A]
All that I have given of the creature, however, will be found true
to the actual type; and that parts should have been omitted will
surprise no one who remembers that many hundred belemnites had
been figured and described ere a specimen turned up in which the
horny prolongation, with its enclosed ink-bag, was found attached
to the calcareous spindle; and that even yet, after many thousand
trilobites have been carefully examined, it remains a question with
the oryctologist, whether this crustacean of the earliest periods was
furnished with legs, or creeped on an abdominal foot, like the snail.
[Footnote A: As these paddle-shaped arms have not been introduced by
Agassiz into his restoration of the _Coccosteus_, their existence, at
least as arms, must still be regarded as problematical. There can be
no doubt, however, that they existed as plates of very peculiar form,
and greatly resembling paddles, and that they served in the economy
of the animal some still unaccounted for purpose.]
I owe to the kindness of Mr. Robertson, Inverugie, the specimen
figured in Plate V., fig. 7, containing shells of the only species
yet discovered in the Old Red Sandstone of Scotland. They occur in
the Lower Formation of the system, in a quarry near Kirkwald, in
which the specimen figured, with several others of the same kind,
was found by Mr. Robertson, in the year 1834. In referring to this
shell, page 99,[B] I have spoken of it as a delicate bivalve, much
resembling a Venus; drawing my illustration, naturally enough, when
describing the shell of an ocean deposit, rather from among marine,
than fluviatile testacea. I have since submitted it to Mr. Murchison,
who has obligingly written me that he "can find no one to say more
regarding it than that it is very like a _Cyclas_." He adds,
however, that it must be an ocean production notwithstanding, seeing
that all its contemporaries in England, Scotland, and Russia, whether
shells or fish, are unequivocally marine.
[Footnote B: Page 90 of the present edition.]
With the exception of two of the figures in Plate IX., the figures
of the _Cephalaspis_ and the _Holoptychius_, and one of the sections
in the Frontispiece, section 2, all the prints of the volume are
originals. To Mr. Daniel Alexander, of Edinburgh,--a gentleman,
who to the skill and taste of the superior artist, adds no small
portion of the knowledge of the practical geologist,--I am indebted
for several of the drawings; that of fig. 2 in Plate V., fig. 1 in
Plate VI., fig. 2 in Plate VIII., and figs. 3 and 4 in plate IX. I am
indebted to another friend for fig. 1, in Plate VII. Whatever defects
may be discovered in any of the others, must be attributed to the
untaught efforts of the writer, all unfamiliar, hitherto, with the
pencil, and with by much too little leisure to acquaint himself with
it now.
AMERICAN PUBLISHERS' NOTICE.
The publishers take pleasure in presenting to the American reader
this interesting work of Hugh Miller, in which are restored to our
view some of the phenomena which occurred in the earlier formations
of the crust of the earth, belonging to those inconceivably remote
ages when living things first appeared;--a work so scientific, and
yet so illustrated with familiar objects and scenes, as to be well
understood by those little versed in Geology. The grand conclusions
which the author deduces from apparently trifling circumstances that
every one has noticed a hundred times, without being the wiser,
illustrate the difference between the philosopher and the common
observer; and the simple and pictorial style in which they are
delineated renders the work peculiarly fascinating.
This is a reprint of the fourth English edition, without additions
or alterations, excepting the omission of the prefatory Notes to
the second and third editions. In the first of these, the author
states that he had added about fifteen pages to the first edition,
chiefly relating to that middle formation of the system to which
the organisms of Balruddery and Carmylie belong, the representative
of the Cornstones in England. Some matters there given as merely
conjectural were also replaced by ascertained facts. In the
latter, he announces that the somewhat bold prediction made by him
in the first edition, in 1841, that the ichthyolites of the Old
Red Sandstone would be found at least equal to those of all the
geological formations united, at the death of Cuvier, was already
more than fulfilled. Cuvier enumerated ninety-two species of fossil
fishes; Agassiz, in 1846, enumerated one hundred and five in the Old
Red Sandstone alone, a formation which had been regarded as poorer
in organisms than any other. In this edition was given the list
of species, as determined and arranged by Professor Agassiz. Many
additions in the shape of notes were also made.
In the first two editions it was stated that there was a gradual
increase of size observable in the progress of ichthyolic life, and
that the Old Red System exhibited, in its successive formations, this
gradation of bulk, beginning with an age of dwarfs, and ending with
an age of giants. Since then, it has been ascertained that there
were giants among the dwarfs. The remains of one of the largest fish
found any where, has been discovered in its lowest formation; whereby
he was convinced that the theory of a gradual progression in size,
from the earlier to the later Palæozoic formations, though based
originally on no inconsiderable amount of negative evidence, must be
permitted to drop. On this fact he has based his incontrovertible
argument against the "development theory" in his more recent work,
already given to the American Public, "Foot-Prints of the Creator."
Boston, _January_, 1851.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
The Working-man's true Policy.--His only Mode of acquiring
Power.--The Exercise of the Faculties essential to
Enjoyment.--No necessary Connection between Labor and
Unhappiness.--Narrative.--Scenes in a Quarry.--The two
dead Birds.--Landscape.--Ripple Markings on a Sandstone
Slab.--Boulder Stones.--Inferences derived from their
water-worn Appearance.--Sea-coast Section.--My first
discovered Fossil.--Lias Deposit on the Shores of the Moray
Frith.--Belemnite.--Result of the Experience of half a Lifetime
of Toil.--Advantages of a Wandering Profession in Connection
with the Geology of a Country.--Geological Opportunities of the
Stone-Mason.--Design of the present Work, 1-14
CHAPTER II.
The Old Red Sandstone.--Till very lately its Existence as a
distinct Formation disputed.--Still little known.--Its great
Importance in the Geological Scale.--Illustration.--The
North of Scotland girdled by an immense Belt of Old Red
Sandstone.--Line of the Girdle along the Coast.--Marks of vast
Denudation.--Its Extent partially indicated by Hills on the
western Coast of Ross-shire.--The System of great Depth in the
North of Scotland.--Difficulties in the Way of estimating the
Thickness of Deposits.--Peculiar Formation of Hill.--Illustrated
by Ben Nevis.--Caution to the Geological Critic.--Lower Old
Red Sandstone immensely developed in Caithness.--Sketch
of the Geology of that County.--Its strange Group of
Fossils.--their present Place of Sepulture.--Their ancient
Habitat.--Agassiz.--Amazing Progress of Fossil Ichthyology during
the last few Years.--Its Nomenclature.--Learned Names repel
unlearned Readers.--Not a great deal in them, 15-34
CHAPTER III.
Lamarck's Theory of Progression illustrated.--Class of Facts
which give Color to it.--The Credulity of _Unbelief_.--M.
Maillet and his Fish-birds.--Gradation not Progress.--Geological
Argument.--The Present incomplete without the Past.--Intermediate
Links of Creation.--Organisms of the Lower Old Red
Sandstone.--The _Pterichthys_.--Its first Discovery.--Mr.
Murchison's Decision regarding it.--Confirmed by that of
Agassiz.--Description.--The several Varieties of the Fossil
yet discovered.--Evidence of violent Death in the Attitudes
in which they are found.--The Coccosteus of the Lower Old
Red.--Description.--Gradations from Crustacea to Fishes.--Habits
of the _Coccosteus_.--Scarcely any Conception too extravagant for
Nature to realize, 35-54
CHAPTER IV.
The Elfin-fish of Gawin Douglas.--The Fish of the Old Red
Sandstone scarcely less curious.--Place which they occupied
indicated in the present Creation by a mere Gap.--Fish divided
into two great Series, the Osseous and Cartilaginous.--Their
distinctive Peculiarities.--Geological Illustration of
Dr. Johnson's shrewd Objection to the Theory of Soame
Jenyns.--Proofs of the intermediate Character of the
Ichthyolites of the Old lied Sandstone.--Appearances which
first led the Writer to deem it intermediate.--Confirmation by
Agassiz.--The _Osteolepis_.--Order to which, this Ichthyolite
belonged.--Description.--_Dipterus._--_Diplopierus._--
_Cheirolepis._--_Glyptolepis_, 55-78
CHAPTER V.
The Classifying Principle and its Uses.--Three Groups
of Ichthyolites among the Organisms of the Lower Old
Red Sandstone.--Peculiarities of the Third Group.--Its
Varieties.--Description of the _Cheiracanthus_.--Of two unnamed
Fossils of the same Order.--Microscopic Beauty of these
ancient Fish.--Various Styles of Ornament which obtain among
them.--The Molluscs of the Formation.--Remarkable chiefly for
the Union of modern with ancient Forms which they exhibit.--Its
Vegetables.--Importance and Interest of the Record which it
furnishes, 79-94
CHAPTER VI.
The Lines of the Geographer rarely right Lines.--These last,
however, always worth looking at when they occur.--Striking
Instance in the Line of the Great Caledonian Valley.--Indicative
of the Direction in which the Volcanic Agencies have
operated.--Sections of the Old Red Sandstone furnished by the
granitic Eminences of the Line.--Illustration.--Lias of the Moray
Frith.--Surmisings regarding its original Extent.--These lead to
an exploratory Ramble.--Narrative.--Phenomena exhibited in the
Course of half an Hour's Walk.--The little Bay.--Its Strata and
their Organisms, 95-108
CHAPTER VII.
Further Discoveries of the Ichthyolite Beds.--Found in one
Locality under a Bed of Peat.--Discovered in another beneath
an ancient Burying-ground.--In a third underlying the Lias
Formation.--In a fourth overtopped by a still older Sandstone
Deposit.--Difficulties in ascertaining the true Place of a
newly-discovered Formation.--Caution against drawing too hasty
Inferences from the mere Circumstance of Neighborhood.--The
Writer receives his first Assistance from without.--_Geological
Appendix_ of the Messrs. Anderson, of Inverness.--Further
Assistance from the Researches of Agassiz.--Suggestion.--Dr.
John Malcolmson.--His extensive Discoveries in Moray.--He
submits to Agassiz a Drawing of the _Pterichthys_.--Place of the
Ichthyolites in the Scale at length determined.--Two distinct
Platforms of Being in the Formation to which they belong, 109-124
CHAPTER VIII.
Upper Formations of the Old Red Sandstone.--Room enough, for each
and to spare.--Middle, or Cornstone Formation.--The Cephalaspis
its most characteristic Organism.--Description.--The Den of
Balruddery richer in the Fossils of this middle Formation than
any other Locality yet discovered.--Various Contemporaries
of the _Cephalaspis._--Vegetable Impressions.--Gigantic
Crustacean.--_Seraphim._--Ichthyodorulites.--Sketch of the
Geology of Forfarshire.--Its older Deposits of the Cornstone
Formation.--The Quarries of Carmylie.--Their Vegetable and Animal
Remains.--The Upper Formation.--Wide Extent of the Fauna and
Flora of the earlier Formations.--Probable Cause, 125-150
CHAPTER IX.
Fossils of the Upper Old Red Sandstone much more imperfectly
preserved than those of the Lower.--The Causes
obvious.--Difference between the two Groups, which first strikes
the Observer, a difference in size.--The _Holoptychius_ a
characteristic Ichthyolite of the Formation.--Description of its
huge Scales.--Of its Occipital Bones, Fins, Teeth, and general
Appearance.--Contemporaries of the _Holoptychius_.--Sponge-like
Bodies.--Plates resembling those of the Sturgeon.--Teeth of
various forms, but all evidently the teeth of fishes.--Limestone
Band and its probable Origin.--Fossils of the Yellow
Sandstone.--the _Pterichthys_ of Dura Den.--Member of a Family
peculiarly characteristic of the System.--No intervening
Formation between the Old Red Sandstone and the Coal
Measures.--The _Holoptychius_ contemporary for a time with the
_Megalichthys_,--The Columns of Tubal-Cain, 151-172
CHAPTER X.
Speculations in the Old Red Sandstone, and their
Character.--George, first Earl of Cromarty.--His Sagacity as
a Naturalist at fault in one instance.--Sets himself to dig
for Coal in the Lower Old Red Sandstone.--Discovers a fine
Artesian Well.--Value of Geological Knowledge in an economic
view.--Scarce a Secondary Formation in the Kingdom in which
Coal has not been sought for.--Mineral Springs of the Old
Red Sandstone.--Strathpeffer.--Its Peculiarities whence
derived.--Chalybeate Springs of Easter Ross and the Black
Isle.--Petrifying Springs.--Building-Stone and Lime of the Old
Red Sandstone.--Its various Soils, 173-189
CHAPTER XI.
Geological Physiognomy.--Scenery of the Primary Formations;
Gneiss, Mica Schist, Quartz Rock.--Of the Secondary; the
Chalk Formations, the Oolite, the New Red Sandstone, the Coal
Measures.--Scenery in the Neighborhood of Edinburgh.--Aspect
of the Trap Rocks.--The Disturbing and Denuding
Agencies.--Distinctive Features of the Old Red Sandstone.--Of
the Great Conglomerate.--Of the Ichthyolite Beds.--The Burn of
Eathie.--The Upper Old Red Sandstones.--Scene in Moray, 190-210
CHAPTER XII.
The two Aspects in which Matter can be viewed; Space and
Time.--Geological History of the Earlier Periods.--The Cambrian
System.--Its Annelids.--The Silurian System.--Its Corals,
Encrinites, Molluscs, and Trilobites.--Its Fish.--These
of a high Order, and called into Existence apparently by
Myriads.--Opening Scene in the History of the Old Red Sandstone
a Scene of Tempest.--Represented by the Great Conglomerate.--Red
a prevailing Color among the Ancient Rocks contained in this
Deposit.--Amazing Abundance of Animal Life.--Exemplified by a
Scene in the Herring Fishery.--Platform of Death.--Probable Cause
of the Catastrophe which rendered it such, 211-225
CHAPTER XIII.
Successors of the exterminated Tribes.--The Gap slowly
filled.--Proof that the Vegetation of a Formation may long
survive its Animal Tribes.--Probable Cause.--Immensely extended
Period during which Fishes were the Master-existences of our
Planet.--Extreme Folly of an Infidel Objection illustrated
by the Fact.--Singular Analogy between the History of Fishes
as Individuals and as a Class.--Chemistry of the Lower
Formation.--Principles on which the Fish-enclosing Nodules were
probably formed.--Chemical Effect of Animal Matter in discharging
the Color from Red Sandstone.--Origin of the prevailing tint
to which the System owes its Name.--Successive Modes in which
a Metal may exist.--The Restorations of the Geologist void of
Color.--Very different Appearance of the Ichthyolites of Cromarty
and Moray, 226-242
CHAPTER XIV.
The Cornstone Formation and its Organisms.--Dwarf
Vegetation.--_Cephalaspides._--Huge Lobster.--Habitats of
the existing Crustacea.--No unapt representation of the
Deposit of Balruddery, furnished by a land-locked Bay in the
neighborhood of Cromarty.--Vast Space occupied by the Geological
Formations.--Contrasted with the half-formed Deposits which
represent the existing Creation.--Inference.--The formation
of the _Holoptychius_.--Probable origin of its Siliceous
Limestone.--Marked increase in the Bulk of the Existences of the
System.--Conjectural Cause.--The Coal Measures.--The Limestone of
Burdie House Conclusion, 243-259
Ichthyolites of the Old Red Sandstone--from Agassiz's "Poissons
Fossiles," 261-288
EXPLANATIONS OF THE SECTIONS AND PLATES.
SECTION I.
Represents the Old Red System of Scotland from its upper beds of
Yellow Quartzose Sandstone to its Great Conglomerate base. _a._
Quartzose Yellow Sandstone, _b._ Impure concretionary limestone
enclosing masses of chert, _c._ Red and variegated sandstones and
conglomerate. These three deposits constitute an upper formation of
the system, characterized by its peculiar group of fossils. (See
Chapter IX.) _d._ Deposit of gray fissile sandstone which constitutes
the middle formation of the system, characterized also by its
peculiar organic group. (See Chapter VIII.) _e._ Red and variegated
sandstones, undistinguishable often in their mineral character from
the upper sandstones, c, but in general less gritty, and containing
fewer pebbles, _f._ Bituminous schists, _g._ Coarse gritty sandstone.
_h._ Great Conglomerate. These four beds compose a lower formation
of the system, more strikingly marked by its peculiar organisms
than even the other two. (See Chapters II. III. IV. and V.) In the
section this lower formation is represented as we find it developed
in Caithness and Orkney. In fig. 5 it is represented as developed
in Cromarty, where, though the fossils are identical with those of
the more northern localities, at least one of the deposits, _f_, is
mineralogically different--alternating beds of sandstone and clay,
these last enclosing limestone nodules, taking the place of the
bituminous schists.
SECTION II.
The Old Red System of England and Wales, as given in the general
Section of Mr. Murchison, with the Silurian Rocks beneath and the
carboniferous limestone above. _i._ The point in the geological
scale at which vertebrated existences first appear. The three
Old Red Sandstone formations of this section correspond in their
characteristic fossils with those of Scotland, but the proportions
in which they are developed are widely different. The tilestones
seem a comparatively narrow stripe in the system in England; the
answering formation in Scotland, _e, f, g, h_, is of such enormous
thickness, that it has been held by very superior geologists to
contain three distinct formations--_e_, the New Red Sandstone, _f_,
a representative of the Coal Measures, and _g, h_, the Old Red
Sandstone.
SECTION III.
Interesting case of extensive denudation from existing causes on
the northern shore of the Moray Frith. (See pages 197 and 198.) The
figures and letters which mark the various beds correspond with those
of fig. 5, and of the following section. The "fish-bed," No. 1,
represents what the reader will find described in pp. 221-225 as the
"platform of sudden death."
SECTION IV.
Illustration of a fault in the Burn of Eathie, Cromartyshire. (See
pages 204 and 205.)
EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATES.
Plate I.--Fig. 1, Restoration of upper side of the elongated species
of _Pterichthys_ (_P. oblongus_,) referred to in page 47. Fig. 2,
_Pterichthys Milleri_. Fig. 3, Part of tail of elongated species,
showing portions of the original covering of rhomboidal scales. Fig.
4, Tubercles of _Pterichthys_ magnified.
Plate II.--Fig. 2, Restoration of under side of _Pterichthys
oblongus_. Fig. 1, A second specimen of _Pterichthys Milleri_. Fig.
3, Portion of wing, natural size.
Plate III.--Fig. 1, _Coccosteus cuspidatus_. Fig. 2, Impression of
inner surface of large dorsal plate. Fig. 3, Abdominal lozenge-shaped
plate. Fig. 4, Portion of jaw, with teeth.
Plate IV.--Fig. 1, Restoration of _Osteolepis major_. Fig. 2, Scales
from the upper part of the body magnified. Fig. 3, Large defensive
scale which runs laterally along all the single fins. Fig. 4, Under
side of scale, showing the attaching bar. Fig. 5, Enamelled and
punctulated jaw of the creature. Fig. 6, Magnified portion of fin,
showing the enamelled and punctulated rays.
Plate V.--Fig. 1, _Dipterus macrolepidotus_. This figure serves
merely to show the place of the fins and the general outline of the
ichthyolite. All the specimens the writer has hitherto examined fail
to show the minuter details. Fig. 2, _Glyptolepis leptopterus_.
Fig. 3, Single scale of the creature, showing its rustic style of
ornament. Fig. 4, Scale with a nail-like attachment. Fig. 5, Under
side of scale. Fig. 6, Magnified portion of fin. Fig. 7, Shells of
the Old Red Sandstone.
Plate VI.--Fig. 1, _Cheirolepis Cummingiæ_. Fig. 2, Magnified scales.
Fig. 3, Magnified portion of fin.
Plate VII.--Fig. 1, _Cheiracanthus microlepidotus_. Fig. 2,
Magnified scales. Figs. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, Vegetable impressions of
the Old Red Sandstone.
Plate VIII.--Fig. 1, _Diplacanthus longispinus_. Fig. 2,
_Diplacanthus striatus_. Fig. 3, Magnified scales of fig. 1. Fig. 4,
Spine of fig. 2, slightly magnified.
Plate IX.--Fig. 1, One of the tail flaps of the gigantic Crustacean
of Forfarshire. Fig. 2, Reticulated markings of Carmylie.
Plate X.--Fig. 1, _Cephalaspis Lyellii_, copied from Lyell's
_Elements of Geology_, Fig. 2, _Holoptychius nobilissimus_, copied on
a greatly reduced scale from Murchison's _Silurian System_, Fig. 3,
Scale of _Holoptychius_, natural size. Fig, 4, Tooth of ditto, also
natural size. These last drawn from specimens in the collection of
Mr. Patrick Duff, of Elgin.
DIRECTIONS TO THE BINDER.
Sheet of Sections to front Title-Page.
Plate I. to front page 44
II. " " " 46
III. " " " 48
IV. " " " 66
V. " " " 72
VI. " " " 78
VII. " " " 82
VIII. " " " 84
IX. " " " 136
X. " " " 154
NEW WALKS IN AN OLD FIELD;
OR,
THE OLD RED SANDSTONE.
CHAPTER I.
The Working-man's True Policy.--His only Mode of acquiring
Power.--The Exercise of the Faculties essential to
Enjoyment.--No necessary Connection between Labor and
Unhappiness.--Narrative.--Scenes in a Quarry.--The two
dead Birds.--Landscape.--Ripple Markings on a Sandstone
Slab.--Boulder Stones.--Inference derived from their water-worn
Appearance.--Sea-coast Section.--My first discovered Fossil,--Lias
Deposit on the Shores of the Moray Frith.--Belemnite.--Result of the
Experience of half a Lifetime of Toil.--Advantages of a Wandering
Profession in Connection with the Geology of a Country.--Geological
Opportunities of the Stone-Mason.--Design of the present Work.
My advice to young working-men, desirous of bettering their
circumstances, and adding to the amount of their enjoyment, is a very
simple one. Do not seek happiness in what is misnamed pleasure; seek
it rather in what is termed study. Keep your consciences clear, your
curiosity fresh, and embrace every opportunity of cultivating your
minds. You will gain nothing by attending Chartist meetings. The
fellows who speak nonsense with fluency at these assemblies, and deem
their nonsense eloquence, are totally unable to help either you or
themselves; or, if they do succeed in helping themselves, it will
be all at your expense. Leave them to harangue unheeded, and set
yourselves to occupy your leisure hours in making yourselves wiser
men. Learn to make a right use of your eyes: the commonest things
are worth looking at--even stones and weeds, and the most familiar
animals. Head good books, not forgetting the best of all: there
is more true philosophy in the Bible than in every work of every
sceptic that ever wrote; and we would be all miserable creatures
without it, and none more miserable than you. You are jealous of the
upper classes; and perhaps it is too true that, with some good, you
have received much evil at their hands. It must be confessed they
have hitherto been doing comparatively little for you, and a great
deal for themselves. But upper and lower classes there must be, so
long as the world lasts; and there is only one way in which your
jealousy of them can be well directed. Do not let them get ahead of
you in intelligence. It would be alike unwise and unjust to attempt
casting them down to your own level, and no class would suffer more
in the attempt than yourselves; for you would only be clearing the
way, at an immense expense of blood, and under a tremendous pressure
of misery, for another and perhaps worse aristocracy, with some
second Cromwell or Napoleon at their head. Society, however, is in
a state of continual flux: some in the upper classes are from time
to time going down, and some of you from time to time mounting up
to take their places--always the more steady and intelligent among
you, remember; and if all your minds were cultivated, not merely
intellectually, but morally also, you would find yourselves, as a
body, in the possession of a power which every charter in the world
could not confer upon you, and which all the tyranny or injustice of
the world could not withstand.
I intended, however, to speak rather of the pleasure to be derived,
by even the humblest, in the pursuit of knowledge, than of the power
with which knowledge in the masses is invariably accompanied. For it
is surely of greater importance that men should receive accessions
to their own happiness, than to the influence which they exert over
other men. There is none of the intellectual, and none of the moral
faculties, the exercise of which does not lead to enjoyment; nay,
it is chiefly in the active employment of these that all enjoyment
consists; and hence it is that happiness bears so little reference
to station. It is a truth which has been often told, but very little
heeded or little calculated upon, that though one nobleman may be
happier than another, and one laborer happier than another, yet it
cannot be at all premised of their respective orders, that the one is
in any degree happier than the other. Simple as the fact may seem,
if universally recognized, it would save a great deal of useless
discontent, and a great deal of envy. Will my humbler readers permit
me at once to illustrate this subject, and to introduce the chapters
which follow, by a piece of simple narrative? I wish to show them
how possible it is to enjoy much happiness in very mean employments.
Cowper tells us that labor, though the primal curse, "has been
softened into mercy;" and I think that, even had he not done so, I
would have found out the fact for myself.
It was twenty years, last February, since I set out a little
before sunrise to make my first acquaintance with a life of labor
and restraint, and I have rarely had a heavier heart than on that
morning. I was but a slim, loose-jointed boy at the time--fond of
the pretty intangibilities of romance, and of dreaming when broad
awake; and, woeful change! I was now going to work at what Burns
has instanced in his "Twa Dogs" as one of the most disagreeable of
all employments--to work in a quarry. Bating the passing uneasiness
occasioned by a few gloomy anticipations, the portion of my life
which had already gone by had been happy beyond the common lot. I had
been a wanderer among rocks and woods--a reader of curious books when
I could get them--a gleaner of old traditionary stories; and now I
was going to exchange all my day-dreams, and all my amusements, for
the kind of life in which men toil every day that they may be enabled
to eat, and eat every day that they may be enabled to toil!
The quarry in which I wrought lay on the southern shore of a noble
inland bay, or frith, rather, with a little clear stream on the
one side, and a thick fir wood on the other. It had been opened
in the Old Red Sandstone of the district, and was overtopped by a
huge bank of diluvial clay, which rose over it in some places to
the height of nearly thirty feet, and which at this time was rent
and shivered, wherever it presented an open front to the weather,
by a recent frost. A heap of loose fragments, which had fallen from
above, blocked up the face of the quarry, and my first employment
was to clear them away. The friction of the shovel soon blistered
my hands; but the pain was by no means very severe, and I wrought
hard and willingly, that I might see how the huge strata below,
which presented so firm and unbroken a frontage, were to be torn
up and removed. Picks, and wedges, and levers were applied by my
brother-workmen; and simple and rude as I had been accustomed to
regard these implements, I found I had much to learn in the way of
using them. They all proved inefficient, however; and the workmen had
to bore into one of the inferior strata, and employ gunpowder. The
process was new to me, and I deemed it a highly amusing one: it had
the merit, too, of being attended with some such degree of danger as
a boating or rock excursion, and had thus an interest independent of
its novelty. We had a few capital shots: the fragments flew in every
direction; and an immense mass of the diluvium came toppling down,
bearing with it two dead birds, that in a recent storm had crept
into one of the deeper fissures, to die in the shelter. I felt a new
interest in examining them. The one was a pretty cock goldfinch, with
its hood of vermilion, and its wings inlaid with the gold to which it
owes its name, as unsoiled and smooth as if it had been preserved for
a museum. The other, a somewhat rarer bird, of the woodpecker tribe,
was variegated with light blue and a grayish yellow. I was engaged
in admiring the poor little things, more disposed to be sentimental,
perhaps, than if I had been ten years older, and thinking of the
contrast between the warmth and jollity of their green summer haunts,
and the cold and darkness of their last retreat, when I heard our
employer bidding the workmen lay by their tools. I looked up, and saw
the sun sinking behind the thick fir wood beside us, and the long,
dark shadows of the trees stretching downwards towards the shore.
This was no very formidable beginning of the course of life I had so
much dreaded. To be sure, my hands were a little sore, and I felt
nearly as much fatigued as if I had been climbing among the rocks;
but I had wrought and been useful, and had yet enjoyed the day fully
as much as usual. It was no small matter, too, that the evening,
converted, by a rare transmutation, into the delicious "blink of
rest" which Burns so truthfully describes, was all my own. I was
as light of heart next morning as any of my brother-workmen. There
had been a smart frost during the night, and the rime lay white on
the grass as we passed onwards through the fields; but the sun
rose in a clear atmosphere, and the day mellowed, as it advanced,
into one of those delightful days of early spring, which give so
pleasing an earnest of whatever is mild and genial in the better
half of the year. All the workmen rested at midday, and I went to
enjoy my half-hour alone on a mossy knoll in the neighboring wood,
which commands through the trees a wide prospect of the bay and the
opposite shore. There was not a wrinkle on the water, nor a cloud in
the sky, and the branches were as moveless in the calm as if they
had been traced on canvas. From a wooded promontory that stretched
half way across the frith, there ascended a thin column of smoke.
It rose straight as the line of a plummet for more than a thousand
yards, and then, on reaching a thinner stratum of air, spread out
equally on every side, like the foliage of a stately tree. Ben Nevis
rose to the west, white with the yet unwasted snows of winter, and
as sharply defined in the clear atmosphere, as if all its sunny
slopes and blue retiring hollows had been chiselled in marble. A
line of snow ran along the opposite hills; all above was white, and
all below was purple. They reminded me of the pretty French story,
in which an old artist is described as tasking the ingenuity of his
future son-in-law, by giving him, as a subject for his pencil, a
flower-piece composed of only white flowers, of which the one half
were to bear their proper color, the other half a deep purple hue,
and yet all be perfectly natural; and how the young man resolved the
riddle, and gained his mistress, by introducing a transparent purple
vase into the picture, and making the light pass through it on the
flowers that were drooping over the edge. I returned to the quarry,
convinced that a very exquisite pleasure may be a very cheap one, and
that the busiest employments may afford leisure enough to enjoy it.
The gunpowder had loosened a large mass in one of the inferior
strata, and our first employment, on resuming our labors, was to
raise it from its bed. I assisted the other workmen in placing it
on edge, and was much struck by the appearance of the platform on
which it had rested. The entire surface was ridged and furrowed like
a bank of sand that had been left by the tide an hour before. I
could trace every bend and curvature, every cross hollow and counter
ridge of the corresponding phenomena; for the resemblance was no
half resemblance--it was the thing itself; and I had observed it
a hundred and a hundred times, when sailing my little schooner in
the shallows left by the ebb. But what had become of the waves that
had thus fretted the solid rock, or of what element had they been
composed? I felt as completely at fault as Robinson Crusoe did on
his discovering the print of the man's foot on the sand. The evening
furnished me with still further cause of wonder. We raised another
block in a different part of the quarry, and found that the area of
a circular depression in the stratum below was broken and flawed in
every direction, as if it had been the bottom of a pool recently
dried up, which had shrunk and split in the hardening. Several
large stones came rolling clown from the diluvium in the course of
the afternoon. They were of different qualities from the Sandstone
below, and from one another; and, what was more wonderful still,
they were all rounded and water-worn, as if they had been tossed
about in the sea, or the bed of a river, for hundreds of years. There
could not, surely, be a more conclusive proof that the bank which
had enclosed them so long could not have been created on the rock on
which it rested. No workman ever manufactures a half-worn article,
and the stones were all half-worn! And if not the bank, why then the
sandstone underneath? I was lost in conjecture, and found I had
food enough for thought that evening, without once thinking of the
unhappiness of a life of labor.
The immense masses of diluvium which we had to clear away rendered
the working of the quarry laborious and expensive, and all the party
quitted it in a few days, to make trial of another that seemed to
promise better. The one we left is situated, as I have said, on
the southern shore of an inland bay--the Bay of Cromarty; the one
to which we removed has been opened in a lofty wall of cliffs that
overhangs the northern shore of the Moray Frith. I soon found I was
to be no loser by the change. Not the united labors of a thousand men
for more than a thousand years could have furnished a better section
of the geology of the district than this range of cliffs. It may be
regarded as a sort of chance dissection on the earth's crust. We see
in one place the primary rock, with its veins of granite and quartz,
its dizzy precipices of gneiss, and its huge masses of hornblende; we
find the secondary rock in another, with its beds of sandstone and
shale, its spars, its clays, and its nodular limestones. We discover
the still little known but highly interesting fossils of the Old
Red Sandstone in one deposition; we find the beautifully preserved
shells and lignites of the Lias in another. There are the remains of
two several creations at once before us. The shore, too, is heaped
with rolled fragments of almost every variety of rock,--basalts,
ironstones, hypersthenes, porphyries, bituminous shales, and
micaceous schists. In short, the young geologist, had he all Europe
before him, could hardly choose for himself a better field. I had,
however, no one to tell me so at the time, for geology had not yet
travelled so far north; and so, without guide or vocabulary, I had
to grope my way as I best might, and find out all its wonders for
myself. But so slow T was the process, and so much was I a seeker in
the dark, that the facts contained in these few sentences were the
patient gatherings of years.
In the course of the first day's employment, I picked up a nodular
mass of blue limestone, and laid it open by a stroke of the hammer.
Wonderful to relate, it contained inside a beautifully finished piece
of sculpture--one of the volutes apparently of an Ionic capital; and
not the far-famed walnut of the fairy tale, had I broken the shell
and found the little dog lying within, could have surprised me more.
Was there another such curiosity in the whole world? I broke open a
few other nodules of similar appearance,--for they lay pretty thickly
on the shore,--and found that there might. In one of these there
were what seemed to be the scales of fishes, and the impressions of
a few minute bivalves, prettily striated; in the centre of another
there was actually a piece of decayed wood. Of all Nature's riddles
these seemed to me to be at once the most interesting, and the most
difficult to expound. I treasured them carefully up, and was told
by one of the workmen to whom I showed them, that there was a part
of the shore about two miles farther to the west, where curiously
shaped stones, somewhat like the heads of boarding-pikes, were
occasionally picked up; and that in his father's days the country
people called them thunderbolts, and deemed them of sovereign
efficacy in curing bewitched cattle. Our employer, on quitting the
quarry for the building on which we were to be engaged, gave all the
workmen a half-holiday. I employed it in visiting the place where the
thunderbolts had fallen so thickly, and found it a richer scene of
wonder than I could have fancied in even my dreams.
What first attracted my notice was a detached group of low lying
skerries, wholly different in form and color from the sandstone
cliffs above, or the primary rocks a little farther to the west. I
found them composed of thin strata of limestone, alternating with
thicker beds of a black slaty substance, which, as I ascertained in
the course of the evening, burns with a powerful flame, and emits
a strong bituminous odor. The layers into which the beds readily
separate are hardly an eighth part of an inch in thickness, and yet
on every layer there are the impressions of thousands and tens of
thousands of the various fossils peculiar to the Lias. We may turn
over these wonderful leaves one after one, like the leaves of a
herbarium, and find the pictorial records of a former creation in
every page. Scallops, and gryphites, and ammonites, of almost every
variety peculiar to the formation, and at least some eight or ten
varieties of belemnite; twigs of wood, leaves of plants, cones of an
extinct species of pine, bits of charcoal, and the scales of fishes;
and, as if to render their pictorial appearance more striking, though
the leaves of this interesting volume are of a deep black, most of
the impressions are of a chalky whiteness. I was lost in admiration
and astonishment, and found my very imagination paralyzed by an
assemblage of wonders, that seemed to outrival, in the fantastic
and the extravagant, even its wildest conceptions. I passed on from
ledge to ledge, like the traveller of the tale through the city of
statues, and at length found one of the supposed aerolites I had come
in quest of, firmly imbedded in a mass of shale. But I had skill
enough to determine that it was other than what it had been deemed.
A very near relative, who had been a sailor in his time on almost
every ocean, and had visited almost every quarter of the globe, had
brought home one of these meteoric stones with him from the coast
of Java. It was of a cylindrical shape and vitreous texture, and it
seemed to have parted in the middle when in a half-molten state,
and to have united again, somewhat awry, ere it had cooled enough
to have lost the adhesive quality. But there was nothing organic
in its structure, whereas the stone I had now found was organized
very curiously indeed. It was of a conical form and filamentary
texture, the filaments radiating in straight lines from the centre
to the circumference. Finely-marked veins like white threads ran
transversely through these in its upper half to the point, while the
space below was occupied by an internal cone, formed of plates that
lay parallel to the base, and which, like watch-glasses, were concave
on the under side, and convex on the upper. I learned in time to call
this stone a belemnite, and became acquainted with enough of its
history to know that it once formed part of a variety of cuttle-fish,
long since extinct.
My first year of labor came to a close, and I found that the
amount of my happiness had not been less than in the last of my
boyhood. My knowledge, too, had increased in more than the ratio
of former seasons; and as I had acquired the skill of at least
the common mechanic, I had fitted myself for independence. The
additional experience of twenty years has not shown me that there
is any necessary connection between a life of toil and a life
of wretchedness; and when I have found good men anticipating a
better and a happier time than either the present or the past, the
conviction that in every period of the world's history the great
bulk of mankind must pass their days in labor, has not in the least
inclined me to scepticism.
My curiosity, once fully awakened, remained awake, and my
opportunities of gratifying it have been tolerably ample. I have been
an explorer of caves and ravines--a loiterer along sea-shores--a
climber among rocks--a laborer in quarries. My profession was a
wandering one. I remember passing direct, on one occasion, from the
wild western coast of Ross-shire, where the Old Red Sandstone leans
at a high angle against the prevailing Quartz Rock of the district,
to where, on the southern skirts of Mid-Lothian, the Mountain
Limestone rises amid the coal. I have resided one season on a raised
beach of the Moray Frith. I have spent the season immediately
following amid the ancient granites and contorted schists of the
central Highlands. In the north I have laid open by thousands the
shells and lignites of the Oolite; in the south I have disinterred
from their matrices of stone or of shale the huge reeds and tree
ferns of the Carboniferous period. I have been taught by experience,
too, how necessary an acquaintance with geology of both extremes
of the kingdom is to the right understanding of the formations of
either. In the north, there occurs a vast gap in the scale. The
Lias leans unconformably against the Old Red Sandstone; there is no
Mountain Limestone, no Coal Measures, none of the New Red Marls or
Sandstones, Under or Upper. There are at least three entire systems
omitted. But the upper portion of the scale is well nigh complete.
In one locality we may pass from the Lower to the Upper Lias, in
another from the Inferior to the Great Oolite, and onward to the
Oxford Clay and the Coral Rag. We may explore, in a third locality,
beds identical in their organisms with the Wealden of Sussex. In a
fourth we find the flints and fossils of the Chalk. The lower part of
the scale is also well nigh complete. The Old Red Sandstone is amply
developed in Moray, Caithness, and Ross; and the Grauwacke, in its
more ancient unfossiliferous type, rather extensively in Banffshire.
But to acquaint one's self with the three missing formations,--to
complete one's knowledge of the entire scale by filling up the
hiatus,--it is necessary to remove to the south. The geology of the
Lothians is the geology of at least two thirds of the gap, and
perhaps a little more;--the geology of Arran wants, it is supposed,
only the Upper New lied Sandstone to fill it entirely.
One important truth I would fain press on the attention of my
lowlier readers. There are few professions, however humble, that
do not present their peculiar advantages of observation; there are
none, I repeat, in which the exercise of the faculties does not lead
to enjoyment. I advise the stone-mason, for instance, to acquaint
himself with Geology. Much of his time must be spent amid the rocks
and quarries of widely separated localities. The bridge or harbor
is no sooner completed in one district, than he has to remove to
where the gentleman's seat, or farm-steading is to be erected in
another; and so, in the course of a few years, he may pass over
the whole geological scale, even when restricted to Scotland, from
the Grauwacke of the Lammermuirs, to the Wealden of Moray, or
the Chalk-flints of Banffshire and Aberdeen; and this, too, with
opportunities of observation, at every stage, which can be shared
with him by only the gentleman of fortune, who devotes his whole time
to the study. Nay, in some respects, his advantages are superior
to those of the amateur himself. The latter must often pronounce a
formation unfossiliferous when, after the examination of at most a
few days, he discovers in it nothing organic; and it will be found
that half the mistakes of geologists have arisen from conclusions
thus hastily formed. But the working-man, whose employments have
to be carried on in the same formation for months, perhaps years,
together, enjoys better opportunities for arriving at just decisions.
There are, besides, a thousand varieties of accident which lead
to discovery--floods, storms, landslips, tides of unusual height,
ebbs of extraordinary fall: and the man who plies his labor at all
seasons in the open air has by much the best, chance of profiting
by these. There are formations which yield their organisms slowly
to the discoverer, and the proofs which establish their place in
the geological scale more tardily still. I was acquainted with the
Old Red Sandstone of Ross and Cromarty for nearly ten years ere I
had ascertained that it is richly fossiliferous--a discovery which,
in exploring this formation in those localities, some of our first
geologists had failed to anticipate. I was acquainted with it for
nearly ten years more ere I could assign to its fossils their exact
place in the scale.
In the following chapters I shall confine my observations chiefly
to this system and its organisms. To none of the others, perhaps,
excepting the Lias of the north of Scotland, have I devoted an equal
degree of attention; nor is there a formation among them which, up
to the present time, has remained so much a _terra incognita_ to the
geologist. The space on both sides has been carefully explored to
its upper and lower boundary; the space between has been suffered
to remain well nigh a chasm. Should my facts regarding it--facts
constituting the slow gatherings of years--serve as stepping-stones
laid across, until such time as geologists of greater skill, and more
extended research, shall have bridged over the gap, I shall have
completed half my design. Should the working-man be encouraged by my
modicum of success to improve his opportunities of observation, I
shall have accomplished the whole of it. It cannot be too extensively
known, that nature is vast and knowledge limited; and that no
individual, however humble in place or acquirement, need despair of
adding to the general fund.