A Manual of Elementary Geology

atrachians (?) in the Old Red Sandstone of Scotland.--At page 344. of this work I have given two figures (figs. 397 and 398.) of small groups of eggs, very common in the shales and sandstones of the "Old Red" of Kincardineshire, Forfarshire, and Fife. I threw out as a conjecture, that they might belong to gasteropodous mollusca, like those represented in fig. 399. p. 345.; but Dr. Mantell, some years ago, showed me a small bundle of the dried-up eggs of the common English frog (see fig. 524 a.), black and carbonaceous, and so identical in appearance with the fossils in question, that he suggested the probability of these last being of Batrachian origin. The plants by which they are often accompanied (fig. 398. p. 344.), I formerly supposed to be Fuci, but Mr. Bunbury tells me that their grass-like form agrees well with the idea of their being freshwater, and of the family Fluviales.

The absence of all shells, so far as our researches have yet gone, in the slates and sandstones of Scotland