found at Stromness by Dr. Fleming, provisionally named by him Stroma obscura, "in all probability a plant of the sea"[1]. It consisted of a "flattened cylinder traversed above and below by a mesial groove extending to the extremities." A figure is given of a fine Lepidodendron from Thurso[2], and a description of the Clockbriggs specimen, which was four feet in length, and threw off two branches at an acute angle. The specimen was covered with a brittle coal, and internally was converted into a brown calcareous substance similar to that of the celebrated Granton and Craigleith trees[3]. Mr. Miller describes some supposed Calamites from Thurso[4], 9 inches to 1 foot in length, and figures a plant discovered by Dr. Fleming, with the usual thick rachis of palæozoic plants, and pinnules even smaller than those of our true Maiden-hair[5]. Not the least interesting of the plants figured in the 'Testimony' is the Palæopteris (Cyclopteris) hibernicus, Forbes, from the Upper Old Red Sandstone of Prestonhaugh, near Dunse[6].
We are indebted to the late Mr. J. W. Salter for one of the first connected accounts of these old plants. His paper "On some Remains of Terrestrial Plants in the Old Red Sandstone of Caithness" was published in 1858[7]. He there describes and figures "Coniferous wood" allied to Dadoxylon of the Coal Measures, "Rootlets," and two plants to which specific names were assigned, Lycopodites Milleri, Salter, and Lepidodendron nothum, Salter (non Unger).
In the same year also (1858) appeared a short paper by Dr. J. A. Smith, "Notes of Fossils from the Old Red Sandstone of the South of Scotland "[8], in which plants similar to those previously discussed by the Rev. J. Duncan are noticed from Denholm-Hill Quarry, Roxburghshire.
To his original description of the genus Psilophyton in 1859, Dr. J. W. Dawson[9] appended a few remarks on Scotch Old-Red-Sandstone plants. He considers the dichotomous roots described by Salter, and the bifurcating plants noticed by Hugh Miller, to belong to his genus Psilophyton, and probably to P. princeps, Dn., or P. robustius, Dn.
1859.—Appended to the late Sir R. I. Murchison's paper "On the succession of the older Rocks in the Northernmost counties of Scotland"[10], are a series of figures by Mr. J. W. Salter, identical with those given in certain editions of 'Siluria,' with an additional figure of a large stem with subalternate lateral branches found at Thurso by Mr. C. W. Peach, and named after him by Mr. Salter Caulopteris Peachii[11], and another representing the young shoot of a coniferous (?) plant with leaves from Duncansby Head[12].
In 1862 Prof. R. Harkness communicated to the Geological Society a paper "On the Position of the Pteraspis-beds, and on
- ↑ Testimony of the Rocks, p. 430.
- ↑ Ibid. p. 432.
- ↑ Ibid. p. 447.
- ↑ Ibid. pp. 433, 434.
- ↑ Ibid. p. 445, fig. 122.
- ↑ Ibid. p. 454, fig. 124.
- ↑ Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. xiv. pp. 72–76.
- ↑ Proc. Royal Phys. Soc. Edinb. ii. p. 36.
- ↑ Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. xv. p. 482.
- ↑ Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xv. p. 407, fig. 13.
- ↑ Ibid. p. 408, fig. 14a.
- ↑ Ibid. fig. 14b.
