The upper belt of yellow stone, the terminal layer of the pyramid, is fossiliferous both in Moray and Fife--more richly so in the latter county than even the conglomerate belt that underlies it, and its organisms are better preserved. It was in this upper layer, in Drumdryan quarry, to the south of Cupar, that Professor Fleming found the first-discovered scales of the _Holoptychius_. At Dura Den, in the same neighborhood, a singularly rich deposit of animal remains was laid open a few years ago, by some workmen, when employed in excavating a water-course for a mill. The organisms lay crowded together, a single slab containing no fewer than thirty specimens, and all in a singularly perfect state of preservation. The whole space excavated did not exceed forty square yards in extent, and yet in these forty yards there were found several genera of fishes new to Geology, and not yet figured nor described--a conclusive proof in itself that we have still very much to learn regarding the fossils of the Old Red Sandstone. By much the greater portion of the remains disinterred on this occasion were preserved by a lady in the neighborhood; and the news of the discovery spreading over the district, the Rev. Dr. Anderson, of Newburgh, was fortunately led to discover them anew in her possession. The most abundant organism of the group was a variety of _Pterichthys_--the sixth species of this very curious genus now discovered in the Old Red Sandstones of Scotland; and as the Doctor had been lucky enough to find out for himself, some years before, that the scales of the _Holoptychius_ were oyster shells, he now ascertained, with quite as little assistance from without, that the _Pterichthys_ must have been surely a huge beetle. As a beetle, therefore, he figured and described it in the pages of a Glasgow topographical publication--_Fife Illustrated_. True, the characteristic elytra were wanting, and some six or seven tubercle plates substituted in their room; nor could the artist, with all his skill, supply the creature with more than two legs; but ingenuity did much for it, notwithstanding; and by lengthening the snout, insect-like, into a point--by projecting an eye, insect-like, on what had mysteriously grown into a head--by rounding the body, insect-like, until it exactly resembled that of the large "twilight shard"--by exaggerating the tubercles seen in profile on the paddles until they stretched out, insect-like, into bristles--and by carefully sinking the tail, which was not insect-like, and for which no possible use could be discovered at the time--the Doctor succeeded in making the _Pterichthys_ of Dura Den a very respectable beetle indeed. In a later publication, an Essay on the Geology of Fifeshire, which appeared in September last in the _Quarterly Journal of Agriculture_, he states, after referring to his former description, that among the higher geological authorities some were disposed to