The Foot-prints of the Creator : $b or, The Asterolepis of Stromness — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
The Foot-prints of the Creator : $b or, The Asterolepis of Stromness
John Stuart Mill · en
In the exercise of his profession, which “was a wandering one,” our
author advanced steadily, though slowly and surely, in his geological
acquirements.
“I remember,” says he, “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 on 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.... 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. 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 very
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 only a few of the upper
beds of the New Red Sandstone to fill it entirely.”—_Old Red
Sandstone_, pp. 13-17.