by the upper beds of the system. These are extensively quarried in Moray, near the village of Burghead, and exported to all parts of the kingdom. The famous obelisk of Forres, so interesting to the antiquary--which has been described by some writers as formed of a species of stone unknown in the district, and which, according to a popular tradition, was transported from the Continent--is evidently composed of this Quartzose Sandstone, and must have been dug out of one of the neighboring quarries. And so coherent is its texture, that the storms of, perhaps, ten centuries have failed to obliterate its rude but impressive sculptures. [Footnote AW: When left to time the process is a tedious one, and, ere its accomplishment, the beauty of the masonry is always in some degree destroyed. The following passage, from a popular work, points out a mode by which it might possibly be anticipated, and the waste of surface prevented:--"A hall of which the walls were constantly damp, though every means were employed to keep them dry, was about to be pulled down, when M. Schmithall recommended, as a last resource, that the walls should be washed with sulphuric acid, (vitriol.) It w T as done, and the deliquescent salts being decomposed by acid, the walls dried, and the hall was afterwards free from dampness."--(_Recreations in Science._)] The limestones of both the upper and lower formations of the system have been wrought in Moray with tolerable success. In both, however, they contain a considerable per centage of siliceous and argillaceous earth. The system, though occupying an intermediate place between two metalliferous deposits,--the grauwacke and the carboniferous limestone,--has not been found to contain workable veins any where in Britain, and in Scotland no metallic veins of any kind, with the exception of here and there a few slender threads of ironstone, and here and there a few detached crystals of galena. Its wealth consists exclusively in building and paving stone, and in lime. Some of the richest tracts of corn land in the kingdom rest on the Old Red Sandstone--the agricultural valley of Strathmore, for instance, and the fertile plains of Easter-Ross: Caithness has also its deep, corn-bearing soils, and Moray has been well known for centuries as the granary of Scotland. But in all these localities the fertility seems derived rather from an intervening subsoil of tenacious diluvial clay, than from the rocks of the system. Wherever the clay is wanting, the soil is barren. In the moor of the Milbuy,--a tract about fifty square miles in extent, and lying within an hour's walk of the Friths of Cromarty and Beauly,--a thin covering of soil rests on the sandstones of the lower formation. And so extreme is the barrenness of this moor, that notwithstanding the advantages of its semi-insular situation, it was suffered to lie as an unclaimed common until about twenty-five years ago, when it was parcelled out among the neighboring proprietors.