The specimen of the former resembles gneiss, or mica slate, near the contact with granite: the sandstone is thick-slaty, quartzose, of a reddish hue, with mica disseminated on the surfaces of the joints; and one face of the specimen is incrusted with quartz crystals, thinly coated with botryoidal hematite.

If this be so, then these New Red sandstones may be the remains of a whole Saharaa sheet of sandy and all but lifeless deserts, reaching from the west of England into Germany, and rising slowly out of the sea; to sink, as we shall find, beneath the sea again.

Sandstone is the prevailing rock, sometimes passing into jasper, and also into chert and coarse limestone.

Once Haught called my attention to a flat stone with a plain trail made by a turtle in ages past when that sandstone was wet, sedimentary deposit.