52 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



already mentioned as now living only in the lakes of Green- 

 land and Spitzbergen. They were exceedingly plentiful in 

 Corstorphine lake, since many hundreds of the different 

 parts have been obtained there. In some parts freshwater 

 shells were got in company with the Arctic plants, showing 

 that these plants still flourished in Midlothian while the 

 Mollusca that distinguish the marl came in to possess it. 



6. TJic Lake Marl. This consisted of calcareous mud, 

 crowded with the ordinary lake-shells, and felted with long 

 ribbon-like stems of water-plants, betokening a long period 

 during which these shells lived and died in millions in the 



o 



quiet water of the lake. 



7. The upper bed of ochrey sand and gravel, 6 or 

 7 feet in thickness, often laminated, and sometimes very 

 beautifully false-bedded, but with little or nothing organic 

 preserved in it. 



Such is a rude sketch of the deposits of these old lakes 

 of Hailes and Corstorphine, which seem to suggest that in 

 most of the old lake deposits of Scotland, Arctic plants may 

 be found if sought for, and that much knowledge might be 

 eot from them of the condition of the land in the times 



O 



succeeding the Glacial Period, or even, it may be, in the 

 latter portions of that period. As warrant for this, I may 

 quote the fact that at Faskine, near Airdrie, Mr. Peter 

 Jack has found nests of lake silt, about 14 feet down in 

 boulder clay, from which leaves of Arctic plants have been 

 obtained, identical with those from Hailes and Corstorphine. 

 These nests must be considered as vestiges of some old 

 glacial lake which existed near Faskine ere yet the ice had 

 finally disappeared, and over which the ice had been driven, 

 carrying portions of the leaf- charged mud with it, and 

 burying them under the above thickness of boulder clay. 



OBITUARY. 



Alexander Stephen Wilson, C.E. On the i6th November there 

 died in Aberdeen, in his sixty-seventh year, after brain disease of 

 several months' duration, one who combined a keen interest in 

 botanical science, more especially in its practical application to 



