The Scottish Naturalist. 43 



able abundance. They were not generally distributed over the 

 exposed surface of the clay, but lay in shallow depressions in it, 

 very closely huddled together, in most cases the one overlying 

 the other. Although plentiful enough, yet, from the crowding 

 and the facility with which they split and broke in pieces when 

 the clay was lifted, one part adhering to the upper layer and 

 another to the lower, it was impossible, except in rare instances, 

 to get anything but a confused heap of fragments. Through 

 the attention of Mr. G. Blair, the intelligent foreman of the work, 

 a few of the specimens were secured in a better condition than 

 they would otherwise have been. 



The examples procured differed somewhat in size : in 

 the largest the disk is about three-eighths of an inch in dia- 

 meter, each ray is about two inches in length, and when 

 they could be traced, it was found that they were perfect 

 to the minute points. From this it may be inferred that the 

 animals were hurriedly killed ; whether this was caused by a 

 sudden irruption of fresh water, as has been suggested, or by 

 some physical change of the sea itself, is not easy to determine; 

 at any rate they had evidently been quickly covered up by the 

 clay after death, without being long exposed or tossed about in 

 the water. 



Through the kindness of Mr. Wilson, I have received 

 specimens of this star-fish, that were found in the brick clay 

 at Brighton, near Cupar Fife. The clay at this place is 

 from one hundred and thirty to one hundred and thirty-five 

 feet above the sea. The Seafield clay, as well as all the other 

 brick clays in the neighbourhood, appears to be lying im- 

 mediately above the boulder clay. They all trend down 

 the low ground toward the estuary of the Eden. Before reach- 

 ing this the Seafield clay runs under another clay of a bluish 

 colour, containing a considerable number of littoral and other 

 shells, which, as far as I have seen, are all living on the coast at 

 the present time. The bivalves have both shells adherent, and 

 in exactly the same position they had in the mud, when the 

 animals were alive. At the beach the top of this clay is about 

 eighteen inches above high water mark ; it is overlaid by 

 a deposit of loamy-looking material about thirty inches in 

 thickness ; on the top of this is a stratified layer of sand 

 and gravel about fifteen inches thick, above which is a de- 

 posit of fine sand about three feet in thickness. From the 

 blue clay have also been obtained bones of a large ox, horns 



