66 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 



Dunlop®" has given details of a section observed by him at about 

 two miles from Airdrie, Scotland. The order, descending, is (i) 

 Alluvium, 3 feet; (2) peat, with trees standing up through it, 2 feet; 

 (3) Upper Boulder clay, containing a 4-inch layer of vivianite near 

 the bottom, 4 feet; (4) sand with partings of fine clay, 11 inches; 

 (5) peat, I foot 5 inches; (6) Boulder clay, not measured. The 

 upper peat bed is recent, 'but the lower is interglacial. The peat of 

 the latter splits readily into layers and darkens somewhat rapidly 

 on exposure. Some layers consist of seeds of Hippuris vulgaris and 

 Menyanthiis trifoliata; others are wholly of mosses and, near the 

 bottom, are some containing abundant remains of beetles. But no 

 traces were found of the trees usually found in bogs, aside from 

 some leaves resembling willow. The cover is sand but silica is prac- 

 tically wanting in the peat, which, air-dried, contains 6 per cent, of 

 ash, mostly oxide of iron. In this bed are boulders of sandstone and 

 gneiss, varying in size and distributed irregularly ; all are waterworn 

 and those which are little disintegrated show ice-markings. 



Reid's*^ report, on behalf of a committee, which studied the de- 

 posits at Hoxne, on the border of Norfolk and Suffolk, England, 

 relates that at that place a bed of lignite, i to 3 feet thick and dis- 

 appearing at the borders of the valley, rests on a carbonaceous clay 

 containing lacustrian shells and some drifted seeds. The bulk of the 

 lignite consists of alder wood preserving the bark, offal from alders 

 along with remains of other plants, all of the swamp-loving type — 

 altogether, 37 species of flowering plants and 11 of mosses. The 

 presence of pools in the swamp is indicated by the occurrence of 

 Va'vata, Pisidinm, rare fishbones and elytra of 'beetles in the lignite ; 

 every plant indicates a temperate climate. A black loam, 13 feet 

 thick, overlies the lignite : it is beautifully laminated and contains 

 well-preserved remains of plants belonging to a cold climate, the 

 arctic willow and birch. Fragments of plants belonging to a tem- 

 perate climate occur in this loam, but their condition shows that they 

 were derived from the underlying deposit. Above the loam are 



80 R. Dunlop, " Note on a Section of Boulder-Cla}', containing a Bed of 

 Peat," Trans. Gcol. Soc. Glasgow, Vol. VIII., pp. 312-324. 



81 C. Reid, " The Relation of Paleolithic Man to the Glacial Epoch," Rep. 

 Brit. Assoc. Adv. Set., 1896, pp. 400-415. 



