in the Neighbourhood of Edinburgh. 22071 
which, from this source, may be expected, I will not enlarge. 
Its fish, though numerous, are known to us by very few speci- 
mens ; and, as for its gigantic monsters, we are hitherto only en- 
abled to judge of them by broken relics: Ex pede Herculem. 
Great, however, as is the satisfaction from contemplating the 
riches of the deposit of Burdiehouse, it is impossible that this 
feeling should not be alloyed, in some degree, by the recollection 
that these limestone quarries had been worked for perhaps half a 
century, or more, at no greater distance from Edinburgh than 
four short miles; and that, during this period, countless bones, to 
the irreparable injury of science, must have been sacrificed on the 
fires of the adjacent limekiln. 
If we would form some little, yet at the best a very inade- 
quate, notion of the extent of this continued destruction of os- 
seous fragments which must have been going on throughout a 
very prolonged period of time, we must descend into the caverned 
chambers which constitute the old workings of the quarry. 
The old line of Burdiehouse quarries was, in the earliest stage 
of its sinkings, so wrought as to present to view a deep perpen- 
dicular escarpment ; which is the state of the newer quarry at pre- 
sent. The strata of limestone, which are conjointly twenty-seven 
feet in thickness, dip towards the south-east, at an angle of 25°. 
Now, in order to extend these workings by deep excavations, im- 
mense square pillars, wrought out of the rock, have been allowed 
to remain, as the supports of a roof formed by the upper stratum 
of the limestone, which roof, in its turn, sustains a great thick- 
ness of supermeumbent shale. 
These excavations are of considerable extent, greater even 
than is rendered manifest. The quarry, which was originally laid 
dry by an engine, became converted, upon its abandonment, into 
a reservoir intended to contain the drainage-water, conducted by. 
subterranean channels, from a more elevated quarry of freestone. 
Consequently, long-extended chambers lie concealed beneath the 
Frf2 
