HISTORY OF THE SOCIETY. 47» 



and is about thirty-three feet above the rise of ordinary spring 

 tides. Mr Bald, in the Memoirs of the Society, mentions sea- 

 shells as occurring at Alloa, twenty feet above the present level 

 of the Frith of Forth ; also sea-shells several miles to the west- 

 ward of Stirling Castle, particularly valves of the oyster of un- 

 common size, although no recent specimens are now found so 

 large, nor any live oysters above Queensferry ; also a bed of sand 

 and oysters at the foot of Clackmannan Hill. Mr Adamson, an- 

 other member of the Society, in a memoir published in vol. iv. of 

 the Society's Memoirs, describes a bed of sea-shells in the isle 

 of Lonach in Loch Lomond, twenty-two feet above the present 

 level of the sea at Dumbarton, in which were some species appa- 

 rently new to conchologists, and several echini. In 1821, in an 

 account read to the Society of remains of the elephant found in 

 an alluvial bed near to Kilmarnock, it was noticed that these re- 

 mains were accompanied by sea-shells of the same species as 

 those living in the present sea. In 1824, Mr Blackadder, land- 

 surveyor, laid before the Society a paper, an abstract of which 

 appeared in the 5th volume of the Society's Memoirs, on what 

 he calls the Superficial Strata of the Forth district. He there 

 mentions common sea-shells of the Forth as occurring at Pol- 

 maise, below Stirling, at Grangemouth, and other places near 

 the shores of the Forth ; and also some instances of their oc- 

 currence far from the present natural habitat of these shells, 

 but everywhere above the present sea-level. Mr Blackadder 

 of Edinburgh, a few years ago, described in a memoir laid 

 before the Society a bed of sea-shells considerably above the 

 present level of the Frith at Wardie and Newhaven. And 

 within these few months, Mr Maclaren, in a well known perio- 

 dical, " The Scotsman," describes a portion of the shell-bed 

 between Leith and Portobello, and Dr R. Thomson, in his inte- 

 resting new journal, " The Records of General Science,^' gives 

 several additional particulars regarding the shell-bed on the 

 banks of the Clyde. From these details, it probably follows, 



