near St. Andrews, 205 
posed, during the excavations for a gas-holder, close by the 
harbour, about 40 yards further down the burn than the spot 
where the fossils were obtained. 
_ All the other excavations, of late years, made for building 
and other purposes, along the high ground by the south side of 
St. Andrews, have merely exposed the brick-clay, which, hke 
the boulder-clay, is of a red colour and of considerable thick- 
ness, sweeping down both sides of the Kinness valley. On the 
high ground there are alternate beds of fine sand and clay ; 
some of the sand-beds are about two feet thick, and sometimes 
show curious contortions. Though organic remains are not 
common in these beds, I have sometimes, after a diligent search, 
found fragments of both bivalve and univalve shells; on one 
occasion [ discovered stalks of an Equisetum sticking in an up- 
right position in the clay, 9 feet from the surface, seemingly as 
they had grown, on a thin layer of vegetable matter. About a 
year ago, in the cutting of a deep drain through this clay, by 
the side of the burn, but about a quarter of a mile up from 
the shell-clay, there was part of the trunk of an oak-tree turned 
out, which had been deposited in the clay with the branches 
and acorns. From the profusion of the latter, and their evident 
attachment to the branches when imbedded, it would appear 
that the tree had grown at no great distance, and that it had 
been swept down in autumn. There were also fragments of the 
birch ; and from a bed of drift-gravel intercalated with the clay, 
_ the molar tooth of a horse and a molar of a goat were obtained. 
The brick-clay is laid thick along both sides of the valley, and 
ean be distinctly traced to within a few yards of the blue or 
shell-clay. And, although the junction of these strata cannot 
be satisfactorily seen, from the ground beimg under cultivation 
and no section exposed, still it can hardly be disputed (from the 
position of the beds and the nature of the ground) that the 
brick-clay underlies the blue clay to some extent on the land- 
ward side of the latter. This would precisely agree with the 
relative positions of the shell- and brick-clays on the west coast, 
according to Mr. Geikie*. He says, “The red brick-clay some- 
times dwindles down to only a few inches in thickness, but is 
always found between the shell-clay and the hard till” (boulder- 
clay). From the position and fossil contents of the blue clay in 
question, there seems little reason to doubt that it is the repre- 
sentative on our east coast, though fragmentary, of the more 
extensive and prolific shell-clays of the west, and that, like them, 
it was deposited during the close of the glacial period, while 
characteristic shells of that period, such as Tellina proxima, still 
lived in abundance on the British shores. Over this glacial bed, 
* The Glacial Drift of Scotland, 
