216 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
Hugh Miller described, but with some differences, which, 
though they lessened the dramatic effect somewhat, did not 
violate in any degree the unities of time and space. 
I found the upper Oyster-bed consisting of cast-up shells— 
the Littorina-bed and the lower bed an unctuous clay, the chief 
shell of which was Trochus cinerarius. I did not find stones 
with oysters adhering, nor any perforated by Saxicavas, nor 
yet Myas burrowing in the boulder clay, as Mr Miller so 
graphically describes. This, of course, I regretted somewhat, 
as I would have liked much to have seen and found every- 
thing that Hugh Miller saw and found; but the regret was 
not great, as my purpose was not, like his, to prove that this 
bed was really a raised sea-bottom and not a mere heap of 
marine debris cast up -by storm waves, as Professor Fleming 
and his school maintained all raised beaches were. My 
purpose was rather to apply to Fillyside the methods of 
researches I had been accustomed to, in examining the 
glacial marine clays of the Clyde beds—methods by means 
of which the minuter life of a past period can be found and 
examined as effectually as the muds and sands of recent 
sea-bottoms have been examined and studied by dredging. I 
was successful so far, for in the muds and sands of the raised 
sea-bottom of Fillyside were to be found not only the larger 
life remains that the finger and thumb could pick up, but also 
the more numerous remains of the minuter life which could 
only be detected by the hand-lens and determined by the 
microscope. Having realised this, 1 made several visits to 
Fillyside in 1869-70, and lifted many samples of its shelly 
sands and muds. The larger shells were named by R. 
Etheridge, jun., and placed in the Raised Beach case in the 
Museum. The minuter life remains—the small shells, the 
Ostracoda and Foraminifera, and a mass of woody debris— 
were laid aside till time or circumstances would bring to 
Edinburgh experts like those in Glasgow, such as Mr David 
Robertson, who could name and determine them. They have 
1 The reason why was doubtless that the tides and storms of the intervening 
fifteen years had washed away the layer of the boulder clay the Myas had 
burrowed in, and rubbed off the oysters from the stones Mr Miller found 
them adhering to in 1854. 
