Mr Taylor on some Examples of Torrent Action, 49 



it caps. The shales of the Midlothian coal measures give it 

 a dark brown colour ; but on passing Cupar it changes to a 

 light reddish grey, in accordance with the prevailing tint of 

 the subjacent sandstones. Fleming thence argued that prob- 

 ably our eastern boulder clays were deposited in two or three 

 great lakes, extending from Edinburgh to near Aberdeen; 

 all the great rivers now cutting through it, finding access in 

 that direction to the German Ocean. Perhaps a series of 

 smaller lakes in connection with high glacier or snow 

 gathering grounds, now either washed away or warped down 

 by those forces evidenced by the cleavage planes of our 

 Scottish hills, may come nearer the truth. This system of 

 lakes and torrents prevailed long after this, even probably to 

 prehistoric times. It is said that branches and stems found' 

 in the clays of Boroughmuirhead are identical as to the 

 character of the wood with that found in the old timber 

 fronts of the High Street. Old residenters still remember 

 the sheet of water at Norton Park ; and of many smaller 

 sheets in the vicinity of Scotland Street, the inciting cause of 

 that aristocratic fever once the cause of great mortality in 

 the New Town. Mr Milne Home, at page 29 of his " Estuary 

 of the Forth," gives the following section of a cutting at the 

 North British Railway workshops of St Margaret's, at Parson's 

 Green, 150 feet above the sea-level : (4.) Sand horizontally 

 stratified, about 20 feet thick; (3.) Finely laminated brown 

 clay, apparently derived from Nos. 4 and 2 ; (2.) Brown clay, 

 partially stratified, containing angular fragments of rock and 

 coarse gravel ; (1.) Boulder clay resting on the trap-rocks of 

 Arthur Seat — very tough. 



Again in the " Lithology of Edinburgh," p. 59, Professor 

 Fleming says: "We have already noticed the proof of a 

 motion from the west by the boulder clay squeezing east- 

 wards portions of the shivers which it overspreads. At the 

 junction above of the clay with the sand, angular fragments 

 of sandstone frequently occur in considerable quantity, as in 

 the recent excavation on the south side of the Canongate and 

 north side of St Leonard's valley. Those comparatively flat 

 or tabular masses, were generally arranged as we find similar 

 flat stones in the channel of a river, dipping in one direction. 

 VOL. v. D 



