ntar St. Andrews. 205 



posed, during the excavations for a gas-holder, close by the 

 harbour, about 40 yards further down the bum 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, like 

 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 I 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 

 can 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 being 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 oi^y 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 proximo, still 

 lived in abundance on the British shores. Over this glacial bed, 

 * The Glacial Drift of Scotland. 



