394 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



country, grinding it down and leaving its drift of mud and 

 stones behind it ; then we have, secondly, water in its usual 

 forms and its familiar ways, of rapid rivers and quiet lakes, 

 cutting and carving and moulding the face of the country 

 anew after its own fashion ; and then Ave have, thirdly, a 

 return of the ice-sheet with its concomitant drift of mud and 

 stones and boulders overwhelmiug everything. 



These conclusions, drawn from the washout presently 

 exposed in New Eedhall Quarry, are strengthened by 

 examples of the same phenomena which have been exhibited 

 in the adjoining quarries of Old Eedhall and Hailes. One 

 of these is thus described by Dr Fleming in his " Lithology 

 of Edinburgh," page 57 : — " At the sandstone quarry of 

 Eedhall a large deposit of stratified sand and gravel was 

 observed a few years ago [from 1857] resting on the 

 bituminous shale which covers the sandstone, and extending 

 a considerable space near to the place where the engine has 

 been since erected. The relation of this mass of sand and 

 gravel could not be determined to the north and west 

 though evidently resting in a hollow, but on the south it was 

 observed reposing on the sandstone for several yards, and 

 covered by the boulder clay which rested on the rock in other 

 parts of the quarry. The clay seems to have flowed over it 

 quietly, or to have been deposited on it without occasioning 

 any particular contortions in the sand." This should perhaps 

 be properly called a washin rather than a washout, yet it 

 is probably but a part of the same phenomena, and had it 

 been followed somewhat farther to the north, it might have 

 been connected with the New Eedhall washout described in 

 this note. Dr Elemins^ also mentions that " in Hailes 

 Quarry, to the westward, a deposit of sand occurred under 

 boulder clay, and in a trough of the rock commingled with 

 some slips of the clay and peat which rendered the pheno- 

 mena somewhat obscure." 



Since Dr Fleming's time we have had more emphatic 

 washouts exposed than he noticed. One of these was 

 described at a meeting of the Edinburgh Geological Society, 

 14th November 1864, as reported in the Geological Magazine, 

 January 1865, p. 38. " Dr Page read a paper on the washout 



