150 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
submerged forest bed, by being told by Mr Affleck, station- 
master there, that a peat with shells was to be found at the 
south side of the station, and he showed me the place; but 
being too heavily laden with the other peat I could not take 
any with me then, and had to ask Mr Affleck to send some 
to me. This he did, and I washed and examined it, and 
found it was the same kind of peat with shells described by 
Mr Wood and Dr Brown. At the Easter holidays of 1890 I 
returned and got a large quantity of it, Mr Affleck helping me 
to dig it out. ‘This | washed and examined, and handed the 
shells to Mr Thomas Scott, F.L.S., for determination, and he, 
finding them interesting on several accounts, read a note on 
them to this Society, which is published in vol. x, p. 337, of 
our Proceedings. Mr Aftleck has since sent me several large 
lots of this shelly peat from five other exposures—one from 
the foundation of a new crane at the station, two from the 
east end of the High Street, one from Bank Street, opposite 
Professor Greentield’s house, and one from the road to Khe 
Harbour, The quantities sent were large, sometimes more 
than a hundredweight, so that our opportunities of research 
have been great, and the results obtained very satisfactory. 
The material in which the shells occur may be described 
as earthy peat or loam mixed with sand,—seashore sand 
blown into the lake from the shore. Sometimes the peat was 
very pure, and in it the shells were few, but generally it was 
much mixed with sand, and in these portions the shells were 
most numerous. The material from the east end of Elie— 
the station peat—the two samples from the High Street, and 
that from the Harbour Road, had very much peaty matter in 
them, while that from Bank Street consisted chiefly of sand 
with only a sprinkling of peaty dust, from which it may be 
inferred that the lake was deepest in the eastern part and 
less so in the western, or it may be that the- western part was 
more exposed to the winds which blew the shore sand into 
its waters. ‘The peat, which is decidedly a water peat, con- 
sisted chiefly of mud with vegetable fibres in it—the result 
of slow maceration in water, Occasionally fragments of hazel 
nuts occurred, Seeds were not numerous, except such as 
from their woody nature best resisted decay, such as the nut- 
