President's Address. 15 



variable thickness of sandstones, blue clays, shales, and 

 cement-stones, with calcareous sandstone bands, the fossils 

 being generally of an estuarine type. Next in order we find 

 massive beds of sandstone, with intercalations of shales, fire- 

 clays, and occasional seams of coal, ironstone, and cement- 

 stone bands, yielding organic remains implying land, fresh- 

 water, or estuarine conditions. These are overlain by alter- 

 nations of marine limestone, with Carboniferous Limestone 

 fossils, shales, sandstones, underclays, followed by a dirt 

 bed or coal seam. Indeed, the succession of limestones, 

 shales, sandstones, and coal seams resembles that met with 

 in the Carboniferous Limestone series of central Scotland. 

 In some instances, as in the Canonbie coalfield, the foresjoing 

 order of succession is not always maintained, for the coal 

 seam is often overlain by shales or sandstones, indicating a 

 limited submergence of the area. 



The deposits of the Lothian area, which attain a thickness 

 of several thousand feet, are characterised by the occurrence 

 of massive sandstones, and particularly by a great thickness 

 of black carbonaceous shales, some bands of which are so 

 bituminous as to yield about thirty gallons of oil to the ton 

 of shale. Intercalated with the shales are certain so-called 

 marls with limestone nodules, which in all likelihood are of 

 volcanic origin. On several horizons freshwater limestones 

 are met with, one of these being the famous Burdie House 

 Limestone, composed chiefly of the remains of small ostracod 

 crustaceans, which has been celebrated for its splendid store 

 of fossil fishes. Only one coal seam, the Houston Coal, has 

 been worked in the Cement-stone group of the Lothians. 

 The deposits of the western area comprise red, blue, and 

 green clays, white and yellow sandstones, with bands of pale 

 argillaceous limestone. They seem to have been deposited 

 in enclosed basins or lagoons to which the sea occasionally 

 gained access, but on the whole the conditions were unsuit- 

 able for the support of animal life. 



The study of the fossils of the Calciferous Sandstone series 

 supports the conclusion already arrived at from a consideration 

 of the physical evidence, viz., that these strata are the shore 

 deposits along the northern margin of the sea in which the 



