502 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



consistinsj now of alternate laminse of carbonaceous matter 

 and sandstone often not thicker than sheets of stout paper. 

 These fakes, being useless as building stones, are thrown 

 aside as waste, and when thoroughly weathered the white 

 layers can be easily separated from the black, which latter 

 when crushed resolve into spores, sacs, bits of plant stems, 

 crumbs of carbonised wood, and shreds of scorpion and 

 Eurypterid skin. As I have not yet found time or patience 

 to count how many pieces of Eurypterid skin turned up in 

 any given quantity of material, I cannot give the number 

 with the precision of a census enumeration, but as these 

 pieces amount to many hundreds, we may, without exaggera- 

 tion, say they represent one hundred individuals. But then 

 as the amount of material from which they were taken com- 

 pared with the amount that remains in the rock is infini- 

 tesimal, we may safely conclude that each hundred pieces 

 got may be represented by a thousand pieces locked up in 

 the solid stone which it is impossible to extract. These 

 facts, I think, prove without any gainsaying how numerous 

 the Eurypterids must have been in that portion of the car- 

 boniferous land represented by the sandstone of Hailes quarry. 

 (2.) Kingscavil Quarry, 1 mile E. of Linlithgow. — The 

 conditions under which the black fakes of Kingscavil occur 

 are somewhat different from Hailes, as they are located in a 

 bed several feet in thickness at the bottom of 30 feet or so of 

 amorphous sandstone. But the way in which they are now 

 found is much more favourable for research. A tunnel 

 having been cut through the bed of fakes, tlie blocks lifted 

 being useless for building stones, have been built into walls 

 to keep the waste heaps from falling into the cartways of the 

 quarry. These walls of black fakes having been exposed for 

 twenty or thirty years, have become softened, and can be 

 easily cut out with a trowel and crushed and washed same 

 as the weathered fakes of Hailes. The yield of spores and 

 other vegetable dehris have been even greater than that from 

 Hailes, and the scorpion and Eurypterid remains have been 

 greater also ; and in consequence the proof of the prevalence 

 of Eurypterids in Carboniferous times derived from Hailes 

 has been accentuated with greater emphasis from what has 



