Two Bits of Clay from the Elephant Bed at Kilmaurs. 453 



clay, varying in thickness from 17 feet in 1817 to 36 feet, as 

 proved by Dr Bryce in 1866. The difference in thickness 

 was due to the quarry having been commenced in the slope 

 of a boulder clay hillock, where the clay was shallowest, but 

 which increased in thickness as the quarry was carried 

 forward. The bed of clay and sand in which the tusks lay 

 rested on a " bed of gravel and rolled stones," as recorded in 

 the Ayr Observer newspaper of 23d January 1817. 



Having given in these prefatory remarks some of the 

 dates and circumstances of the discovery of the elephant 

 remains at Kilmaurs, I come now to the incidents upon 

 which this note is founded. In the year 1878, the Council 

 of the Eoyal Society of Edinburgh, finding themselves 

 hampered for room to store their books, resolved to clear the 

 museum attached to the library of a large number of speci- 

 mens, and give them to the University of Edinburgh for the 

 use of the Professor of Geology, who at that date was 

 Professor Archibald Geikie. In looking over them, a portion 

 of an elephant's tusk was found with a label pasted on it, 

 which proved it to be the half of the tusk of 1817 referred 

 to in the minutes of the Wernerian Society of 20th Decem- 

 ber 1817. Along with the tusk was a small paper parcel, in 

 which were several specimens of stones and clay and two 

 fragments of bones, and a piece of paper, on which was 

 written that they were referred to in the note accompanying 

 the tusk. Professor Geikie took the tusk and placed it in 

 his class museum, where it has remained ever since, being 

 used in illustrating his lectures. While examining the paper 

 parcel, I, remembering that Mr John Young had washed a bit 

 of clay which had been sent with the tusk which had been 

 placed in the Hunterian Museum, and found in it numerous 

 seeds of water plants, suggested, that the two bits of clay might 

 be washed with a like result. This suggestion was not acted 

 upon, and the specimens were parcelled up again and put 

 aside in the storeroom of the Geological Survey. About two 

 years ago, while searching for other things, I came accident- 

 ally upon the parcel, and having time then, thought I might 

 try to wash a small crumb of one of the bits of clay. The 

 result was satisfactory, and I washed the greater part of that 



