Two Bits of Clay from the Elephant Bed at Kibnaurs. 455 



submitted them to Mr Bennett of Croydon, who has made a 

 special study of the Potamogetons. Mr Bennett reports one 

 kind to be a Potamogeton, whose affinity is doubtless with 

 P. rufescens, Schrad ; another Potamogeton, whose affinity is 

 with P. Zizii and P. hetero]phyllus ; and also several seeds of 

 Chara. 



The other seeds, comprising three or four different kinds, 

 have not yet been fully determined. Mr Kidston says " that 

 some of them certainly are those of the water Pi^anunculus^ 

 and others may be the fruit of Carex and Polygonum. There 

 were also many fragments of the dried stems of thread-like 

 plants whose character could not be made out. Nearly the 

 whole body of a very small beetle and two fragments of 

 another turned up in the seedy clay. Several other organ- 

 isms, small, cylindrical, and cocoon-like, also occurred." 



Such are the contents of these two bits of clay so far as 

 yet determined. One speaks of the sea and the other of the 

 land, and both of a time when the cattle of Ayrshire were 

 the reindeer and the mammoth, and the valley of the Carmel 

 Water was the haunt of the walrus and the whale — larger 

 mammals, no doubt, but not to be preferred either in beauty 

 or utility to the small variegated kye which are now the 

 pride and glory of Ayrshire.^ 



The Position and Age of the Elephant Bed at Kilmaurs. 



This is rather a vexed question, and I refer to it princi- 

 pally to correct one or two erroneous statements regarding it. 

 Mr Bald, whose record was written in 1821, only four years 

 after the finding of the first tusk, and which is the best 



1 The specimens referred to in the notice read at the "Wernerian Society, 

 Dec. 20, 1817, were exhibited to the Royal Physical Society when this note 

 was read. They consisted of (1.) portion of the leg bone of probably a deer ; 

 (2.) fragment of bone ; (3.) remainder of marine clay not washed ; (4.) seedy 

 clay, as it was all washed only the seeds were exhibited ; (5.) clay, probably 

 boulder-clay ; (6.) portion of cast in sandstone of a carboniferous plant ; (7.) 

 two fragments of limestone with striated surfaces ; (8.) piece of sandstone, 

 probably tlie rock quarried ; also two fragments of coal and one piece of 

 pyritous sandstone. The original numbers were still on the specimens except 

 No. 4. The fragments of coal and pyritous sandstone seem never to have 

 been numbered. 



