144 Correspondence — Dr. Wheelton Hind. 



exist. These endeavours have proved futile, for, while a Committee, 

 after sinking a well or enlarging an old one — I forget which — at 

 Chapelhall, near Airdrie, have been enabled to say that they found no 

 shells in the Drift where a previous observer had reported their 

 presence, other observers have been discovering in Ayrshire large 

 deposits of BouIder-cIay in which shells occur, often even possessing 

 their epidel-mis. What adds pungency to the fact is, that these large 

 beds of Boulder-clay are exposed in numerous natural sections that 

 were open to the eyes of glacialists and others interested, who failed 

 to see that they contained marine shells — being perhaps stricken 

 with an ice-sheet blindness — while time and money were being 

 consumed in sinking wells elsewhere and finding nothing. 



Now that large deposits of shelly Boulder-clay have been found 

 to exist in Ayrshire at various heights, from sea-level up to 1062 feet, 

 my friend Mr. Bell is not inclined to attach so much importance to 

 their presence. In fact, he says, " the value of the Ayrshire sections 

 as proofs of submergence has yet to be determined. My own opinion, 

 frankly, is that it is nil." 



As regards the suggestion that the Muirkirk beds have been laid 

 down by a Frith of Clyde glacier, I can only point out that the 

 hypothetical course of such a glacier does not correspond with that 

 of any map I have yet seen which professes to give the lines of 

 glacial flow in Scotland. It is really too bad to ask geologists to 

 grant phenomena as due to the devious courses of masses of land-ice 

 when such hypothetical courses have to be amended from day to 

 day to fit in with the progress of discovery, and often involve the 

 most surprising contradictions. T. Mellard Eeade. 



Park Cokner, Blundbllands, 

 February 3, 1897. 



GENEEAL SEQUENCE OF THE CAEBONIFEEOUS EOCKS. 

 SiK, — I feel deeply obliged to Mr. Etheridge for calling attention 

 to an omission in the Introduction to my Monograph on the British 

 Carboniferous lamellibi-anchs. I am sorry to say that in my table 

 of the general sequence of Scottish Carboniferous rocks, the upper 

 and middle groups of the Carboniferous Limestone series are also 

 missing. How these lapses have come about I am unable to say, 

 for I have the most distinct recollection of inserting these groups 

 in their correct position in my MSS. Of course 1 am convicted of 

 great carelessness in the readiug of the proof, for which there is 

 no excuse. Wheelton Hind. 



OBITTJJ^E,:^". 



We regret to announce the deaths of Dr. Bernhard Limdgren, 

 Professor of Geology in the University of Lund ; and of Professor 

 Constantin Baron von Ettingshausen, the distinguished Palasobotanist 

 of Graz, Austria. We hope to give some account of these eminent 

 men in the next number of the Magazine. 



