508 Brown — Arctic Deposits, Fifeshire. 



I. — On the Akctic Shell-clat of Elie and Errol, Fifeshire, 



VIEWED IN CONNECTION WITH OUR OTHER GlACIAL AND MORE 



RECENT Deposits. By the Eev. Thomas Brown, F.E.S.E. 

 [From the Transactions of the Koyal Society of Edinburgh, vol. xxii. part iii.] 



AFTEE describing in detail several sections in the two localities, 

 the author, by combining the information derived from them, 

 gives in serial order the various deposits, and examines the evidence 

 they supply as to climate and the relative height of sea and land. 

 In descending series the beds are — 



1. The Blown Sand and Baised Beaches. — The blown sand is in 

 some places from twenty to thirty feet thick, and contains several 

 beds of peat of various thicknesses, some of them containing large 

 numbers of land and fresh-water shells of species now living in the 

 district. The so-called raised beach consists of shingle, sand, and 

 shells, arranged in a confused manner. It was probably deposited 

 on the shore while the sand was forming beyond high- water-mark. 

 It is occasionally eighteen feet thick. The evidence that it is a true 

 raised sea-beach is not decisive. 



2. Sands and Clays with Scrohicularia. — This consists partly of 

 about a foot of fine clay with numerous specimens of Scrohularia 

 piperata in the position in which they lived. The tide runs further 

 up the stream than where this deposit occurs, but the level of high- 

 water-mark is at least fourteen feet below the clay bed. In the 

 brick clays between Stirling and Bridge of Allan, in which skeletons 

 of whales have been found. Dr. McBain has obtained specimens of 

 Scrohicularia and also at Portobello, and both these clay beds are at 

 the same height above the present level of the sea as at the Elie 

 deposit. Below the clay there is about six feet of alternating sandy 

 and clayey layers, containing the same species of moUusca as occur 

 on the shores of the Forth at present, showing the climate to have 

 been the same as now. 



3. The submerged Forest. — This is seen on the shore passing out 

 into the sea. It is four feet in depth, and consists of a mass of peat, 

 in which willow and hazel, and especially hazel-nuts, were found, 

 with other seeds, mosses, and abundant remains o^Arundo Phragmites. 

 These plants indicate a climate identical with the present. 



4. High-level Gravel and Sand. — The beds of this stage occur at 

 considerable heights all over the surface of the country, and are 

 entirely destitute of fossils. In some of the gravels are found 

 angular patches of fine sand, which the author supposes to have been 

 frozen masses of sand transported with the gravel ; and, if so, giving 

 the first indication in the descending series of the glacial cold. 



In the Fife deposits there is, below this gravel, an unconformity 

 which Mr. Brown believes to represent the period during which were 

 deposited — 1st, the beds of Fort William and Caithness, investigated 

 by Mr. Peach ; 2nd, the Clyde beds, described by Mr. Smith ; and 



