Wunsch — Fossil Trees in Arran. 651 



currents, and not as an effect of ice action. He exhibited some 

 Admiralty charts, showing the submarine banks and spits existing 

 in the English Channel, all of which were in like manner parallel 

 to the sea-coast. If this bank was formed in that way, the sea must 

 have stood at least 350 feet higher than now, and, in that view, an 

 explanation was afforded of several phenomena in the district, such 

 as the smoothed appearance of the hard whinstone rocks of Stirling, 

 Craigforth, Airthrey, Castleton, and Logic. He thought it however 

 probable that ice then floated on the sea, otherwise he could not 

 account for the position of some enormous boulders to the east of 

 Stirling. In the opinion recently expressed, that the last change of 

 relatiA'e levels between sea and land had occurred since the occupa- 

 tion of this country by the Eomans, he could not concur. Several 

 facts militated against it. If the sea covered the extensive plains to 

 the west of Stirling, up to the old sea-cliff shown on the map, it 

 would have been impossible for the Eomans to have had their road, 

 which had been discovered across the moss of Kincardine ; or to 

 have had their fort on the banks of the river below Stirling. More- 

 over, the caves hollowed out by the sea at Wemyss, in Fife, before 

 the last change of the relative levels, must then have been occupied 

 by the sea, and therefore the remarkable sculptures found on their 

 walls, lately described by Sir James Simpson, must have been ex- 

 ecuted since the Eomans left our island, a notion which, he believed, 

 all archeeologists would repudiate. 



JTT, — On Cakbonifekous Fossil Tkees Embedded in Trappean 

 Ash in the Isle of Arran.— By E. A. Wunsch, Esq. 



THE beds in which these trees occur have hitherto been classified 

 as trap dykes or eruptive sheets of trap rock, but a summer's 

 residence in the island has enabled Mr. Wunsch to discover the true 

 character of the rocks. The beds referred to extend in a north- 

 easterly direction, at an angle of about 37° from high, down to low- 

 water mark, and, doubtless, to some distance below it, with the 

 stems of trees embedded at right angles to the plane of stratifica- 

 tion, having retained the original position in which they once grew, 

 and having subsequently been upheaved on the flanks of the granitic 

 nucleus of the island. As many as twelve or fourteen trunks have 

 been observed on different occasions and within a circumscribed area. 

 The stems of the trees are perfectly cylindrical, from 15 to 20 inches 

 in diameter, with their roots extending down into the subsoil — one 

 of them, a Sigillaria, must have been a hollow cylinder, through, the 

 interior of which several vigorous young shoots had made their way 

 at the time it was suddenly buried by a shower of ash. Another tree 

 must have been perfectly hollow, filled up with debris of vegetables 

 and with fir cones. Mr. Binney, who has undertaken to make a 

 more minute examination of the plants, has found specimens of 

 Sgillana, Lepidodendron. and a species as yet undescribed. The ash 

 itself is very much indurated, having, in fact, very much the ap- 

 pearance and hardness of ordinary trap rock. So far as known, the 



