Lapworth 8^ Wilson — Silurian Rocks of Roxburgh ^ Selkirk. 459 



sea, and appears to retain very much the same characteristics through- 

 out the whole length and breadth of the northern slope. It is beauti- 

 fully developed in the neighbourhood of Moffat. In one place, 

 stretching in an imbroken and slightly undulating line of ten or 

 twelve miles, afterwards let down by little faults that cut it entirely 

 out at irregular intervals ; in a second, folded in such a way that the 

 outcrop maps a number of sub-parallel inosculating lines ; in a third, 

 shown as a long fusiform patch peeping from a denuded anticline, or 

 left snug in the hollow of a synclinal fold. The mineral character 

 of this bed, the deep black shale loaded with graptolites, and the 

 yellow or white mud-stones, all disfigured by stains of oxide of iron, 

 so clearly mark the bed, that it is picked out at once from the sur- 

 rounding strata. These shales and mud-stones, where they are 

 unaltered, are easily destroyed by the elements, and their position 

 is frequently marked by a deep red gash, conspicuous against the 

 dark heather high up on the mountain side, and visible at a great 

 distance. It is the metropolis of the Graptolites in Scotland, and is 

 crammed with a great variety of peculiar species — the majority of 

 them, in fact, being unknown in beds of later age. 



In the St. Mary's Lake districts, the Douglas Burn, the Upper 

 Tweed, and in the Holms Water, we ascertained that these beds 

 come up again and again, and almost the whole of the country in 

 that direction must consist of beds of Moffat age; but the ground 

 they occupy in the district we are describing is comparatively small. 

 We find them in two distinct areas — one to the north, the other to 

 the south, of our Gala group. To the south, they succeed at once to 

 the Selkirk beds, and contain a couple of lines of the anthracite 

 band — one running from the rapids of the river at Ettrick Bridgend 

 for about four miles, till it is lost under the gravel of the Ettrick, 

 near Selkirk ; the second, emerging from below the Gala beds at 

 Ettrickbank, is continued in a broken line through Lindean, the 

 romantic dingle of the Ehymer's Glen, and Melrose, till it plunges 

 beneath the Old Eed Conglomerate near Leaderfoot. It thins out 

 very rapidly, however, in this distance, being only about a few feet 

 thick at its termination. We have detected in these bands a great 

 number of the Moffat fossils, including : — 



Siphonotreta micula, M'Coy. Oladograpsus eapillaris, Oarr. 



Aerotreta Nicholsoni, Davidson. Seliocograpsus gracilis. Hall. 



Dicranograpsus ramosus, B. sextans, Hall. Diplograpsus pristis, His. 

 Dicellograpsus Forchammeri, Geiu. ,, Whitfieldii, Hall. 



„ Moffatensis, Carr. „ vesiculosus, Nich. _ 



Cladograpsm linearis, Carr. CUmacograpsus teretiusculus, His. 



and a few other peculiar Moffat species, but the beds are usually so 

 crushed and altered that they can only be procured in very small 

 fragments. 



The whole Moffat series then sinks below the Gala beds, after- 

 wards to be described, and comes to the surface again along the 

 northern edge of the Silurian. 



We have found here three distinct lines of the anthracitic band 

 running approximately parallel and pretty close to each other. 



