1862.] 



CARKUTHERS SECTION NEAR LEITH. 



451 



when the operations of the workmen had exposed a greater extent of 

 the beds. 



Fig. 2. — Section at Junction-Road, Leith. 





. Very recent overshot earth and sand. 

 5 b. Cultivated soil with cinders, coal, shells, &c. 

 5 a. Clay passing upwards into cultivated soil. 

 4. Clay bed. 

 3. Gravel and sand. 



2. Drift sand, false-bedded ; containing a medieval jar. 

 1. Gravel (resting on the Boulder-elay). 



The basement-bed (N"o. 1) is a very coarse gravel, evidently washed 

 out of the Boulder- clay, on which I observed it rested. Bed Ko. 2 

 is a considerable thickness of fine, light-coloured, blown sand. It 

 strikingly exhibits the false stratification characteristic of materials 

 arranged by wind. The whole of the flat on which Leith is built 

 is covered with this sand. It comes out on the surface in the Links, 

 where it is prevented from being blown about by a thin covering of 

 turf. Dr. Paterson, of Leith, obtained, some months ago, from this 

 sand a perfect jar, determined by Mr. Birch, of the British Museum, 

 to be of medieval manufacture. It was found, 12 feet deep, in un- 

 disturbed position in the bed, when digging the foundations of a 

 house. Dr. Paterson read a paper on this interesting discovery to 

 the Society of Scottish Antiquaries last winter. The place at which 

 it was found is at a little distance from Mr. Geikie's section ; but 

 the continuity of the bed between the two places has been deter- 

 mined during drainage-operations which have been lately carried on 

 in the district. This medieval jar, then, which is believed by Dr. 

 Paterson to have been deposited in its place when the layer of sand 

 was finally arranged, occurs in a bed much older than that contain- 

 ing the supposed Eoman pottery, and which, according to Mr. Geikie, 

 was deposited when the Eomans were in Britain. 



Beds 3 and 4 are, as described, strata of gravel and clay. Bed 5 

 is that in which the pottery was found. It is described by Mr. 

 Geikie as " a dark silt, or sandy clay, well stratified, having thin 

 lenticular interlaminations of sand, with occasional oyster- valves, a 

 few stones, and fragments of bones and pottery." It was formed as 

 a littoral deposit like " the dark sandy mud which covers such ex- 

 tensive flats between tide-marks at Leith." " Whatever," he adds, 

 " may be the contents of this bed of silt, they are undoubtedly of 

 contemporaneous deposition." Among the contents were fragments 

 of pottery of two kinds, glazed and unglazed, and which Mr. M^Cul- 

 loch, the Curator of the Scottish Antiquarian Museum, " stated he 



VOL. XYin. PART I. 



2h 



