134 Anniversary Address. 



other hills of a like character. Fossils have not yet been dis- 

 covered in Berwickshire to mark their age ; but organisms have 

 been found in Peeblesshire and Dumfriesshire, which show that 

 they belong to the Lower Silurian formation, the most charac- 

 teristic of these fossils being several species of Graptolites, which 

 are corals allied to recent Virgularise. On the south side of the 

 belt at Burnmouth, red sandstones also lie unconformably upon 

 the grey wacke ; and it may not be uninteresting to notice that 

 similar sandstones and conglomerates, deep red in colour and 

 frequently ripple-marked, rest upon the flanks of the Cheviots 

 in Roddam Dean. These red sandstones and conglomerates, 

 which are of considerable thickness, appear in many successive 

 beds along the coast to a little beyond the Pees' mouth, near to 

 which the Club in 1846 discovered remains distinctly deter- 

 mining their age ; these were scales and plates of Holoptychius 

 nobilissimus and Pterichthys major, which are characteristic of the 

 upper beds of the Old-red-sandstone formation. The conglome- 

 rate beds, made up of the wreck of rocks older still, and the 

 deep ripple-marks on several of the strata tell of violent and 

 destructive agencies, and of shallow waters frequently agitated 

 with tumultuous heavings, and breaking with violence on the 

 shore. 



No distinct line marks the division between the Old-red-sand- 

 stone and Carboniferous formations. Disturbances appear, as at 

 Cove Harbour, where the strata are nearly vertical, but no dis- 

 location breaks the sequence of the series, for all the beds above 

 the grey wacke from Siccar Point to Dunglas Burn are conform- 

 able to each other. Fossiliferous beds, however, which have been 

 noticed both by Mr. Stevenson and myself, furnish interesting 

 evidence as to age and equivalency. Remains of fish, entirely 

 different from those in the Old red sandstone, and of Entomo- 

 straca and of plants, occur in cherty and slightly calcareous 

 beds not far northward of the Pees' mouth ; and interstratified 

 with these beds is a thin seam of coal. The plants are Lepido- 

 dendrons and Sigillarise ; and at the very base of the Carboni- 

 ferous formation, the remarkable Stigmaria ficoides appears in a 

 bed beneath the coal seam. Other rocks succeed, consisting of 

 greenish, white, pale red, and yellowish sandstones, along with 

 a few shales. They synchronize with the lower carboniferous 

 beds which appear on the Whiteadder and on the Tweed. At the 



