122 Mr. Stevenson on Primary Quartz Book, 8fc. 



discovery that they could not possibly have furnished the 

 pebbles in question. On making further inquiries^ the writer 

 was informed by Mr Kemp of Galashiels, that a great quantity 

 of similar quartz pebbles was scattered over the fields near 

 Belshes Mill, on the banks of the Ale water in Roxburgh- 

 shire. In examining that place it was seen, that the pebbles 

 there had also been washed out of the conglomerate which 

 is exposed for a short distance in the bed of the river. It is 

 worthy of remark, that this locality is situated exactly in the 

 prolongation of the N.E. to S.W. line, before referred to, as 

 marking the direction of the quartzose portion of the con- 

 glomerate. Over all the tract of country between the Lam- 

 mermoors and Cheviots, as well as at many localities among 

 the latter group of hills, quartz pebbles are met with in greater 

 or less plenty. They abound most in lines running nearly 

 E.N.E. from those places where similar pebbles occur as consti- 

 tuents of the conglomerate ; this having been the direction of 

 a great marine current which flowed over this part of the 

 country before its last emergence from the waters. 



It thus appears, that prior to the deposition of the Old Red 

 Sandstone Conglomerate (and perhaps also of the Lammer- 

 moor greywacke) there existed, somewhere in the western 

 part of the counties of Berwick and Roxburgh, at least two 

 or more patches or insulated portions of an older formation 

 of Quartz Rock. Of these, however, there appears to be not 

 a vestige left in situ. The axis of this formation probably 

 ranged in the direction before referred to, i.e., N.E. to S.W., 

 and perhaps future minute researches along the line indicated 

 may throw additional light upon the subject. A considerable 

 portion of it must have been exposed to the action of the 

 waters at the time when the Old Red Conglomerate of 

 Greenlaw, Belshes, &c., was forming. It appears strange, 

 considering its almost unquestionably higher antiquity, that 

 no fragments derived from it have as yet been found entering 

 into the composition of the greywacke rocks of the Lammer- 

 moors. True greywacke conglomerates occur at various 

 places among the hills, but these contain only minute pebbles 

 (rarely exceeding the size of horse beans) of white crystalline 

 quartz, clay-slate, and felspar porphyry, all of which might 

 be, and probably were, furnished by the disintegration of the 

 mica and clay slates, &c., of the Grampians or of a southern 

 extension of the same formation. There is one bed of grey- 

 wacke conglomerate, however, among the Lammer moors, 

 which, though not containing pebbles of exactly the same 



