Natural History ofDenholm. By J. A. H. Murray, F.E.I.S. 



Den HOLM is situated upon a platform of the newer boulder 

 clay, which here, as in so many other parts of the valley, 

 overlies the old red sandstone of Teviotdale, and an excellent 

 section of which is seen in the scaur below the new bridge 

 across the Teviot. The old red sandstone strata occupy the 

 centre of the county, apparently filling up a hollow or depres- 

 sion in the Silurian rocks which form the bottom strata of 

 the southern counties of Scotland. By pursuing the course 

 of the Teviot for a mile above the village, the limits of the 

 formation are reached, the boundary line between it and the 

 old red extending south from the east of the Eildons to 

 Hassendean, touching the Teviot near Hassendean burn, 

 then retreating from it again so as to follow the line of 

 elevated ground by Teviotbank, below which it crosses the 

 Teviot and proceeds nearly by Little Cavers, East Middle, 

 and Whitriggs, southward along the western border of the 

 Rule valley, up which a long and narrow prolongation of this 

 rock system runs as far as Windburgh. Sections shewing 

 the junction of the greywacke with the bottom beds of the 

 sandstone are seen in the Hassendean burn, a short distance 

 below the station, and also in one of the rivulets feeding the 

 Denholm dean burn on the north-west edge of Ruberslaw. 

 The red sandstone, as developed in the neighbourhood, shews 

 as its lowest member a thick bed of conglomerate formed of 

 pebbles of quartz and gray wacke, which can be well examined 

 in the Hassendean burn and in the upper part of Denholm 

 dean. Above this lies a vast thickness of those crumbly red- 

 brown beds so characteristically shewn in the banks of the 

 Jed, and which form the steep scaurs overhanging the burn 

 in Denholm dean. Higher up, but preserved from the 

 effects of the mighty denudations which have swept the 

 valley, only in the vicinity of trap and other igneous rocks, 

 occur beds of massive sandstone, red, yellow, and white, 

 available as a building stone, and containing, though sparingly, 

 fossil remains of characteristic Devonian forms of plant and 

 animal life, such as ferns (apparently Cyclopteris), ligneous 

 stems, and scales and other portions of Holoptychius* On 



• Specimens of the fossils from the Denholm Hill sandstone were exhibited 

 to the meeting by Mr. Ferguson, who is thoroughly acquainted with the geology 

 of these strata. No traces of organisms have yet been found in the Silurian 

 rocks at Cavers, Kirkton, and elsewhere to the west of Denholm, though the 

 higher part of the Teviot vale above Hawick has afforded rare indication of 

 protozoic existence. Nor have the boulder clays which bound the river in so 

 many places yielded any remains of the life of the Post-Tertiary era. The 



