The Ancient Lakes of Edinburgh. ISa 
old lake marls, separated with difficulty from the white mud; 
- and the Ostracoda were loth to “rise again” from the charnel 
dust in which they had been buried. The white clay was more 
amenable to the persuasions of washing and boiling, and the 
Ostracoda came forth in great numbers from the charnel | 
dust. There was very little vegetable matter in this clay, 
merely thin ribbon-hke stems of water plants, of which only 
the epidermis remained. There were a few seeds of the 
larger plants, and those of Chara were in thousands. 
The Holyrood Lake must have been of very ancient date, 
probably existing a long time before the building of the 
Abbey or even the Palace—that time in sooth when the 
“doe made its den” in the woods which we know once 
occupied the site of Holyrood. 
CORSTORPHINE LAKE. 
On the farm of Broomhouse, at the distance of several 
hundred yards from Corstorphine Station on the line of the 
short cut railway from the Forth Bridge, it was found necessary 
to make a culvert for an underground water-course, and a 
cutting 7 feet in depth was made for that purpose. The 
soil cut into was not boulder clay or gravel as in other 
cuttings in the neighbourhood, but lake silt and peat. The 
silt was crowded with freshwater shells and Ostracoda, and 
the peat was composed chiefly of the stems of water plants, 
being essentially a water peat. The cutting was not seen by 
us, and we cannot give details of the section. From answers 
to inquiries, however, we learnt from the workmen that the 
peat was not lying above the silt, but interstratified with it. 
The 7 feet did not exhaust the silt with shells, which was 
evidently several feet more, as the culvert had to be founded 
upon concrete. The ground through which the underground 
water-course ran is still slightly lower than the surrounding 
fields, and there can be no doubt that a small lake existed 
here for a considerable time ere say 10 feet of silt and shells 
could be formed, nearly every grain of which seems to have 
been once organic. The plain in which this old lake occurs, 
extending from Edinburgh to near Gogar, is said in the 
