134 Proceedings of the Royal Physveal Socvrety. 
Geological Map of the district (Edinburgh, Sheet 2) to be an 
old alluvial plain, and from traditions we learn that the 
eastern part of it from Edinburgh to Corstorphine was 
formerly a marsh difficult to cross, especially at night, and 
that a beacon light used to be affixed to the gable end of 
Corstorphine Church to guide benighted wayfarers safely 
across it. This little lake, of which the silt and the shells are 
now the only memorials, was doubtless one of many which 
once studded this plain in parts with water pools, each not 
many acres in extent, in which the little life which luxuriates 
in plashy places dwelt for many generations through a 
lengthened period ere a bed of organic silt 8 or 10 feet in 
thickness could be elaborated, every grain of which silt was 
without doubt once alive. 
KETHYMYRE LAKE. 
In making a private railway from Binnend Oil Works to 
Kinghorn in 1887, an old lake marl was cut through in a low 
flat hollow named Kethymyre at the foot of Rodanbraes, 
about two miles N.E. of Burntisland. The section exhibited 
was as follows :—(1.) Peat, 1 ft.; (2.) marl, I’ft.; (8.) greenish 
clay with shells, 3 ft.; (4.) clay without shells, 1 ft.; 
(5.) boulder clay. The peat was rusty brown and very loose 
in texture, and an oak tree trunk about 14 feet in diameter 
stretched across it. At one place an irregular bed of sand 
3 to 4 feet in thickness, and striped with bands of light and 
dark red sand, seemed at one place to be upon the marl and 
at another upon the boulder clay. I note this as giving a 
rather ancient date for the lake of Kethymyre, but still the 
name shows that it was extant during the human period. 
The height of this flat space is about 150 feet above the sea, 
and its situation not far from the shore of the 100-foot beach 
period. These peat and marl beds are still (1889) accessible 
just west of the bridge which carries the road to Kinghorn 
over the railway. 
ANCIENT LAKE AT HAILES QUARRY. 
In the summer of 1886 a tirring in the N.E. of Hailes 
Quarry exposed deposits which could only have been made 
