BRITISH POSTGLACIAL 6- RECENT DEPOSITS. 391 



the clay was plentifully charged with hazel-nuts. In the upper 

 reaches of the Carse-land, as at Bridge of Earn, the peat-bed is 

 a few feet above the surface of the river. Still farther to the 

 west, as opposite Easter Balgour, it reaches six to nine feet 

 above the ordinary level of the Earn ; and the same is the 

 case in the valley of the Tay at Perth. In short, it generally 

 rests upon the old alluvia described above, the upper surface of 

 which, as might have been expected, is not horizontal, but has 

 a perceptible slope down the valley. 



The peat consists, as I have said, of a mass of vegetable 

 matter, which varies in thickness from a few inches up to three 

 or four feet. In some places it seems to be made up chiefly of 

 reed-like plants and sedges, and occasional mosses, commiugled 

 with which are abundant fragments of birch, alder, willow, hazel, 

 and pine. In other places it contains trunks and stools of oak and 

 hazel, with hazel-nuts — the trees being rooted in the subjacent 

 deposits. It is generally highly compressed and readily splits into 

 laminas, upon the surface of which many small seeds now and 

 again appear. Here and there also Dr. Buchanan White and I 

 have detected the wing-cases of beetles. The twigs, branches, and 

 trunks, are likewise compressed, but are usually in a very good 

 state of preservation, having when freshly broken a reddish tint. 

 The colour of the peat itself is usually a dark brown inclining 

 to black. It strongly recalled to me in general appearance the 

 interglacial lignites of Dlirnten and Leffe, but when broken up 

 it had not the same indications of extreme age. As a rule 

 the bed is sharply marked off from the silt and clay which 

 immediately overlie it, but occasionally this is not the case — 

 the peat interosculating to some extent with the lower portions 

 of those deposits. But this appearance quickly terminates 

 upwards, as I shall point out presently. In the brick-clay pit 

 at Friarton, Perth, the peat occurs under a thickness of ten or 

 eleven feet of clay. Lying upon and in the peat-bed at this 

 place, and sometimes partly penetrating the underlying river- 

 sand, occur now and again large trunks of pine (Pinus sylvestris) 

 which have much the appearance of having been drifted into 



