182 Dr Hibbert on the Limestone of Burdiehouse 



been allowed to remain long exposed to the air, so that some lit- 

 tle of its surface has become removed by weathering, the crus- 

 taceous or shelly coverings of these minute beings become bet- 

 ter defined, and their numbers are more palpably brought to 

 light. In fact, I possess specimens which are almost rendered 

 oolitic by the crowded state of these little animals. 



These examples, while they shew to what an extent this pri- 

 meval lake or river had once teemed with animal life, equally 

 prove the quietness with which its calcareous deposit was con- 

 ducted, and, consequently, the stillness and stagnation of these 

 marshy waters, in which vegetables, together with entomostraca, 

 have found so extraordinary a diffusion, as well as so extraordi- 

 nary a conservation of their outward form and character. 



NOTES TO SECTION IV. 



Mr Ure, in his History of Rutherglen, who wrote forty years ago, has the merit 

 of having first directed the attention of naturalists to the microscopic shells which 

 he found at Lawrieston and Stuartfield ; but he does not make us acquainted with 

 the description of beds in which they occurred at these places. He adds, that he 

 also found them in a limestone quarry, about fifteen miles west from Newcastle- 

 upon-Tyne, near the spot where the Roman wall is intersected by Watling Street. 

 One of the specimens, of which he gives a magnified representation, is evidently 

 that of a Cypris. {See Uke's History of Rutherglen, p. 311.) 



SECTION V — THE DISCOVERY OF OSSEOUS REMAINS IN THE QUARRY OF 



BURDIEHOUSE. 



That various kinds of fish were enclosed in the limestone of 

 Burdiehouse, was a fact of which I was apprised upon the first 

 occasion of my visit to the quarry. 



My earliest communication to the Royal Society of Edin- 

 burgh, relative to the limestone of Burdiehouse, was limited to 

 the information, which I considered as an important one, that, in 

 reference to its organic remains, it had no characters in common 

 vvith the mountain-limestone of marine origin ; but that, on the 

 contrary, the immense abundance of plants which it contained, 



