in the Neighbourhood of Edinburgh. 29.9 



Calamites, at the waving of which, countless bones of fish, including the dazzling 

 scales, the elongated bony rays, and the cranial fragments of vast finny tyrants, burst 

 from their marble prisonhouse amidst a classical shower of coprobtic rebcs. We 

 may next suppose, that, in obedience to another fiat, various bones reunite and dis- 

 tribute themselves into their respective genera, species, and varieties ; the mind be- 

 ing lost in the grotesque appearance of larger monsters, developed in their mixed 

 ichthyoid and sauroid character. 



If it be occasionally allowable, in a disquisition dedicated to Philosophy and 

 Truth, to let the imagination for an instant run wild, Truth would at least stipulate 

 that it be strongly pervaded with a philosophical moral. The Genius of Fossil 

 Zoology may therefore rise again to our fancy ; — she may point to contiguous lime- 

 kilns, whence issue dense clouds of vapour ; she may demand, with scowling looks, 

 why to these destructive fires, which have blazed for half a century, countless bones 

 have been devoted ; and why cremations, in honour of her destructive opponent 

 Cybele, have so long been rendered ; or why no attempt has been made to extricate 

 the treasury of osseous relics enclosed by them, which may have even aided in the 

 composition of the very mortar with which the walls of Edina's geological museums 

 have been cemented. 



I will not, in my own defence, venture upon the task of inquiry, Why the lime- 

 stone of Burdiehouse, situated so near the city of Edinburgh, had not been before 

 examined ? or why, in reference to my own private repose, so long as I remained in 

 Edinburgh, I had thought it necessary to exclude Scottish rocks from my researches ? 



I have not, however, on this account, been the less industrious, although labour- 

 ing under the inconvenient necessity, either of limiting the object of my tours to the 

 elucidation of the archaeology of Scotland, or of selecting any country as a field for 

 geological exertion except that in which I had long resided, and to which I have 

 been long attached by many ties of near connexion and friendship. 



Many years had consequently elapsed since my retirement from the study of 

 Scottish rocks, nor did I think that I should ever re-enter that rich, yet almost for- 

 bidden, field of Geological observation, however much I valued its high interest. 

 This reluctance was at length overcome by a visit, purely accidental, which I paid 

 on my return from an excursion to Roslin to the limestone quarry of Burdiehouse. 

 My impression upon the first sight of this quarry, to which the individuals who ac- 

 companied me will remember I gave utterance, was, that I had found a geological 

 deposit which I had never seen before, but which I had long hoped to discover. It 

 was a freshwater formation belonging to the carboniferous group of rocks. 



The result attributable to this occurrence has not, I trust, been overrated. 



Upon the occasion of the meeting of the British Association of Science at Edin- 

 burgh, the osseous relics in the possession of the Royal Society were submitted to 

 M. Agasstz, who considered them as forming some of the most valuable acquisitions 



