708 MR FRANCIS J. LEWIS 
8. Brown clay, peaty above, and containing scanty remains of 
Equisetum; becoming pebbly towards the base, and 
resting on moraine material. 
The clays of this section contain no stones, and show every evidence of having been 
deposited by water; and this alternation of clay beds and peat layers has evidently been 
caused by flooding, which has continued uninterruptedly for a period long enough for 
about a foot of sandy clay to be deposited. The regular alternation of clay beds with 
wood peat is at first very striking when seen in section, but it is difficult to correlate 
these beds with those described in the first section unless the clay beds correspond with 
the wet-condition peat of layers 8, 6, and 4 of Section 1. There is nothing in the 
relative positions of the two sections which would preclude this explanation, for 
local flooding affecting Section 1 during a wet period might not have spread to 
Section 2. 
The peat covering the level ground and slopes on the N.H. side of Loch Skene, and 
forming the gathering ground of Winterhope Burn, was next examined. ‘The same 
evidence of present denudation is to be seen here, the peat in some cases being wasted 
away to within 1 or 2 feet of the underlying glacial deposits. Several sections and 
borings were made in this locality, and al] agreed in showing the following changes in 
vegetation :— 
1. Scirpus and Sphagnum peat, with occasional Calluna, . 3 feet. 
2. Empetrum zone, . : ; a 
- 8. Traces of Betula. 
4. Dry hard peat, with traces of Calluna towards the base, . é Oo ee 
5. Pebbles and clay. 
On comparing the sequence of beds in the northern area of the Merrick-Kells 
mosses and the Winterhope peat, a striking similarity is seen. In both cases two 
woodland beds are present, separated by layers showing a considerable increase in 
precipitation. Thus, in both districts the basal woodland bed is covered with Sphagnum 
peat, which at a later date was replaced by a vegetation in which Hriophorum 
vaginatum was the dominant plant. Such plant associations cover the wettest areas 
on our moorlands at the present time, having been mapped in 8. Yorks. by Dr Smirx 
(6), and on the Northern Pennines by myself (7). The most interesting point, however, 
is the fact that thése wet-condition beds are overlaid in both districts by a thin seam 
of Arctic plants—Empetrum with Salix herbacea and S. reticulata in the Merrick- 
Kells mosses, and Empetrum and Lovselewria procumbens in the Tweedsmuir district ; 
and the evidence can, I think, be hardly interpreted in any other way except that a 
considerable decrease in temperature took place at the time this bed was forming. The 
interest of these two districts is further increased by the fact that a gradual change 
takes place above these Arctic plant-beds. Immediately over them lies Hophorum 
vayinatum peat, which again is covered with Sphagnum peat. The line of division 
between the lower surface of the Arctic plant-bed and the underlying Eriophorum peat 
