Carboniferous Period in East Scotland. 241 
in East Scotland. Sun-cracks are almost everywhere observable in these 
beds. 
These deposits were evidently laid down in lagoons cut off from the sea 
and subject to periodical desiccation. Their fossil contents seem to bear out 
this point. In the Edinburgh district, Hstheria occurs in a cementstone 
band in the Camstone Quarry above the Hunter’s Bog. Remains of fishes— 
Rhizodus, Elonichthys striatusand Callopristodus pectinatus—have been recorded 
by Dr Traquair from the ash bed from under St Anthony’s Chapel,’ while 
Mr Kirkby records a list comprising ostracods, fish and plants from the site 
of the Scotsman office in Edinburgh, and shows that the ostracods were 
marine in facies.” 
To the east of the area just mentioned, especially in East Lothian, a 
different type of sedimentation has taken place, showing a great prevalence 
of sandstone and sandy calcareous beds. This probably indicates the 
position of the sand bars that successively shut off the lagoons from the 
outer estuary or open sea. . 
In East Fife, Messrs Craig and Balsillie, who are at present at work on 
the sections exposed to the north of Fife Ness, inform me that, on the top of 
anticlines bringing up the cornstone and cherty bands that represent the 
local top of the Upper Old Red Sandstone, they find about 10 feet or so of 
sediments of true Ballagan type. Above this horizon there is the rythmic 
succession of sandstones, shales and lamellibranch and Spirorbis limestones so 
well described by the late J. W. Kirkby in his paper on the Randerstone 
section,> which is reproduced by Sir Archibald Geikie in the Geological 
Survey Memoir on East Fife (pp. 123-126). The sequence of strata overlying 
the Randerstone beds exposed on the shore between the base of the Billow 
Ness Sandstone and Anstruther was described by Mr Kirkby, and this 
description is reproduced by Sir A. Geikie in the same Memoir (pp. 96-99). 
The exact point where the two sections overlap cannot be definitely 
determined ; but it shows throughout, the same rythmical ty pe of sedimentation, 
pointing to an estuarine condition of deposit rather than that of open water. 
But freshwater conditions, and even land surfaces, occurred within the area 
during this period, for No. X Limestone, shown in Kirkby’s Randerstone 
section near its base, isa matted mass of the shells of Carbonicola elegans 
belonging to the Unionidze—a freshwater group; while, near the top of his 
section, two coal seams are represented. 
This area then seems to have lain, for most part of the time, outside the 
1“ The Geology of the Neighbourhood of Edinburgh,” Mem. Geol. Sur., 1910, p. 100, 
2 “Summary of Progress,” Mem. Geol. Sur. for 1898, p. 131. 
3 Trans. Edin, Geol, Soc,, vol. viii., pp. 61-75, 1905. 
