Carboniferous Period in East Scotland. 253 
from another set of fishes that as persistently accompany the recurrences of 
marine limestones. A similar story is told by the corals, brachiopods and 
other marine forms. The sandstones are singularly devoid of organisms 
beyond worm-casts and trails, while the fireclays are always traversed by 
rootlets. In the case of the limestones, the more muddy portions carry a 
different fauna from the purer limestones. This is well illustrated by the 
association of fossils found in the sediments underlying the first Abden 
Limestone at its outcrop near Kinghorn. Succeeding a basalt lava are 
3 feet of dark shale near the base of which occurs an inch or so of dark “ bone- 
bed” in which the fish remains are all fragmentary and mixed up with broken 
LIingulas. Above the “‘bone-bed” the shale contains Vaiadites, Pterinopecten, 
Actinopteria (Pteronites) and Sanguinolites abdenensis. The shale is overlaid 
by 18 inches of marly clay with piants, and this in turn by 18 inches of dark 
shale with foraminifera, ostracods, Lingula, Productus, Pterinopecten, Naiadites 
(Myalina), Actinopteria (Pteronites), Sanguinolites abdenensis. This is overlaid 
by 6 feet of green tuff above which is 1 foot of shale with limestone nodules 
which yield, in addition to foraminifera and entomostraca, the brachiopods, 
Schizophoria (Orthis) reswpinata, and Ripidomella (Orthis) michelini, Chonetes, 
Spirvfer, and Archeocidaris. Above is 10 feet of limestone somewhat calmy 
in character containing a marine facies of fossils including Lzthostrotion, 
several crinoids, rhynchonellids, Spirifer and orthotetids. 
A similar “bone-bed” overlaid by a limestone with Ripidomella and 
Schizophoria which underlies a twenty-foot thick limestone, was discovered by 
Mr Macconochie at the junction of a tributary with the Bilston Burn, on the 
western side of the Midlothian Coal-field, as recorded in the Edinburgh 
Memoir of the Geological Survey, p. 162. The “bone-bed” there contains 
broken-up Lingule and fish bones as at Abden. Since the memoir was 
written, Mr A. Macconochie, at the instigation of Mr Peter Macnair, has 
unearthed a lamellibranch fauna from the thin layers that separate the bone- 
bed from the Aipidomella layer, This fauna contains Sanguinolites abdenensis. 
The fish-bed has also been identified in the Gilmerton section, thus furnishing 
a close correlation with that of the Bilston Burn (see p. 170, Edin. Memoir). 
Mr Peter Macnair, in his paper on the Hurlet Sequence in Ayrshire, read 
before the Geological Society of Glasgow on the 9th May of last year, shows 
the occurrence of a bone-bed identical in character with that of Abden 
and Bilston Burn, and like them followed by lamellibranch bearing shales 
containing Myalina vernueili, Sanguinolites abdenensis, Actinopteria (Pteronttes) 
persuleata, Streblopteria (Aviculopecten) ornata, succeeded by beds yielding 
Ripidomella (Orthis) michelinit and Schizophoria (Orthis) resupinata. This 
sequence forms a constant horizon between the Hurlet Coal and the Hurlet 
