On Brick-Clay Beds and their Fossil Remains. 127 



beds lie upon the rock, but the one does not pass into the 

 other. A tongue of the overlying sand passes down to the 

 rock between them. 



The same bed of clay crops out at high-water mark, on a 

 lower level than Elie Station, which is the lowest point of 

 the railway. The shells in it at that point were first dis- 

 covered by the Eev. Thomas Brown. It was visited this 

 summer by Professor Torell, who found specimens of the 

 following shells : — Saxicava rugosa, Yoldia or Leda trun- 

 cata, Pecten grecrilandicus, Yoldia pygmcea, Bulla (sp.), 

 Nucida inflata, Actceon (sp.), Bidlanus porcatus, Crenella 

 laevigata, and Astarte elliptica. Two of these species, as he 

 told the writer, he had himself picked up, lying side by side 

 in front of the great glacier of Spitzbergen. 



Immediately above the clay is a layer of peat, which first 

 appears in the cutting between the bridges as several thin 

 seams, with sand (apparently blown sand) intervening. 

 These dip very rapidly towards Elie Station, where they 

 form a bed of peat not less than 10 or 12 feet thick, mixed 

 with much sand and many fresh- water shells. On the shore, 

 where the same bed crops out above the clay, it is very much 

 thinner. It may be added, that over the whole town of 

 Elie, whenever excavations have been made down to the 

 clay, a stratum of peaty matter has been found immediately 

 above it, full of branches of oak, birch, and hazel, and even 

 many hazel nuts. These may have been contemporaneous 

 with the submerged forest in Largo Bay, described by the 

 late Professor Fleming. — " Trans. Eoyal Soc. of Edin.," vol. 

 ix. p. 421. Some inquiries are about to be instituted, in 

 order to determine this point if possible, and the result will 

 be communicated to the Society. 



Thin veins and streaks of peat are also to be met with in 

 other places among the strata which overlie the clay, but 

 only at Elie Station do they form a bed of any thickness. 

 It is deserving of remark, that where the bed of peat occurs 

 the strata of water-borne sand and gravel disappear, and are 

 succeeded by blown sand. It also happens that this occurs 

 simultaneously with the substitution of the unctuous clay for 

 the hard till ; but this may be an accidental circumstance. 



