On Brich-Clay Beds and their Fossil Remai7is. 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 Eiie Station, which is the lowest point of 
the railway. The shells in it at that point were first dis- 
covered by the Kev. 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 greenlandictcs, Yoldia pygmcea, Bulla (sp.), 
Nucula injlata, Actceon {sp.), Bullanus porcatus, Crenella 
Icevigata, 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. Koyal 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. 
