of Edinhiiryh, Session 1883—84. 
749 
exposed in section are somewhat variable, and show a good deal of 
diagonal bedding, pointing to somewhat persistent current action 
from the south ; in a few places, however, there is evidence of a 
movement in quite the opposite direction. Although the deposits 
show so much false-bedding, the inclination of all the various 
lenticular beds and sheets of gravel and sand is towards the north 
at a low angle, between 2° and 3°. The sand is chiefly siliceous, 
and remarkably “ sharp ” or clean, and it greatly predominates 
over the gravel. Some layers are very fine, others are less so, 
passing into a grit. The gravel consists of well water-worn stones, 
varying in size from mere grit up to fragments several inches in 
diameter. Coarser and finer gravels alternate in lenticular or 
irregular layers and beds, which interosculate with lines and sheets 
of sand. So far as I have observed, there are no rock-fragments in 
the gravel which do not also occur in the boulder-clay of the same 
district, and very few, if any, that might not have been derived 
fi-om the drainage-area of the Kiver Esk, which enters the sea about 
half a mile to the east of our section. 
It is in these gravel and sand beds that the drifted trees occur. 
They were met with at or about the bottom of the section in the 
sand-pit, and all within a distance of 40 feet of each other. The 
absence of any trace of marine organisms in the beds, taken in 
connection with the presence of the drifted trees, branches, twigs, 
&c., suggests the fluviatile origin of the deposits, and the same 
might be inferred from the general appearance of the deposits them- 
selves. All the evidence points to a flow of water from south to 
north. The inclination of the various layers, the “ pitch ” of the 
diagonal bedding, the shape of the gravel stones (well water-worn, but 
not generally so well rounded as marine gravel), the manner in which 
the stones often overlap, and the general disposition of the materials 
precisely resemble what we see in the recent alluvial accumulations 
of our larger rivers, and in certain older valley-terraces laid down 
by many of our streams at a time when these flowed in greater 
volume than at present. The deposits at Musselburgh occur some 
30 feet above Ordnance datum-line, and form part of a broad 
terrace which slopes gradually inland to a height of as near as may 
be 45 feet. Indeed, the 50 feet contour line may be taken as the 
bouudary of the gravel and sand, the terrace formed by which 
