Extract

The late researches of Messrs. Cuvier and Brongniart in the vicinity of Paris, and those of Mr. Webster in the Isle of Wight, have made known to us a new series of beds, of which the most remarkable consist almost entirely of the shells of freshwater mollusæ. An instance of analogous recent accumulations will not, I hope, be undeserving of the Society’s attention.

The Rev. James Lambert, of Trinity College, Cambridge, has supplied me with most of the following particulars, which have been chiefly abstracted from the returns made to that gentleman’s enquiries by some respectable land agents and proprietors in the neighbourhood of Dundee.

The beds of shell-marle are chiefly found in the shire of Angus, in the several parishes of Kerrymuir, Airlie, Forfar, Rescobie, Meigh, Newtigh, Abermo’, and Lundie, lying from eight to twenty miles north-west or north-east of Dundee. They are also known in the shires of Perth and Ross, and south of the Tay in the shire of Fife near to St. Andrew’s, and of Berwick near to Kelso.

The shells, which, by the kindness of Mr. Lambert, I am enabled to present to the Society, were taken from a bed of marle lying on the estate of Mr. Cleghorn, about four miles south of St. Andrew’s. This bed is found in a piece of swampy ground, at the bottom of a natural hollow, in attempting to drain which the marle was discovered. It is entirely covered by moss, and also rests upon moss, of which