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OUTLINE OF ITS GEOLOGY. I53 preserved tusk of the mammoth-an extinct hairy elephant-was disinterred from the deposit. Above the till lie accumuIations of sand and gravel, sometimes forming the remarkable ridges known in Scotland as Kames. Good examples may be seen between Burdiehouse and Lothianburn. Towards the sea-margin, deposits of fine laminated clay occur, sometimes curiously contorted, as if from the stranding of heavy icebergs when these clays were under the sea. Foraminiferze and marine shells occur in the clays, together, sometimes with quantities of drift-wood. The brick-pits of Portobello afford good sections of these latest members of the glacial drift series of this neighbourhood. At the close of the Ice Age our land was not so much out of water as it is now. It has since then been pushed up several times, the intervals of rest between these upheavals being marked by the lines of terrace known as Raised Beaches. The most marked of these lines near Edinburgh is the twenty-five foot terrace which forms a noticeable feature of the coast-line. It is well seen between Granton and Newhaven, and again between Leith and Joppa. When the level terrace is dug up it is found to consist.of layers of gravel and sand like the deposits of the present beach, often with abundant shore-shells of the common species. Here and there, as between Leith and Portobello, the inner edge of the terrace is marked by a line of bluff or cliff. This represents the bank against which the waves beat when the terrace was formed. These deposits, together with the accumulations of peat and mar1 by which former lakes, like those once covering the Meadows, have been filled up, close the long geological record, and bring us into the time of the human occupation, where the stone hatchet, flint arrowhead; and rude canoe are fossils claimed alike by the geologist and the antiquary. NEWHAVEN PER. U
Volume 11 Page 212
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Volume 11 Page 213
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