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that, from their appearance, must have died within the twelve-month,—seems to be a greatly less abundant shell in the lo-cality now than during the ages of the old-coast line, and ap-pears, unless, indeed, it has been hitherto strangely missed byour dredgers, to be dying out. The old sea-bottom at Queens-ferry, little more than half an acre in extent, furnished mewith full three dozen sj^ecimens, though in a state more orless broken,—an extraordinary number for what has beenwell described in the history of the Mollusca as one of ourrarest British shells. Of these recent shells of the ancientcoast line we find older and newer beds. The Scrobiculariaof Portobello, for instance, were the inhabitants of a muddyestuary, which ran along what is now the flat, winding, wil-low-skirted valley that runs inland towards the village ofEaster Duddingstone ; but ere the last upheaval of the landthey must have been dead for ages ; for how can we other-wise interpret their position in the brick-clay, with from sixto eight feet of an argillaceous deposit, of apparently slowformation, resting over them. The Pholas bed of the Lonesof Fern exists in similar conditions. It, too, was deeplysilted over ere the last rise of the land; whereas the shellsof Granton, and of many other localities on the coast, musthave been beach-shells at the time of the upheaval; and nota few of them were, mayhap, living scarce half a year before.In some of these old estuary deposits,—such as that of Por-tobello,—we find interesting remains of the aboriginal treesof the country,—boles of oak, birch, alder, the Scotch fir, andthe yew,—with handfuls of sorely blackened hazel-nuts, andthe trunks and branches of a dwarfish hawthorn, convertedinto a glossy substance, nearly resembling jet. They yieldus curious glimpses of those mighty woods which covered thecountry ere it had become a home of man, or during thoseearlier ages of his inhabitancy, when he was yet too unskil-ful to commence its history.