dimple the hills in every direction, and, like so many little mirrors, reflect the glitter of the summer sun. And do not these erratics even add to the beauty as they certainly do to the interest of the scene 1 Wanderers often far from home, with their parentage doubtful or wholly unknown, perched no matter where, they are at once the relics and the evidences of a time when certainly there were none to admire them, or to care either for what they were or from whence they came. No. XXXY.-ON THE

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... EOLOGY OF ARDROSSAN AND WEST KILBRIDE. BY DUGALD BELL, V.P. WITH A SECTION. [Read 12th April, 1884.] FROM Port-Glasgow to Ardrossan, the eastern shore of the Firth of Clyde is generally of a bold and rocky character, bounded by a range of hills in which the well-marked old coast-line, that forms so picturesque a feature of our seaboard, has been cut out at no great distance from the present shore. But between Ardrossan and the Heads of Ayr, the country assumes a more open and level aspect; the hills retreat further into the interior, and a considerable plain, or tract of gently sloping ground, extends outwards from them towards the sea, terminating along the shore in a broad margin of yellow sand. This low-shelving part of the coast marks the sea ward extension of the Ayrshire coalfield. It forms, in fact, a great bay scooped out of the softer Carboniferous strata between the points where the Calciferous sandstones and associated igneous rocks emerge from beneath them on either hand. This great bay is divided by two or three projecting points into so many smaller bays, as at Ai'drossan, Saltcoats, and Troon. Such points on a coast are always worthy of notice, as indicating rocks which from their superior hardness have more successfully resisted the abrad ing action of the sea. If they be igneous or eruptive rocks, there is a likelihood that the neighbouring strata will be seen to advan tage either protected by them from disintegration or disturbed and uptilted alongside of them. At Saltcoats and Ardrossan, for example, we find that both these projecting points, of which advantage has been taken to form the Libraries on