In Greenock, excavations have lately been made for a new gasometer. The works are now completed, but the superintendent, a most intelligent man, took me to the place, and told me what they had found in the course of digging.

The site of the excavation is close to the shore, and very little above the tide-mark.

At the south-east corner of the works, i.e., most remote from the sea, the workmen reached the rock at a depth of 20 feet. It was a soft shale, and I could not ascertain that any striations were observed on it. Probably there were none preserved on such material. Its upper surface was flat. Towards the sea, or north and west, the rock sloped downwards very steeply, and this seaward face was covered by a great bed or bank of sand, that sloped up from the edge of the rock, and as it receded rose higher as a bank.