Following the discovery of well-preserved fossil plants at Weak Law, North Berwick (Gordon, 1935, p. 280), a search of all the volcanic ashes in the neighbourhood was undertaken and special attention was given to those localities from which plant-remains had been recorded in the past. Isolated specimens had been from time to time discovered, but were usually of an unsatisfactory character—mostly fragments of charred wood such as frequently occur in volcanic ashes. More satisfactory specimens were found by Mr James Whitecross of North Berwick, and were recorded by the late Mr T. Cuthbert Day (Day, 1928, p. 48), from a thin bed of limestone in the ashes of Gin Head, Tantallon, and elsewhere in the vicinity.
Few plants of Carboniferous age have appealed so strongly to the scientific observer as the huge woody trunks of a coniferous type that have been discovered from time to time in beds of that system. The appeal has come from different points of view at different times; thus these trees were hailed by Witham (1831, pp. 1–2), Lindley and Hutton (1831, p. xiii), and Hugh Miller (1849, p. 186) as evidence of the existence of higher coniferous plants in abundance during a period to which the current consensus of scientific opinion had assigned only members of the lower plant families, or would admit only an infrequent occurrence of higher forms. These remains were therefore important in discussions concerning the development of plant life, and were cited by Hugh Miller (1849, p. 185) in his attempt to combat the then embryonic ideas of evolution—the recrudescence of Lamarckian ideas—current under the name of “the development hypothesis.” Miller, however, recognised one significant point, namely, that they represented a land flora as distinct from one occupying a water habitat (1849, p. 202).
During the past few years probably no group of fossil plants has received more attention from palæobotanists than that of the Pteridospermeæ. Many fern-like impressions, derived from Carboniferous rocks, have proved to be members of this division of the vegetable kingdom; while many more may ultimately be removed from the Filicales and included in the Pteridospermeæ. Specimens, however, in which the internal structure is preserved, may, as a rule, be correctly referred to their respective class, but among those included in the latter group there is considerable diversity of organisation, and recently described genera have tended to increase the diversity of type rather than to indicate relationships among the forms already known.
In a recent paper (Gordon, 1938) reasons were given for the belief that semi-arid conditions prevailed during Lower Carboniferous times in the neighbourhood of North Berwick, East Lothian. The evidence was opposed, in a measure, to that advanced by Mr George Barrow in the East Lothian Memoir (1910) to substantiate the same position. He had relied on the absence of fossils as part proof; but, in point of fact, fossil plants have been obtained in abundance from the actual bedded ashes of Oxroad Bay that he considered (a) to be unfossiliferous, and (b) to have been formed in a manner similar to beds on the Springbok Flats of the Transvaal. The plants that have now been obtained showed xerophytic features, and, consequently, a semi-arid climate was proved on positive evidence. Other positive evidence of a lithological character was also presented in confirmation (Gordon, 1938, pp. 352, 353).
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