Some fifteen years ago I began to find small pieces of amber (Middletonite) in coal brought from the Kilmarnock district, and immediately afterwards both in the coal and coal-shale of the five-quarter seam at the Misk pit near Stevenston. Subsequently I got some specimens of it from Mr. David Beveridge, then manager of the Annandale Colliery near Kilmarnock, who obtained it in the main coal seam. This substance occurs in flattish blebs, from pieces little bigger than mouse-peas up to slightly over an inch in diameter, and in thin sheets, sometimes as much as two inches long, interbedded between the layers of the coal. It agrees in character and occurrence with the description of Middletonite given by Dr. Page in his “Handbook of Geological Terms,” as follows:—“A mineral resin found in the older coal formations and occurring in layers or in rounded pea-like masses of a reddish-brown colour, resinous, brittle, and easily sectile. So called from Middleton Colliery, near Leeds, where it was first discovered between the layers of the coal. Consists of 86 carbon, 8 hydrogen, and 5·5 oxygen.” Amber has got 70 carbon, 12 hydrogen, and 8 oxygen, so that the Middletonite, before it lost some of its hydrogen and oxygen, may have been at one time identical in composition with the more recent amber. The Misk variety, in thin transparent sections, is pale yellow in colour, the Annandale variety being somewhat reddish, while thick bits of both kinds are perfectly opaque. The Kilmarnock main coal is the This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract