436 MR MILNE ON THE GEOLOGY OF ROXBURGHSHIRE. 



The Old Red Sandstone rocks are most generally of a dull brick-red colour, 

 [n a few localities, there are strata nearly pure white, and, still more rarely, 

 there are strata of a yellow colour. 



The texture of the stone is soft, and seldom compact. The picturesque charac- 

 ter of the valley of the Jed, enclosed within steep and lofty cliffs, for many miles 

 of its course, is mainly attributable to the facility with which that river and its 

 tributaries cut through the old red sandstone strata. But, though this is the 

 general character of these rocks, they in many places become hard enough to 

 form good building stone. 



The lowest member of this formation, when visible, is almost every where 

 seen to be a conglomerate, or bed of pebbles cemented by sand and clay, highly 

 impregnated and reddened, by oxide of iron. This conglomerate is found in very 

 many places on the upturned edges of the greywacke, as may be seen at Jedburgh, 

 both above and below the town, in the river ; in Hassendean burn, a few hundred 

 yards below the village of that name ; in the Wauchope and Catlie burns, and 

 other places.* It was the first of the places just mentioned, which furnished to 

 Dr HUTTON the strongest of his proofs in support of his views as to the elevation 

 and disruption of rocks by volcanic action, and the formation of new rocks out of 

 the ruins of the former set. As Dr BUTTON'S description of the section is still 

 perfectly applicable, I cannot do better than quote the following passage from his 

 celebrated work on the Theory of the Earth.f In describing the vertical and the 

 horizontal strata of the Jed, he refers to " a certain pudding-stone, which is inter- 

 posed between the two, lying immediately upon the one and under the other. 

 This pudding-stone (he adds) is a confused mass of stones, gravel, and sand, with 

 red marly earth. These are consolidated or cemented in a considerable degree, 

 and thus form a stratum extremely unlike any thing which is to be found either 

 above or below. 



" When we examine the stones and gravel of which it is composed, these 

 appear to have belonged to the vertical strata or schistus mountains. They are 

 in general the hard and solid parts of those indurated strata, worn and rounded 

 by attrition ; particularly sand or marl-stone consolidated and veined with quartz, 

 and many fragments of quartz, all rounded by attrition. In this pudding-stone 

 of the Jed, I find also rounded lumps of porphyry, but have not perceived any of 

 granite. This, however, is not the case in the pudding-stone of the schistus moun- 

 tains, for, where there is granite in the neighbourhood, there is also granite in the 

 pudding-stone. From this it will appear, that the schistus mountains or the ver- 

 tical strata of indurated bodies had been formed, and had been wasted and worn 

 in the natural operations of the globe, before the horizontal strata were begun to 



* These places are indicated on the map by red dots. 

 t Vol. i. p. 436. 



