Anniversary Address, 186 



Cove Harbour coal again occurs ; and below the Fishers' Houses 

 remains of fish and of plants are remarkably abundant in a 

 black carbonaceous shale and in a fine-grained sandstone. The 

 fish are the same as those at Burdie House, and some scales are 

 similar to Holoptychius Portlockii, obtained from the carbonife- 

 rous beds in Ireland. Fine specimens of Sphenopteris affinU 

 occur, showing beautifully the venations of this graceful fern, 

 which seems to be confined to the lower portions of the carboni- 

 ferous series, and which also is one of the most chai*actcristic 

 remains of the Burdie House limestone. Besides this plant, I 

 also noticed Sphenopteris bifida, Sphenopteris obtusiloba, Lepido- 

 phyllum intermedium, and Coniferitest verticillatus, which was 

 first observed in the shales below Lammerton. Beneath this 

 shale lies a thin coal scam, and under it is a fire-clay, penetrated 

 vertically by obscure vegetable remains, apparently the roots of 

 the plants which had supplied the materials of the coal bed. The 

 rocks which I have attempted to describe form a distinct division 

 in the Carboniferous formation, lying far below the Productal and 

 Encrinal limestones of Northumberland and East Lothian, and 

 are well marked by the abundance of fish-remains, by the com- 

 paratively small amount of carbon, and by the slight indications 

 of marine conditions. The coal beds are thin and unimportant, 

 but they arc the earliest that appear ; they are the dawn of the 

 Carboniferous aera, when the earth was clothed with a vegetation 

 marvellously luxuriant, which was entombed within the rocky 

 strata, to furnish a source of light and heat for the intellectual 

 and moral beings who were ages afterwards to people the earth. 

 The connexion between the outline of a coast and the relative 

 hardness of rocks and their inclination to the sea, is well illus- 

 trated by a comparison between Siccar Point and Cove Harbour ; 

 at the former the rocks are hard and dipping towards the sea, 

 and the destructive force of the wave is lessened by the inclined 

 surface, and hence this headland juts far into the waters ; but at 

 the latter, soft sandstones and softer shales present the edges of 

 their highly-tilted strata to the sea, and the roll of the billow 

 beats with full force against them ; hence the coast is here deeply 

 indented, the rocks are cavemed and perforated, and a few of the 

 harder and less exposed stand apart from the cliff, worked by the 

 elements into picturesque forms resembling pinnacles and ruined 

 towers in the midst of the waters. One mass seemed to me like 



