\ 



THE 



EDINBURGH JOURNAL 



OF 



natuhal and geographical science. 



FEBRUARY, 1831. 



ORIGINAL ARTICLES. 



ART. I. On the occurrence of the Scales of Vertehrated Animals 

 in the Old Red Sandstone of Fifeshire, (with a Plate.) By the 

 Rev. Dr Fleming.* 



The country between the two firths of the Forth and Tay, 

 considered in a geological point of view, exhibits two well marked 

 groups of rocks, separated from each other by an intervening bed 

 of limestone. The rocks situate above the limestone consist of 

 the ordinary members of the independent coal formation, such as 

 coal, bituminous shale, slate clay, clay ironstone, sandstone, and 

 limestone, to which may be added greenstone, trap-tuff, and basalt 

 with olivine. This series of the coal metals may be viewed as a 

 lacustrine deposit, with occasionally interposed thin beds o^ marine 

 limestone, containing the same organic remains as the fundamental 

 rock, or carboniferous limestone, a stratum better known among 

 our southern neighbours under the designation of mountain lime- 

 stone. This carboniferous limestone abounds with the organisms 

 of radiated, molluscous, and even vertehrated animals. 



The rocks which occur below the great bed of carboniferous 

 limestone, admit of distribution into the four following provisional 

 groups, enumerated in a descending series, viz. yellow sandstone, 

 amygdaloid, gray sandstone, and red sandstone. 



1. Yelloiv Sandstone. 



This rock, which is of very considerable thickness, is of a light 

 ochrey colour in its upper beds, but, towards the lower part of the 



* Read before the Wernerian Society, 1st May, 1830. 

 VOL. III. L 



