Geology of Dumfries Basin. 221 



Terraughtie behiucl the shooting butls nearly to Cargen. The 

 railway cutting passing through this ridge at Goldielea shows a 

 good section. It passes under Lochar Moss, and is to be seen 

 resting on Silurian strata on the other side. And the two rocks 

 — Permian and Silurian — may be seen in the same relation near 

 the bottom of the deep gorge in the Cargen below the Glen 

 :Mills. 



The term conglomerate is often mistakenly applied to 

 breccia. Conglomerate, or pudding stone, is a rock composed 

 of a mass of rounded water-worn stones, all cemented together, 

 usually by oxide of iron or carbonate of lime. Breccia is a 

 similar rock, but instead of rounded stones it is made up of angular 

 and subangular fragments. In this area the fragments of which it 

 is made up are of various kinds of rocks, and of every size, up to 

 half a ton. And further, it may be noted that the stones often 

 have a g'laciated appearance, closely resembling those found in 

 true boulder clay. The view now held by man}' eminent 

 geologists is that at many stages throughout the unknown and 

 unknowable millions of years during which the crust of the earth 

 has been slowly attaining its present development there have been 

 many glacial epochs. Sir A. C. Ramsay and Professor James 

 Geikie — high authorities in glacial geology — were of opinion that 

 those breccias which here, and in other places, reach to so great a 

 thickness, " indicate a glacial episode during part of the Permian 

 period." And according to the same authorities the petrological 

 character of the Permian rocks in the British area, and in other 

 parts of the world where the sj'stem is developed, point to " the 

 isolation of various large tracts (of an earlier sea), which thus 

 became inland seas or salt lakes, like the Caspian ; " and that " one 

 or more of those inland seas -covered large areas which now form 

 part of central and northern England, and extended into southern 

 Scotland and the north of Ireland." 



The life of the period, on sea and land, in remarkable contrast 

 with the antecedent carboniferous era, was much impoverished, 

 and generally stunted and dwarfed in character. But it is interest- 

 ing to remember that the footprints of reptiles moving in a 

 southerly direction have been found on the Corncockle sandstone. 

 And it is to this discovery we owe the witty, but now rather 

 hackneyed, remark of Dean Buckland, " that even at that early 

 date the migration from Scotland to England had commenced." 



