368 Geological History of the Coast of Fife. [Sess. 
period of great terrestrial disturbance, during which much of 
the rock-material previously formed was removed by denuda- 
tion. If we may judge by the thickness of rock removed 
during this period it must have been one of immense length, 
seeing that the whole of the Caledonian Old Red and much of 
the Orcadian was wasted away in the interval. If, as we 
seem to be justified in doing, the aggregate thickness of these 
rocks is estimated at over thirty thousand feet, and the waste 
proceeded at a rate as high as one foot in ¢wo thousand years, 
instead of the usual standard, one in six, the period works out 
at sixty million years. 
Following this period of waste, there commenced a second 
period of arid conditions, with Britain (or a large part of it) under 
continental conditions as before. It was the desert sands, the 
wady deposits, and the sediments deposited upon the floors of 
the inland lakes of this period which combined to build up the 
Upper Old Red—those sandstones which lie unconformably 
upon the volcanic rocks of the Ochils, and whose soft outcrops 
now form the Howe of Fife. Near the close of the period in 
question the whole land began to subside, and the arid climate 
of former times gave place to climatal conditions of a much 
more humid character. Plants, which had been conspicuous 
by their absence in the earlier period referred to, now began 
to flourish under the more genial climate, animals of various 
kinds gradually spread over the changing surface, and a new 
order of things commenced. 
Presently the land began to be lowered beneath the sea— 
the part where Edinburgh and Tweedside now are being the 
first to disappear. Sediments began to accumulate over the 
old floor of desert-formed rocks, and the lower beds of the 
Lower Carboniferous rocks were spread out over all the part 
submerged. But no part of Fife was under water until a later 
period. Long before that event occurred what is now Fife 
consisted of a rising ground far above sea level, with a con- 
siderable hill formed of Upper Old Red Sandstone over the 
area where the Lomonds of Fife and the adjoining Howe of 
Fife are now. In the meantime, the Edinburgh voleano— 
that from which came the volcanic rocks of Arthur’s Seat, the 
Calton Hill, and Craiglockhart Hills—had slowly raised its 
head above the waters, and, in course of time, had grown up 
