1go1-1902.] Geological History of the Coast of Fife. 375 
seams in the Edge Coal Series are, though not always very 
thick, amongst some of the most persistent sedimentary rocks 
anywhere known. 
The series in which these coals occur occupies nearly the 
whole of the shore from Seafield to east of Kirkcaldy. It is 
mainly of estuarine origin. I may remark here that deposits 
of freshwater origin in the Lower Carboniferous rocks exist 
only in text-books—the sediments are all either purely marine 
or else of estuarine origin, under which latter category may be 
classed the lagoon deposits. I cannot adopt the view that any 
coals are of terrestrial origin,—at least, any I have yet had 
an opportunity of examining. 
There is not much need to enter into any great amount of 
detail with regard to the rocks under notice. But no descrip- 
tion of the coal section under notice would be complete if it 
did not contain some reference to the disturbances which the 
Carboniferous Rocks have undergone. In Fife they have been 
thrown into a great series of folds, whose axes may be said to 
range in a north-westerly direction between Kinghorn and 
Kirkealdy, and to be north-easterly in the area around 
Starleyburn, just west of Burntisland. These folds are of 
post-Carboniferous and pre-Triassic age, for there is clear 
evidence of their having been folded, faulted, and greatly 
wasted by denudation, prior to the period last named. There- 
after they were covered first by the Trias, then by the Rhetic 
Rocks, and finally by those of the Jurassic age. Whether 
they were covered by the Cretaceous Rocks also may never 
be determined. The faults just referred to are very well 
seen at many places on the shore; and they include a 
remarkable group of small reversed faults or overthrusts, 
which occur chiefly between Craigfoot and the Tyrie Bleach 
Works, in one of the limestones. 
I think it was but in comparatively recent geological times 
that the last remnant of the Trias was removed from Fife. It 
occurred, I think, as a strip extending from Kirkcaldy across 
the Forth to the east of Inchkeith, and thence along what is 
now the low ground of the Dalkeith coal-field. 
It was from the Trias that the remarkable staining which 
gave the characteristic red colour to “The Fife Red Measures, 
d°,” in the first instance arose. 
VOL. Iv. 2D 
