TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 639 



for a considerable distance out from the existing cliffs ; and 

 were there to be an elevation of the coast, we should have 

 another table- land, formed of vertical strata, with their edges 

 worn down to a nearly horizontal level, like the table -land, 

 at present about 100 feet above the level of the sea. 



Perhaps, connected with this very recent elevation of the 

 coast, may be some extensive rents and fissures in the land vi- 

 sible near St. Abb's Head, and particularly on the north side of 

 it about Dunglass. 



One of the most perceptible of these fissures runs for about 

 1^ mile from the Siccar Point past the ruins of a church called 

 St. Helen's, and towards the valley of the Pease bridge, where 

 the rent is nearly 150 feet deep. In the part of its course first 

 described, the valley is perfectly dry, and there are no symptoms 

 of any rivulet having ever run in it. The strata of grauwacke 

 are here and there nearly vertical, and form a smooth unbroken 

 wall for several hundred yards, on both sides of the valley, 

 which has been formed by the sundering, or separating, or slip- 

 ping of the strata from off each other. 



Similar rents are seen at Cockburnspath and at St. Abb's 

 Head, some of which are about 180 feet deep, and have small 

 rivulets running at the bottom of them (which are too insigni- 

 ficant to have cut through these hard strata to such a depth) ; 

 but some of them are so shaped that they never could have had 

 rivulets running in them at all. 



This district bears upon its front the well-marked symptoms 

 of diluvial action. Large boulders of mica-slate, and every va- 

 riety of trap are found buried in the alluvial strata on the 

 banks of the Tweed, as well as at the foot of the hills ; and the 

 hills are most generally devoid of vegetation, and bared to the 

 rock upon their south-western flanks. This is particularly the 

 case with Home Castle rock, Cowdenknowes, Stitchel, Bemer- 

 side, and others of less note. 



A good deal of red soil is found scattered over localities, and 

 even among the grauwack^ hills, where alone it could have 

 been brought and deposited by a flood, which swept the red 

 sandstones of Roxburghshire, and, as it were, painted the south 

 front of the Lammermuirs with a vermilion edge, to mark the 

 force and direction of its waters. 



On the Coal-fields of Scotland. By Major-General Lord 

 ' Greenock, F.R.S.E. F.G.S. 



[With a Plate.] 



It is more than forty years since Dr. Ure published his 

 History of the Parishes of Rutherglen a?id Kilbride, in which 



