116 Lord Greenock on the Coal Formation of the 
excited so much interest were first noticed in the coal-fields of 
Scotland, the important conclusions that might have been derived 
from this valuable addition to the paleontology of that period 
appear to have been entirely overlooked. 
It may, however, be worthy of notice in this place, that al- 
though traces of some of the more recent secondary formations, 
such as the lias and oolite, and even chalk flints, have been ob- 
served in the northern parts of the island where primary rocks 
chiefly prevail; none whatever of a later date than the coal-mea- 
sures (if we except the alluvial deposits) have been met with in 
the Great Valley of the Scottish Lowlands. For the red sand- 
stones of that district do not appear in any instance to have been 
identified with the new red sandstone of England, but they have, 
apparently on good grounds, been referred by the best geological 
authorities to the lower part of the carboniferous series. 
Professor Sepewick * and Mr Conyseare + have remarked 
that some of the inferior beds of the English coal-measures, such 
as the millstone grit and limestone shale, which are but of little 
importance in the southern coal-fields, spread out as they proceed 
northwards, presenting subordinate beds of coal; and as these 
strata approach the transition chain of the Scottish border, the 
lower beds of the carboniferous limestone, in like manner, be- 
come subdivided, and alternate with coal, sandstone, and shale, 
the calcareous beds decreasing, and the coal-beds increasing, until 
they assume the character of a regular coal formation, to which 
that of Scotland bears so much analogy, as to render it highly 
probable that the same law has extended beyond these mountains, 
and that the Scottish coal-measures occupying the great valley 
of the Lowlands, are equally referable to the lower beds of the 
carboniferous limestone group. 
* Sepewrcx’s Address to the Geological Society, 1831. 
+ Conyszarn’s Report on Geology, Transactions of the British Association, 
vol. i. 
