INTRODUCTORY. 3 



Dura, Blebo, and Kemback, nestle on the sloping banks of the 

 dell, amidst stately clusters of plantation ; the church and 

 manse occupy an elevated plateau in a bay of the rock ; the 

 ever-busy mills, and their neat workmen's cottages, are seen at 

 intervals beneath ; the Castle of Dairsie stands in ruins in the 

 close vicinity of the parish church, the erection of Archbishop 

 Spottiswoode, still in perfect preservation, and the former famed 

 in Scottish story as the house of parliament in which were 

 discussed the contending claims of Bruce and Baliol. Here, in 

 the caverns of the rock, persecuted saints have found a refuge 

 in covenanting days ; a short detour to the left presents a sight 

 of Magus Muir, of cruel memory and most indefensible policy ; 

 and nearer to the right are the lands of Pitscottie, the birth- 

 place and retreat of llobert Lindsay, the learned author of the 

 History of Scotland. 



No apology therefore is required for a separate Memoir of 

 a locality combining so many points of historic interest and 

 geologic illustration. Dura Den ranks with the celebrated de- 

 posits of Cromarty, Caithness, Elgin, Isle of Eigg, Clashbennie, 

 Babruddery, and Carmylie, in their vast stores of organic 

 remains, while it presents as yet a monopoly of several genera 

 and species of the ganoid order of fishes — the precise types of 

 organic life, and beautiful enamelled forms of the yellow sand- 

 stone of the district, being nowhere else discovered in any of 

 our geological formations. Lying nearly equidistant between 

 the firths of Forth and Tay, the county town of Cupar, and 

 the city of St. Andrews, the railway traverses the opening of 

 the Den, and on every side it is of the easiest access. 



Dura Den, thus distinguished in its local and archaeological 

 connexions, is about two miles in length in its direct lineal 

 extension from the church of Spottiswoode to the lands of 

 Pitscottie. The record of events of their own time, by these 

 celebrated chroniclers, is perhaps less trustworthy than the 

 legends inscribed on the rocks beneatli, of creatures that battled 

 in their hard scaly armature, and in the far antepast of geologic 



