132 OUTLINES OF FIELD-GEOLOGY PART i 



inclination may be conveniently recorded to explain 

 the position of the same dislocation in the underground 

 workings. 



Unless the same bed can be recognised on both sides 

 of a fault as exposed in a cliff or other section, it is evident 

 that the fault at that particular place does not reveal the 

 extent of its displacement It would not, in such a case, 

 be safe to pronounce the fault to be large or small in the 

 amount of its throw, unless we had other evidence by 

 which to identify the beds on either side. A fault with a 

 considerable amount of displacement may make little 

 show in a cliff, while on the other hand, one which, to 

 judge from the jumbled and fractured ends of the beds 

 on either side, might be supposed to be a powerful disloca- 

 tion, may be found to be of comparatively slight import- 

 ance. I may cite in illustration, the section exposed on 

 the cliff near Stonehaven in Kincardineshire, where one 

 of the most notable faults in Great Britain runs out to sea. 

 This fault lies between the ancient crystalline rocks of 

 the Highlands and the red sandstones and conglomerates 

 of the Lowlands of Scotland. So powerful have been its 

 effects that the strata on the Lowland side have been 

 thrown on end for a distance of two miles back from the 

 line of fracture, so as to stand upright along the coast- 

 cliffs, like books on a library shelf. Yet at the actual 

 point where the fault reaches the sea and is cut in section 

 by the cliff, it does not appear as a line of shattered rock. 

 On the contrary, no one, placed upon the spot, would at 

 first be likely to suspect the existence of a fault at all. 

 The red sandstone and the reddened Highland slates 

 have been so compressed and, as it were, welded into 



