32 AGRICULTURAL SURVEY OF dap. I. 



whin rock strata prevail, and there neither coal 

 nor lime are found near the shore. At Dalachy, 

 near Aberdour, there is a lime-stone of excellent 

 quality belonging to the Earl of Morton. In 

 the parish of Burntisland, there are inexhausti- 

 ble quarries of lime-stone, which is exported to 

 Carron and other places, in great quantities, 

 But between this and the west end of Kirkaldy, 

 the whin rock again intervenes, and neither coal 

 nor lime appears, except in the east of King- 

 horn, where lime is found at Abden, within sea 

 mark, and at Innertiel, about half a mile west of 

 Kirkaldy. In the lime-rock last mentioned, 

 though elevated at least 50 feet above the sea 

 at high water, a prodigious quantity of sea-shells 

 are found incorporated with the solid mass. 

 From this circumstance it is presumeable, that 

 the calcareous matter forming the rock must 

 have been, at some remote period, in a fluid 

 state ; and that these similar strata must have 

 been formed by the agency of water, and not 

 by fire, as some theorists alledge ; for if fire had 

 been the agent, all these shells must have been 

 calcined, and their original form entirely de* 

 stroyed. 



In the parishes of Abbotshall and Kirkaldy, a 

 few seams of coal are found within a mile of the 

 shore ; but none of them are wrought at present. 

 In the parish of Dysart, there is a large and ex-? 

 tensive bed of coal, the property of Sir James 

 Sinclair Erskine, stretching from the sea to the 

 water of Orr. The part of this coal, that is just 

 now working, is eighteen feet thick, divided in- 

 to three seams by two thin strata of till. It was 

 discovered and wrought above 300 years 



