34 Fingal and East Coast. 



In front of the mansion of James Grant, Esq., of 

 Tullochgorum, there is a picturesque crescent-like vale 

 embosomed in terraced hills of greenstone : along- the 

 base of these are several deep recesses in which the clay- 

 slate formation shows itself. It is there constituted of 

 alternating seams of finely laminated argillaceous 

 matter, and of arenaceous and flaggy beds, intermixed 

 and crossed with ferruginous septa. These beds are 

 inclined at an angle of about 75° to the south east ; and 

 there rests upon their broken edges a series of kindred 

 beds, dipping to east by north at an angle of not more 

 than 15° from the horizon. 



These overlying beds are in the first instance clayey 

 and arenaceous, and, to all appearance, composed of 

 nearly the same material as the vertical beds on which 

 they repose : but, as they recede from direct contact and 

 immediate neighbourhood, they are separated by thin 

 layers of a schistose clay ironstone, by a gritty ferrugi- 

 nous sandstone, and by seams of fine conglomerate ; and 

 there is no longer any appearance of the ferruginous septa 

 which obtained in the nether beds. Whatever the agency 

 may have been which determined that semi-crystalline 

 structure, it ceased to operate at or about the period when 

 the transition strata were forced up to an angle of about 

 60°. Thenceforward the ferruginous matter was diffused 

 in schistose beds of clay. 



Pursuing the series of beds upwards in this locality, I 

 found them pass into laminated clayey beds of a yellow- 

 ish and brownish slate colour, into tliick compact beds 

 of clay, and into seams of soft clayey sandstone, having 

 a yellow and brownish yellow tint, which is in many 

 places tastefully striped with red. 



Upon two or three eminences immediately behind the 

 village at Fingal, building-stone and flag-stone have been 

 quarried from this section of the group of beds of soft 



