20 GEOLOGY OF THE LOTHIANS. 



stone, and the Coal Formation, separate, without ever 

 blending into each other, the New Red Sandstone from the 

 Transition Rocks. It is this alone which has made some 

 declare that the series of red sandstone strata, which, in 

 some places, is found above the true Coal Deposits, be- 

 longs to the New Red Sandstone. To determine the age of 

 strata, they must be examined through their whole extent, 

 and their position in the globe's crust is only to be ascertain- 

 ed by studying all their various phenomena. Though the red 

 sandstone, white sandstone, and limestone, of the Lothians, 

 may not, from the circumstance of their being so intimately 

 connected, be considered exactly similar to the carboniferous 

 series of other districts, though, perhaps, they exhibit not 

 that invariableness of position which characterizes them 

 elsewhere, still, in the circumstance of the red sandstone and 

 conglomerate being most remarkably developed in those 

 parts of the country which are in the vicinity of the older 

 rocks, they exhibit an appearance similar to that observable 

 in other and more distant localities. The conglomerates of 

 the lower parts of the series are, from the size of the mass- 

 es which compose them, highly indicative of the great me- 

 chanical action which must have operated in their forma- 

 tion. 



Though conchological contents characteristic of a forma- 

 tion, the position of which relatively to others is known, be 

 found in districts at a great distance from those in which the 



By comparing this series of red and white sandstone with the same as 

 developed in the Lothians, or even in the adjoining coast of Ayrshire, 

 the identity of the two is easily made out, and that sandstone which was 

 by these gentlemen considered as the new red sandstone, becomes on- 

 ly a member of the great secondary series of the Lothians, no one of 

 which can be naturally separated from the others, if throughout the 

 whole extent of their distribution we examine their mode of arrangement 

 relatively to each other. This view of the sandstone of Arran was pro- 

 posed by Professor Jameson, in one of a series of memoirs on the geo- 

 logy of Arran, read to the Wernerian Society several years ago. 



