MAKINE FOSSILS IN THE CALCIPEEOUS SANDSTONE OF FIFE. 559 



41 . On the Zones of Marine Fossils in the Calciferotjs Sandstone 

 Series of Fife. By Jas. "W. Kirkbt, Esq. (Read June 23, 

 1880.) 



(Communicated by Prof. T. Eupert Jones, F.E.S., F.G.S.) 



The presence of marine beds in the Calciferous Sandstones of the 

 east of Scotland has been noticed by various authors. The officers 

 of the Geological Survey, for example, draw attention to their 

 occurrence in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh and in East Lothian, 

 in their memoirs of those districts *. The Rev. Thomas Brown 

 also gives an account of several beds containing marine fossils in his 

 paper on the Carboniferous strata of Fife t ; and, more recently, 

 Mr. E. Etheridge, jun., has published a paper, in the Journal of this 

 Society, on the Invertebrate fauna of the rocks of this series in the 

 vicinity of Edinburgh, which includes all the marine species known 

 to him from that district %. 



As supplementary to these and other notices, I propose in this 

 paper to describe the marine beds that I have met with in an ex- 

 amination of the Calciferous Sandstones of the east of Fife. These 

 beds I shall notice in their descending order of position, together 

 with such details of the intermediate measures and fossils as may 

 assist in the attainment of a general idea of the palaeontology of the 

 formation. 



In the east of Fife these rocks form the coast-line from near St. 

 Monan's, on by Fife Ness, to St. Andrew's ; but the most complete 

 section is that exposed at their first outcrop, at a point east of the 

 first-named place to Anstruther, a distance of two miles or more. 

 The strata of this section dip to the west, usually at a high angle, 

 and the thickness exposed exceeds 3900 feet. Unfortunately at 

 this depth the dip is reversed, so that the junction of the basement 

 beds of the series with the underlying Old lied Sandstone is not 

 seen. To this extent the section is incomplete, and there is no other 

 on the Fife coast to show what is here wanting ; so that there 

 may possibly be marine strata of still earlier date in the Carboni- 

 ferous series of the east of Scotland than any to be noticed in this 

 paper. 



Notwithstanding the great thickness of strata shown in this 

 section, the whole of it is probably included in the " Cementstone 

 Group " of the Geological Survey. At least there is nothing seen 

 like the lowest or *' Cornstone Group" as described by Prof. 

 Geikie and his colleagues in the memoirs on the districts south of the 

 Forth. The lowest strata exposed at Anstruther are pretty much 

 the same in character as the measures above, though perhaps rather 



^- Geology of the Neighbourhood of Edinburgh, 1861, pp. 18, 30, 146. Geo- 

 logy of East Lothian, 1866, pp. 28, 73. 



t Trans. Eoyal Society of Edinburgh, 1860, vol. xxii. pp. 398-400. See also 

 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc.*l859, vol. xv. p. 59. 



I Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. 1878, vol. xxxiv. p. 1. 



