XX. — On the Coal-field of Brora in Sutherlandshire, and some other 

 Stratified Deposits in the North of Scotland. 



By Roderick Impey MurchisoNj Esq. Sec. G.S. F.R.S. 



[Read January 5th, and February 2nd, 1827.] 



iHE peculiarities of the Brora coal-field had excited considerable interest 

 among- geologists^ a few specimens of its more remarkable fossils having been 

 occasionally sent to England. My attention was particularly called to this 

 tracts by the Rev. Dr. Buckland and Mr. C. Lyell, who having visited Brora 

 in the year 1824, expressed an opinion that the strata there were wholly un- 

 connected with the coal-formation below the new red sandstone, and were in 

 fact the equivalent of part of the oolitic series*. I was thus led to devote last 

 summer to an examination of the district : and for the purpose of comparing 

 its structure with that of certain parts of England and Scotland, which ap- 

 peared to have the same physical characters, I previously surveyed the coast 

 of Yorkshire, from Filey Bay to Whitby, comprising the coal-tract of the 

 Eastern Moorlands; and afterwards some of the islands of the Hebrides. I 



* The only printed notice of the Brora coal, with which I am acquainted, is contained in a 

 general account of the Clackmannan and other Scottish coal-Jields by Mr. Bald (Memoirs of the 

 Wernerian Society, Edin. vol. iii. p. 138.) But it ought to be mentioned that a manuscript sketch 

 of this tract has been read before the Philosophical Society of Inverness, by Mr. Anderson of that 

 place ; and if the avocations of this gentleman had permitted his examining analogous deposits in 

 England, the present memoir might have been anticipated. 



On the Yorkshire coast I had the great advantage of being accompanied by Mr. William 

 Smith, whose accurate acquaintance with the different oolitic formations has enabled him to de- 

 tect in Yorkshire, nearly all the beds belonging to that series in the south of England. Professor 

 Sedgwick had established the general relations of these strata in a paper published in the An- 

 nals of Philosophy for May 1826 ; and the Rev. Wm. Vernon has since pointed out the exist- 

 ence, along the south-western boundary of the Wolds, of several of the beds discovered by 

 Mr. Smith near Scarborough (Annals of Phil. June 1826.) In procuring illustrative fossils, 

 with a view to comparison, I was kindly assisted by Mr. Williamson of Scarborough, a most ac- 

 curate and zealous collector. For a detail of the order of beds in this district, see p. 297, note t- 



