1 ]6 Lord Greenock on the Coal Formation of the 



excited so much interest were first noticed in the coal-fields of 

 Scotland, the important conclusions that might have been derived 

 from this valuable addition to the palaeontology of that period 

 appear to have been entirely overlooked. 



It may, however, be worthy of notice in this place, that al- 

 though traces of some of the more recent secondary formations, 

 such as the Has and oolite, and even chalk flints, have been ob- 

 served in the northern parts of the island where primary rocks 

 chiefly prevail ; none whatever of a later date than the coal-mea- 

 sures (if we except the alluvial deposits) have been met with in 

 the Great Valley of the Scottish Lowlands. For the red sand- 

 stones of that district do not appear in any instance to have been 

 identified with the new red sandstone of England, but they have, 

 apparently on good grounds, been referred by the best geological 

 authorities to the lower part of the carboniferous series. 



Professor Sedgwick* and Mr Conybeare f have remarked 

 that some of the inferior beds of the English coal-measures, such 

 as the millstone grit and limestone shale, which are but of little 

 importance in the southern coal-fields, spread out as they proceed 

 northwards, presenting subordinate beds of coal ; and as these 

 strata approach the transition chain of the Scottish border, the 

 lower beds of the carboniferous limestone, in like manner, be- 

 come subdivided, and alternate with coal, sandstone, and shale, 

 the calcareous beds decreasing, and the coal-beds increasing, until 

 they assume the character of a regular coal formation, to which 

 that of Scotland bears so much analogy, as to render it highly 

 probable that the same law has extended beyond these mountains, 

 and that the Scottish coal-measures occupying the great valley 

 of the Lowlands, are equally referable to the lower beds of the 

 carboniferous limestone group. 



* Sedgwick's Address to the Geological Society, 1831. 



•f Conybeare's Report on Geology, Transactions of the British Association^ 



vol. 



