924 DR ROBERT CAMPBELL ON 
secondary and older strata meet each other”; the numerous east-and-west dykes of 
whin and porphyry intruded into the secondary strata; and the porphyry dykes in the 
mica schist area trending in a direction at right angles to the strike of the schists, are 
in turn clearly described and their positions noted on the admirable sketch-map which 
accompanies the memoir. While the paper as a whole is a splendid record of close 
observation, the account given of the whin dyke near the House of the Burn may be 
singled out as a brilliant piece of descriptive geology. In a second paper,* read to the 
Wernerian Society in 1810, Imrie described the thick conglomerates between Fowls 
Heugh and Stonehaven. He noted the occurrence of pebbles of jasper, porphyries, 
(quartzite) and porphyries 
predominate. He recorded also the presence of a vertical bed of “greenstone” at 
” 
eranites, gneiss, quartz, etc., and pointed out that “ quartz 
Stonehaven harbour and a ‘‘clay porphyry ” at Cowie. 
Of the many short sketches of local geology embodied in the New Statistical 
Account of Scotland, vol. xi.—Forfar and Kincardine—two, namely those on the 
parishes of Fordoun and St Cyrus, are of considerable historical interest. In his 
account of the geology of Fordoun, written’ in 1837, the eminent geologist Professor 
(afterwards Principal) James Davip ForBest compared the “transition clay slate” 
series at the Clattering Bridge with the “ primary” rocks of the North Esk section 
described by Imrie. He noted the occurrence of a “‘ clay porphyry ” in the same relative 
position in each locality—in what we now know to be the line of the Highland Boundary 
fault ; he suggested the correlation of the limestones in the North Esk, at Clattering 
Bridge, and at Mains of Drumtochty--a suggestion fully confirmed many years after- 
wards by the detailed mapping by Mr Barrow, who has designated them the Margie 
limestone ; and further he recorded from the Clattering Bridge section a bed containing 
‘red jasper in dots ”—an observation which gives additional evidence of the occurrence 
of the Margie series of Mr Barrow at that locality. Professor Forsms’s paper contains 
also an admirable account of the field relations of one of the east-and-west trap dykes, 
and he sees in the presence of this dyke ‘“‘an adequate cause for the rapid rise of the 
sandstone strata” in the Ferdun burn. 
The first record of fossils from Kincardineshire is given in the account of the geology 
of St Cyrus { written in 1841 by James Murray, the local schoolmaster. In an 
interesting footnote it is stated that fossils were first discovered in Canterland Den in 
the “present year” by Mr James Perer of Canterland. These consisted of “ broad 
tapering leaves, fragments of the stems, branches, and leaves of fuci, called fucordes, 
and rounded masses of oval or circular dots, resembling the compressed seeds of the 
strawberry, and supposed by Mr Mrxxar to be the roe of an extinct species of gigantic 
lobster.” The fossil last mentioned is undoubtedly Parka decipiens. . 
If we may judge from the absence of published papers, the geology of Kincardineshire 
must have been rather neglected during the next twenty years—a fact which is rather 
* Mem. Wernerian Soc., vol. i, p. 453, 1811. 
+ The New Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. xi. Kincardineshire, p. 72, 1845. { Ibid., p. 274, 1845. 
