22 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



fault. If the Craig and Shotts Hills be proved to be of 

 contemporaneous age with the Bathgate Hills, the proof 

 will be almost conclusive that the mineral is simply a local 

 deposit. 



The contemporaneous nature of the traps of the Bathgate 

 Hills is very clearly made out from the local section. If we 

 begin our examination of the hills at the Clinking Stane, a 

 mile and a half above Bathgate, we shall find to the east- 

 wards, at a south-east clip, the fresh-water Burdiehouse 

 limestone strata much intercalated with igneous rocks, which, 

 along with the faults already alluded to, help to throw the 

 strata into a number of small basins. Proceeding towards 

 Bathgate, the succession, until we come to the outcrop of 

 the Balbairdie gas-coal and ironstone, is a series of marine 

 limestones intercalated with beds of contemporaneous green- 

 stones. Beyond the outcrop of the Balbairdie gas-coal, we 

 soon come on the fault bounding the outcrop of the Tor- 

 banehill mineral. 



Perhaps no local section in Scotland exhibits so many 

 petralogical characteristics demonstrating the contempo- 

 raneity of the igneous and aqueous rocks. A little beyond 

 the site of the ancient crater, at the Clinking Stane, we 

 traverse the outcrop of two limestone beds, which clearly 

 testify three marked changes in the physical features of the 

 land. First, The Kirkton limestone, with its leafy laminse 

 and curiously baked beds of cherty porcelain, its interstrati- 

 fled ash, and over-capping basalt, indicate a close proximity 

 to volcanic activity. Its nuvio-marine fossils indicate it to 

 be the stage when the great river which formed the fresh- 

 water strata of the east side of the axis ceased. A few hun- 

 dred yards westward we meet the outcrop of the Peter s Hill 

 bed, and its decidedly marine fossils clearly indicate how soon 

 the land had given place to a sea deep enough even for build- 

 ing corals to begin their long labours. After the great lime- 

 stone belt of the hills had been thus formed, a complete 

 physico-geographical change again ensued, in which dry 

 land had the predominance. The Balbairdie gas-coal series 

 were now deposited; and the sheets of bedded trap with which 

 they are intercalated must have been erupted from the vol- 



