22 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
fault. If the Craig and Sbotts Hills be proved to be of 
contemporaneous age with the Bathgate Hilla, 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 dip, the fresh-water Burdiehouse 
limestone strata much intercalated with igneous rocks, which, 
along with the faults already alluded to, help to throw tlie 
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 laminae 
and curiously baked beds of cherty porcelain, its interstrati- 
fied ash, and over-capping basalt, indicate a close proximity 
to volcanic activity. Its fluvio-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- 
