76 
THE PERMIAN VOLCANOES 
BOOK VII 
the neck at Buddo Ness, on the coast east of St. Andrews, which measures 
only 20 yards across. 
From the way in which the vents have been dissected by the sea along 
the Fife coast, the geologist is enabled to study in minute detail the 
effects of tire volcanic operations upon the strata through which the 
funnels have been drilled. Considerable variation may be observed in the 
nature and amount of change. 
Sometimes the orifice has been 
made without any noticeable 
alteration of the sandstones, 
shales and limestones, which 
retain their dip and strike up 
to the very wall of the chimney. 
Usually there is more or less 
jumbling and crushing of the 
stratification, and often a considerable amount of induration. As a typical 
example of these effects I give a section from the margin of the neck of tuff 
on the east side of Elie Harbour (Fig. 2 1 5). Here the sandstones and shales 
(a) have been doubled over and dragged down against the tuff (b). They 
have likewise been hardened into a kind of quartzite, and this alteration 
extends for about 20 to 30 feet from the edge of the neck. 
The material which has filled up the vents is almost entirely fragmental, 
varying from a coarse agglomerate to a fine volcanic tuff. Some minor necks 
have been completely or in great part filled with angular debris of the ordinary 
rocks of the neighbourhood. In the western neck on the Largo shore, for 
example, which rises through the red rocks of the Upper Coal-measures, the 
material consists largely of fragments of red sandstone, clay and shale. 
Between Elie and St. Monans, some of the necks are filled almost wholly with 
debris of black shale and encrinal limestone. 
There does not appear to be any relation between the diameter' of a 
funnel and the size of the blocks that now fill it. Some of the larger necks, 
for example, consist of comparatively fine tuff. The Buddo Ness, on the 
other hand, though so small a vent, is packed with blocks of shale six feet 
long, while the sandstone through which the orifice has been drilled passes, as 
usual, into quartzite for several yards away from the edge. As an example 
of the general aspect presented by one of the coarse agglomerates in the 
necks of the Fife coast, a view is given in Fig. 21 G of a portion of the neck 
at Ardross, about two miles east from Elie. This thoroughly volcanic 
accumulation is here shown to consist of blocks of all sizes heaped together 
without any definite arrangement. 
Since the first stage in the history of the vents has been the perforation 
of the solid crust by explosion, .and the consequent production of debris from 
the disrupted rocks, we may hope to detect underneath the pile of thoroughly 
volcanic ejections, traces of the first explosions. I have been much struck 
with the fact that in the East of Fife such traces may frequently be found 
here and there within the outer border of the vents. At Largo, and 
Fig. 215. — Section of tlie strata at the edge of the volcanic 
vent on the east side of Elie Harbour. 
