1. Summary of the Discoveries hitherto made in the Ossiferous Beds of the Basins of the Forth and Clyde

Abstract

The author gave a summary of the discoveries which had taken place during the course of the session relative to the ossiferous beds of the basins of the Forth and Clyde. The additional information contained in his paper comprised, in the first place, an account of the older class of strata upon which the carboniferous group of rocks (in which saurian remains had been found) were supposed, in an unconformable position, to rest. Some of these were referred to a system of beds, which geologists consider as of a newer transition class, intermediate to grauwacke schist and coal strata. Thus, it was found that a peculiar hard and gray sandstone, containing mica, and occasionally alternated with siliceous schist,—which in Shetland succeeds to clay-slate; which, near Loch Ness, succeeds to a transition granite; and, on the north of the Tay, to grauwacke schist,—was thrown up on the south of the Forth, near North Berwick, in the form of immense severed beds or fragments, shewing that this transition-rock (an important one in the series of Scottish strata) is to be regarded as in some places fundamental to the coal measures of the district. This older grey sandstone is also alternated, either with aluminous strata of the same general character, or with a hard sandstone of a reddish colour.