I. The Red Sandstone of Toward

Abstract

The Red Sandstones of Toward skirt the Firth of Clyde for a distance of 3½ miles to the south-west of Innellan Pier, and are cut off from the Highland schists by the great Boundary Fault, of which a very fine exposure may be seen on the shore at the gate of Toward Castle. The sandstones are generally composed of minute well-rounded grains of quartz, with, in certain places, a considerable amount of felspathic dust, cemented together by ferric oxide. They dip in various directions generally at low angles, with a good deal of cross bedding, and contain occasional bands of conglomerate or breccia, mainly of vein quartz and Highland schists, sometimes a few inches thick, but often represented by only a few scattered pebbles. No organic remains have been discovered, but in places there are to be seen numerous small spheres, from which the red colouring matter has been discharged, the oxide being converted into a silicate of iron. Here and there the surface of the sandstones is roughened by a network of sharp ridges enclosing between them cup-like depressions, which are probably sun cracks subsequently filled with drifted sand, and have consequently resisted denudation better than the original deposit, as the sand grains would be more likely to be drifted into the cracks than the lighter felspathic dust. A well-marked feature is the occurrence of quite a number of white siliceous limestones or cornstones, conformable to the sandstones, and sometimes as much as 5 to 6 feet thick. Some This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract