Note on a section recently exposed near Straiton

Abstract

The excavations in progress at the new brickworks, half a mile to the east of Straiton, furnish an opportunity for examining a series of beds, of which this is probably the best if not the only exposure in the immediate vicinity of Edinburgh. I have twice gone over the ground in company with Mr Henderson (whose assistance I take this opportunity of gratefully acknowledging), and we agree in placing these beds in the upper part of the Burdiehouse division of the Calciferous Sandstone series. The strata between the Burdiehouse Limestone and the First Marine or Gilmerton Limestone, the conventional boundary established by the Geological Survey of Scotland between the Calciferous Sandstones and the Carboniferous Limestone series, were surveyed and mapped by Mr Howell, and in the explanation of Sheet 32, the map of the Edinburgh district, we have the first description of importance of what I find convenient to designate the ‶Upper Burdiehouse Series.″ Since the date of the publication of the Survey’s Memoir in 1861, much additional information has accumulated relative to this uppermost member of the Calciferous Sandstone Series. Railways both on the east and west of the Pentlands have been constructed, intersecting it at various points; and the rise and growth of the great oil industry have provided fresh material of interest, both to the palaeontologist and to the physical geologist. Subsequent to the publication of the Memoir, appeared a ‶Descriptive Catalogue of Rock Specimens collected by the Geological Survey of Scotland, and exhibited in the Edinburgh