Notice of sandstone now in the course of formation at Elie, Fifeshire

Abstract

Along the coast between Elie and St Monance* occurs one of the most interesting and instructive sections of carboniferous strata to be seen anywhere—beds of sandstone, shale, and limestone, with sometimes a seam of coal, dipping at almost every angle, and interrupted in many places by masses of trap tuff and innumerable trap dykes. About a mile east from Elie, at a point in this section near the railway bridge at Ardross, there are some beds of shale and impure limestone, thickly studded with Encrinites, Cyathopsis fungites, and a great number of Loxonemae and crushed Productae. Lying on the projecting edges of some of these beds of shale are small patches of sandstone, the recent formation of which is evident from an examination of the beds lying over but not upon them. Above the beds of shale was a bed of tenacious clay, containing recent shells, Littorina littorea, Turritella communis, &c., above which was the blown sand, which accumulates on the surface all along the coast. This sand was washed down by the rain over the clay, and deposited on the edges of the beds of shale, while the siliceous particles of which the sand was composed were cemented together, partly by carbonate of lime held in solution by the rain-water, and derived, no doubt, from the shells occurring in the sand and in the clay, and partly from a ferruginous cementing material contained in the clay. A hard sandstone was thus being formed, very like one of much older