On some less common Bathgate fossils

Abstract

The limestone of the Bathgate Hills abounds with fossils, and these are for the most part in a remarkably fine state of preservation. When wholly enclosed in the limestone, they always retain their perfect form, that is, if they have been embedded entire, though their external markings are not always to be seen. These markings are there, but the fine coral or other debris that had filled up the shell in many cases separates more readily from that shell than the shell does from the matrix in which it is enclosed; hence we have what are called casts of fossils. From the cast it is often difficult to determine the species; by a little careful chipping, however, one sometimes succeeds in getting a fragment showing the external markings. When the fossils lie at the top of any of the divisions of the limestone, and have been only in part embedded in it, they are seldom entire, at times distorted besides, especially the larger ones. Those that occur in the thin shale partings between the massive layers of limestone are almost always flattened and imperfect. In many parts in the west of Scotland, Mr Young, in his work on that district, states that it is mainly in the shales that the fossils are to be found, and few in the pure limestones. In the Bathgate Hill, on the other hand, the fossils are most numerous and finest in the limestone. A few miles to the south, however, where the limestone becomes