The occurrence of plant remains in Olivine Beds in the Bo'ness Coalfield

Abstract

In a paper which I read before the Edinburgh Geological Society on 26th January 1880, and which appears in the Transactions, vol. iii. pp. 304-325, a general stratigraphical account is given of the extensive series of interbedded volcanic rocks of the Bo'ness Coalfield in Linlithgowshire. During the eleven years that have elapsed since that date some new facts of considerable geological interest have been elicited in the course of mining and quarrying operations in the district. Among these the most remarkable is perhaps the discovery of undoubted fragments of plants in some of the sheets of basalt interstratified with the carboniferous beds. In my former paper I referred to the occurrence of coniferous wood in some of the ash beds and neck tuffs that belong to the old volcanos of the carboniferous limestone series of Linlithgowshire, but such plant remains, although interesting, are not particularly remarkable or surprising in their mode of occurrence, as similar remains have been found elsewhere, and their origin is not at all difficult of explanation. The plant remains I shall now briefly describe were found under much more unusual circumstances, and I may safely say that very few, if any, similar cases have been discovered in this country at least, in which the matrix surrounding the fossil consists of a crystalline massive volcanic rock. During the summer of 1890 I had occasion, while carrying out some improvements at Cowdenhill, in the village of Grangepans, to remove part of a knoll of trap that forms a