XIII. On the Fossiliferous Strata lying between the Lower and Upper Limestones in the Beith and Dalry District

Abstract

Continuing my investigation into the fossiliferous character of the rocks of this locality, the present paper in advancing order treats of the strata that intervene between the lower and the upper limestones. This includes about 100 fathoms, made up of shales, sandstones, thin beds of coarse limestones, ironstones, and coal; and contains all the coals and ironstones worked in the Dalry mineral field. As in my former papers, my object is to give a short notice of the physical and fossiliferous characters of the strata so far as known. Without attempting an exhaustive list of the fossils found, still the list appended gives the whole that have as yet come under my knowledge without having recourse to microscopical examination. I do not say anything at present upon the contemporaneous age of these coal and ironstone measures, as to do so to any purpose would overburden the paper. Intending to discuss this subject in a supplementary paper, I leave it in the meantime with the following remark from Sir Charles Lyell's “Student's Elements of Geology,” page 377 :—“These Scotch sedimentary beds containing coal may be older than any of the coal measures of central and southern England, as being coeval with the mountain limestone of the south.” The fact that the strata, which are the subject of my remarks, lie in the middle of the Carboniferous limestone, and are therefore older than those which overlie them, bears out the correctness of the above quotation. To simplify the paper as much as This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract