XVII. Scottish Carboniferous Stratigraphy: An Introduction to the Study of the Carboniferous Rocks of Scotland

Abstract

I. INTRODUCTION. The writer has frequently been asked by students of geology for a reference to any publication containing a recent comparative account of Scottish Carboniferous stratigraphy. In the following paper an attempt has been made to supply such an account, to review the sources and present state of our knowledge of the Carboniferous rocks of Scotland, and to indicate the lines along which further research is required. The paper is intended primarily for the use of students of geology who may desire an introduction to the study of a subject which has already gathered round it a voluminous but scattered literature. Certain portions of it, however, especially the section on the correlation of the coals and the tables of comparative vertical sections, will prove, it is hoped, of interest and value to the mining community.1 The sources of our information on the subject are as follows:— 1. Natural sections, such as are exposed on the coast or along rivers; and artificial exposures of strata, such as are seen in quarries or railway-cuttings. 2. Underground sections provided by borings, shafts, workings and cross-cut mines. 3. The published records and descriptions of earlier workers. Of natural sections, coastal and river, we have a very considerable number. There is, for example, the splendid series of sections along the Fifeshire coast from Charlestown to Anstruther, and indeed as far north as St. Andrews. On the south side of the Firth of Forth there are the shore sections between This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract