XIV.—The Igneous Geology of the Bathgate and Linlithgow Hills

Extract

The Bathgate and Linlithgow Hills occupy a well-defined belt of rising ground stretching S.S.W.–N.N.E. from Bathgate to Bo'ness, and included in the marginal portions of sheets 31 and 32 of the 1-in. maps of the Ordnance and Geological Surveys. Throughout the range the steeper slopes face the west, while the eastern flanks are deeply buried in drift. The glaciated contours are well seen from the east, and the sky-line is in several places deeply indented by glacial grooves. The physical geography is throughout intimately dependent upon the geological structure, but the latter is simplicity itself when contrasted with the complicated structure of the shale-fields to the east. Alternating zones of volcanic and sedimentary rocks strike parallel with the direction of elongation of the range from Bathgate to Bonnytoun Hill, and these are cut by a later connected series of dykes and sills of intrusive igneous rock. The latter, as a rule, are more resistant than the lavas, and form the more prominent features of the landscape, while the sedimentary intercalations may frequently be traced, even where no rock is visible, by the trough-like depressions which have been hollowed out of them between the zones of lava.