III. On some Special Indications of Volcanic Action in the Carboniferous Period at Burntisland, Firth of Forth

Extract

On the northern margin of the Firth of Forth, opposite Edinburgh, a line of steep craggy slope sweeps round from behind the village of Burntisland to the shore about half a mile eastward. The highest and most precipitous portion rises to a height of 631 feet; and the space between its base and the shore is so short that when seen from a short distance, the hill seems to shoot almost directly out of the sea. Hence these heights form conspicuous landmarks all over the Lothians. Their scarred fronts and verdurous slopes bear all the characteristic features of the minor hills in the lowlands of Scotland — a union of brown mouldering crag, often steep and bold, with soft green hollows, and with shelving sides that are either cumbered with ruins from the cliff overhead, or dotted with bushes of golden gorse. Such scenery is to a geological eye eminently ‘trappean;’ it at once suggests beds of greenstone, basalt, and ash, with the other concomitants of ancient volcanic eruptions. And truly amid all the rich development of volcanic phenomena in these Lowlands, the rocks of the Burntisland shore deserve to stand up as conspicuous landmarks. They have been laid bare by rains and frosts and the waves of the Firth along some miles of the coast-line, where they can be studied, bed after bed, in the minutest detail. I know of no such section in any other part of the kingdom.