Finally, let it be assumed, in the argument for the geologists, that vast masses of vegetable matter are already stored up and duly arranged over the sea-bottom, that more is continually accumulating, and that there is heat enough under the earth’s crust to bituminize and indurate the whole. A new coal epoch is thus approaching, or rather, even now, we are living within its influences. But the question occurs, when completed, of what avail would it be to man, who would inevitably be swept off the earth in the elevation and breaking up of the strata from the depths beneath? Geology makes known the undoubted fact, that our planet has been subjected to many and most extensive changes before it was reduced to its present condition. These, from the beginning, have been all found subservient to the improvement and well-being of the human family. The next, upon a similar scale of magnitude, would inevitably prove the destruction of the race.
1. Sigillaria pachyderma. 2. Stigmaria ficoides. 3. Lepidodendron Sternbergii.
CHAPTER IX.
GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF FIFESHIRE—DIVISIONS OF THE COAL-FIELD.
The general remarks on the coal deposit, in which we have been led to indulge in the two last chapters, may be verified by, as they all receive the most ample illustrations from, the admirable arrangement, position, and distribution of the metals in the counties of Fife, Clackmannan, Stirling, Lanark, and Renfrew, which are extensions of one great basin. Fifeshire alone contains an epitome of the system, divided as it is into numerous compartments, the encrinital limestone cropping out and marking their several boundaries. Indeed, the whole series of the carboniferous rocks are here laid open for examination on every hill-side, in the numerous ravines which intersect the district, and along the eastern and southern coast-lines. Approaching the coal-field from the north, a panoramic section at once fills the eye, and will rivet the attention, as, stepping from the strata of the antecedent epoch, you find, in immediate superposition as well as contrast of color, the multiplied and more diversified reliquiæ of the coal-measures.
The eruptive rocks will also be here studied to great advantage, where they have played no insignificant part in giving shape and outline to the landscape, and in laying open the inclosed minerals. It is impossible to convey any adequate idea, in mere description, of the marvelous display of plutonic action of which this peninsula has once been the theater: subterranean movements crushing and grinding into fragments the solid strata, parting and heaving them asunder, or crumpling into complicated folds the tougher and more unyielding beds, as if it had been some fabric of manufacture tossed and twisted by the wind. The bituminous breccia at Pettycur, Elie, Balcarras Den, and which appears again at the Rock and Spindle near St. Andrews, affords a remarkable instance of the action of the intrusive rocks in breaking, and transmuting into a composite paste, the series of beds constituting the coal-measures, in which every one of the strata has its representative in fragments, from the size of a garden pea to masses a foot in diameter or even upward. The storm lifts the ocean into lofty curling billows, leaving long narrow troughs and frightful yawning chasms beneath. Here, in like manner, and all over the surface, the crust has been broken up, and the minerals tossed about, or agitated like wreck upon the waves, and, upon subsiding, have been cast into the form of ridges, or broad tabular masses. The ridges, with their serrated outcrops, in the interior of the county, have been gradually rounded off and covered with soil; while, by the shore, they still present the effects of the violent commotions to which they have been subjected, exposed and laid bare by the action of the sea, upon the lower levels of the disrupted strata. The Ochils, Lammermuirs, and Pentlands, were already above the waters, calmly contemplating the troubled scene, as an inner circle of basalt and greenstone hills arose—the Lomonds, Largo Law, the Binn, and Binnarty, on the north; Stirling rock, Corstorphine hill, Arthur’s Seat, Berwick Law, and the Bass, on the south—which were severally lifted into view, to be stationed as so many sentinels on the outposts of the field.
The coal metals shared in the general elevation of the hills, where they are either folded round their bases, or are depending, drapery-wise, from their tops. Thus the members of the inferior carboniferous series are raised about eleven hundred feet along the Lomond ridge, encompassing the east and west cones, and training westward by Binnarty and the Cleish hills. Largo and Kellie Laws have each their coal basins, of workable minerals, stretched along their eminences, and dipping toward the Teasses and Ceres basins. On the low grounds which skirt them on the south, the metals dip rapidly into the Forth, and are collected in various hollows or independent bands by the shore. The intermediate coal-fields, which occupy the center of the basin, are regulated in their strike and inclination by the dykes and outbursts of trap by which the strata have been invaded. A limestone traverses the county at right angles from north to south, emerging at Ravenscrag, which forms a line of demarkation betwixt the number of the coal seams on its opposite sides. The Lochgellic, Cowdenbeath, and Dunfermline basins, on the west, average about twelve to fourteen workable coal-bands, while on the east of the limestone, the Dysart, Wemyss, Teasses, and Ceres basins run from twenty to thirty-three of various quality and thickness. The Clackmannan coal-field recovers in numerical proportion, where there are twenty-four seams of coal, from two inches to nine feet thick, and two great slips, which raise the metals successively 700 and 1230 feet, as they abut against the Ochil range. In the Elgin basin there are twenty-seven beds of coal, with a thickness of fifty-six feet.
Fifeshire thus owes its diversified shape and contour, and access to all its vast mineral treasures, to the early disturbances by which it has been so thoroughly dislocated and furrowed. Every district has a section, separate and independent, of its own. The ground you tread on is, every foot of it, a cabinet of wonders—literally a necropolis, a city of the dead. Go where you will, chronicles of the olden time are before and around you, while everywhere—
“and at your side