Rises a mountain-rock in rugged pride,
And in that rock are shapes of shells, and forms
Of creatures in old worlds.”
The cuttings of the Edinburgh and Perth Railway give excellent sections of the various minerals of the county, from the gray sandstone to the uppermost coverings of the coal-field. Entering Fifeshire from the west, your course lies deep among the detritus of the various members of the old red series already noticed. At the Newburgh Station, and under the cliffs of Clatchart, the gray sandstone and cornstone may be observed—the latter is regularly stratified; the former is embraced among the igneous rocks, broken, isolated, and inclined at every possible degree to the horizon. Clatchart Crag itself has been stirred to its foundations; the huge mass, reverberating now to the passage of other fires, rests on highly inclined beds of the gray sandstone; the black transverse dyke of basalt, a few hundred yards on the west, may be conjectured to have been the instrument of upheaval, as in fancy we can still discern in the half-raised, half-suspended position of the rock, the enormous pressure required for its elevation.
The Lomonds and Cults hills are conspicuous objects in the landscape. The line traverses for miles the yellow sandstone and overlaying grits which form their base. Greenstone and augitic trap in both ranges cap the summits, bursting through the coal metals, and elevating the various beds of limestone. The encrinital limestone sweeps round the peaks of the Lomonds, filling up the intermediate plateau, in some places bare of herbage or any covering of soil, and the fossils are lying exposed on the surface fresh as when washed by the waves, about eleven hundred feet above their ancient sea-bottom. A vein of galena occurs on the south side of the hill, intersecting the limestone at right angles to the plain of stratification, and is described in the notices of the period of its discovery as rich in silver ore. But it has no great claim, we believe, to be regarded as argentiferous. Two similar veins traverse the county, one already noticed in Dura Den, and the other in the parish of Inverkeithing, situated among the same series of rocks, and having the same general line of bearing from nearly north-east by south-west. The lead ore in all of them is partly massive, and partly in regular hexahedral crystals. Lead, copper, cobalt, and silver are likewise found in the Ochil range, but in no great quantities, in the culminating heights betwixt Dollar, Bencleugh, and Dalmyat.
On approaching the river Leven at Markinch, the out-crop of the central coal-basin comes to the surface. After crossing the viaduct the line lies deep among the metals—a repetition of faults, upheavals, and depressions, where in succession the edges of the same beds are several times passed over. The dip is various, the strike generally to the south-east, and under the sea at Dysart the metals are wrought at the depth of several hundred feet.
The igneous rocks along the coast will not fail to call forth surprise and admiration, unrivaled as they probably are in the number of alternations with the deposits of the carboniferous series, and all the interesting phenomena which accompany their intrusion. No description, indeed, can do justice to the interlacings and alternations presented of the two classes of rocks, so different in their origin, as those of the traps and coal-measures; where, through the agency of the former, the latter series are bent, twisted, re-united, altered, and lying at every angle betwixt the horizontal and perpendicular. Nearing Kirkaldy the coal is split up, and the fused matter injected between the layers, converting them into cinder. Within the distance of a mile, from Seaforth to Kinghorn, there are from forty to fifty alternations of the igneous and sedimentary rocks; and again, on the west, toward Pittycur, there is a recurrence of as many, with examples of the jointed columnar basalt reposing on sandstones rendered quartzose, or converted into chert, and on shales baked into brick. The outburst at the Burntisland terminus, in three parallel ridges, throws up the strata, inclining them toward the north, whence trending round the town they dip under the Binn-hill. Orrock-hill, lying immediately to the north-east of Binn-hill, furnishes a beautiful example of jointed basalt: the entire rock, three hundred feet high, and nearly a mile long, by half-a-mile in breadth, is composed of regularly constructed columns, which divide into concretionary masses from one to three feet in length, and presenting generally the pentagonal or hexagonal form. The columns are grouped into distinct clusters, which, inclining at various angles, impart to the exposed face of the rock a pleasing picturesque effect. The erosive action of water, or swell of the ocean tide, is all that is required here to shape another Staffa—“that wondrous dome”—out of these magnificent materials.
A fresh-water, or rather perhaps an estuary, limestone is an object of considerable geological interest in this locality, mixed up and altered in many places by the igneous matter. The best sections occur a little back from Pittycur harbor, and on the western slope of Binn-hill, where it is extensively quarried. Scales of fishes and other ichthyolites are very abundant: also innumerable microscopic shells, belonging to the order of entomostraca and the genus cypris. Several species of palæoniscus have been found in good preservation, namely, P. ariolatis, P. ornatissimus, and P. Robisoni. The Pygopteris Jamesoni and specimens of the Eurynotus and Crenatis have likewise been detected in the deposit. Vegetable remains are very plentiful, especially of the fern tribe and the lycopodiums: the impressions of the sphenopteris, of which there are several species, are extremely numerous, fresh, and beautiful. This limestone is of a dull, earthy aspect, acquired obviously from the bituminous matter diffused through the mass; not crystalline, though very compact in texture, and possessed of great hardness. Wardie beach, on the opposite shore, displays a bed having many points of resemblance, which abounds in nodular masses, inclosing coprolites and fishes; and inland, the celebrated Burdiehouse limestone is an extension of the Fifeshire deposit.
Thus varied and important is this small peninsula, a speck on the face of the globe, and affording so much room for speculation and detail. Inclosed between the estuaries of the Tay and Forth are to be found some of the most legible and remarkable chronicles of our planet’s history. Fifeshire has been stirred and upheaved all over, abounding in all the life-moving and plutonic energies of the carboniferous age. The vegetable and animal kingdoms supply a vast proportion of the materials of the sedimentary rocks, while the fires of the interior have mainly contributed to the production of the rest. Shall we look across the waters, and replace them, in imagination, by the former continuity of land, when the center of the coal-basin was raised above them, and their numerous islets were high and dry upon the surface? Certain it is, that the erupted matter so abundantly scattered along the shores and piled up in such masses landward, would leave room for subsidence, while the outgoing of the deposits on both sides shows such an affinity in quality and strike as to demonstrate an ancient union and geological connection.
