I have been examining the south
alpine country of Scotland, occasionally, for more than forty years
back, and I never could find any mark of an organised body in the
schistus of those mountains. It is true that I know of only one place
where limestone is found among the strata; this is upon Tweed-side near
the Crook. This quarry I had carefully examined long ago, but could find
no mark of any organised body in it. I suppose they now are working some
other of the vertical strata near those which I had examined; for, in
the summer 1792, I received a letter from Sir James Hall, which I shall
now transcribe. It is dated at Moffat, June 2. 1792.
"As I was riding yesterday between Noble-house and Crook, on the road to
this place, I fell in with a quarry of alpine limestone; it consists of
four or five strata, about three feet thick, one of them single, and the
rest contiguous; they all stand between the strata of slate and schist
that are at the place nearly vertical. In the neighbourhood, a slate
quarry is worked of a pure blue slate; several of the strata of slate
near the limestone are filled with fragments of limestone scattered
about like the fragments of schist in the sandstone in the neighbourhood
of the junction on our coast.
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