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.