THE Scots Magazine, AND EDINBURGH LITERARY MISCELLANY, FOR MAY 1812. Description of Broomhall, the seat of the Earl of Elgin. HIS elegant mansion, the resi tinguished families in the county of Fife, is situated near the sea coast, a few miles to the west of Inverkeithing. It is of recent erection, and the situation happily chosen. It belongs to the parish of Dunfermline, of which Lord Elgin is one of the principal heritors. The property to which this house is attached is remarkable, as containing the most copious supply of the valuable commodities of coal and lime that is known to exist in this country. The bed of lime is situated in the immediate neighbourhood of the house, and runs parallel to the sea, about a mile in length, and from 20 to 50 feet in breadth. It had been worked from a very remote period; and the village of Limekills, situated immediately to the east of Broomhall, had received its name from the exportation of carried, however, to any thing approaching to their present extent, till the time of the late Earl of Elgin. That nobleman, eminently distinguished both for worth and talents, saw the importance of which they were susceptible, and resolved to spare no pains or expence in cultivating this source of wealth to his family. He spent L.14000 in erecting the necessary machinery; he formed nine large draw-kilns, a harbour, waggon-ways for conveying the stone from the quarry to the kilnheads; and he built, immediately to the west of Broomhall, a village, which received from himself the name of Charlestown. This ex-' penditure, judiciously laid out, was amply repaid. The great demand for lime, for the purposes of building and agriculture, secured an am ple ple market for all that could be pro While he lived, perish came upon him. duced. The quantity now drawn The blessing of them that were ready to from the mines amounts annually to from 80 to 90,000 tons, the value of which is above L.10,000 sterling. The seams of coal are situated some miles inland, in the vicinity of the town of Dunfermline, and are attached to the lands of Midbalbridge, Clunie, Luscar, and Rosebank. They were not originally the property of the Elgin family; but the present Earl, actively following up the system of improvement which had been begun by his father, purchased them, in order to secure materials for working his lime quarries. He then formed, between his coal and lime-works, a rail-way, of four miles in extent, the first example given, in this country, on any great scale at least, of that very important improvement. This field coal contains upwards of 9000 square acres, and includes seams of all the species that are found in the country. The veneration in which the memory of the late Earl of Elgin is held in the neighbourhood, is well expressed by the following inscription upon a monument erected for him in the church-yard of Dunferm line: Sacred to the memory of By the goodness of his heart, and virtues In his manners amiable and gentle, As far as human imperfection admits, Pious without superstition, Their tears embalm his memory. Reader, 3. In Memory of ELIZABETH CAIRNS, spouse of John Cairns, Liverpool, and daughter of John Johnstone, of Ayr, who died 29th April, 1807, aged 22 years. If ever virtue, beauty, love and truth storm. 4. a token that he had done his duty He died 12th Feb. 1808, in the 5. Avise la Fin. Sacred to the Memory of CAPTAIN JOHN KENNEDY, a native of Arran, late of Liverpool. In the stormy night of the seventh of October, 1808, it pleased God to call his Spirit to the heavenly world, and to bury his mortal remains in the sea, near Hoylake, in the 56th year of his age. As a testimony of filial regard, this monument is erected by his only surviving son, Captain Allan Kennedy. Bill of Mortality, for the last seven years. Beneath are deposited the remains of WILLIAM RIDDICK, Seaman, a native of Colvend, in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, of Liverpool. He was Master's Mate of the Zealous, in the Battle of the Nile; and received a Silver Medal, as Many of the Children who are baptized in this Chapel, are buried in other burial-grounds in Liverpool. Proceedings Births. Over the conglomerate, masses of Proceedings of the Wernerian Na. claystone, greenstone passing into tural History Society. A March, Professor Jameson T the meeting on the 28th read an account of a floetz gypsum formation, which occurs on the banks of the Whiteadder near Kelso. -Likewise of a beautiful floetz quartz found in beds in the coal districts of Fifeshire; and of the occurrence of basalt, amygdaloid and trap-tuff, in a coal formation newer than the old red sandstone and its accompanying porphyry, but probably older than the general mass of the rocks of the newest floetz trap formation. At the same meet ing, Mr Leach read a description of the pig of Orkney and Shetland, which he inclined to consider as a distinct species. And the Secretary laid before the meeting a very full and interesting thermometrical register and meteorological journal to Davis' Straits and back again, kept by Mr John Aitken, surgeon. At the meeting on 11th April, Dr Macknight read a mineralogical description of Tinto, a noted mountain in Lanarkshire. It appears to be of floetz formation; probably resting on the grey wacke which pervades the whole mountainous districts in the south of Scotland. Around the base is found a conglomerate, containing rounded masses of grey-wacke, iron-clay, flinty slate, splintery hornstone, quartz, felspar, mica, &c. Where the rock becomes finer grained, it approaches in some places to grey-wacke, and in others to those portions of the old red sandstone which are conjectured to alternate with the newer members of the transition series. clinkstone, and porphyry-slate, successively appear; till we reach the summit, which, along with the whole of the upper part, is found to consist of compact felspar, and felspar porphyry.-The disposition of the rocks in this mountain is conformable to the idea of secondary deposition, by assuming a finer and more crystalline texture as they ascend; and the occurrence of claystone and felspar in a position corresponding to what is observed on the Eildon Hills, the Pentlands, the Ochils, Papa Stour, Dundee, and in other places, seems to favour the hypothesis of a particular overlying formation, in which those substances are prevailing ingredients, extending over a considerable portion of the lower country of Scot`land. In the bed of the Clyde to the eastward of Tinto, amygdaloid appears, having nodules of calcedony coated with green earth; also calcspar, and portions of steatiteTowards the north, the conglomerate forming the base of Tinto, passes into the sandstone, of which the whole interior districts of Lanarkshire are composed. It is to the waste of this rock, that we owe the splendid scenery of Cora-lin, and the other celebrated falls of the Clyde, which exhibits in its courses, so many charms of nature, and may indeed be said to carry along with it, beauty and fertility from its very source. At the same meeting, the Secretary communicated a very curious meteorological journal, for a year, kept by Governor Graham, during his residence in Hudson's Bay. Monthly MAY 4th.-A (Hirundo nu Memoirs of the Progress of Manu factures, Chemistry, Science, and the Fine Arts. R BRODIE has made addition tica) were observed here this day, Mal experiments of the effects of for the first time this season. On the 9th May they became numerous, this being the first mild summer day, and the wind changing from easterly to west. It may here be mentioned that the same species of swallow arrived in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, in 1810, on the 23d April, and in 1811 on the 7th and 10th April. 16. The rapid progress of vegetation during the past week has been striking in proportion to the lateness of the season. The first grass cut for sale in the Edinburgh market was mown in the meadow of Salisbury Craig on the 13th ult. This meadow is generally cut for the first time about the middle of April, and consists chiefly of Poa trivialis. 18. A return of the chilling easterly kaar, as it is here styled, has again impeded vegetation. 20. The foliation of trees is on an average fully a month later than usual. The leaves on the lower spray of elm tress are just beginning to expand. The buds of the beech are in general only swelling, many trees and hedges still retaining the shrivelled leaves of last year. The ash is not generally in flower, and the leaf-buds of that very late forest tree are only beginning to swell. A few sycamores are nearly in leaf, but many are still naked. 27. Mild weather has again set in; and affords the prospect, at feast, of a plentiful, though probably of a late harvest, both to the husbandman and the horticultur N. various poisons on different animals. It appears that the slight inflammation which occurs in the stomach, after taking poison into it, is not sufficient to occasion death; but that it is the palsying power of the drugs on the nervous system and on the blood which destroys life. Among the causes which have an influence upon the quality of wines, M. Chaptal enumerates:-1. The different species of the cultivated vines.-2. The variety of climates where they grow.-3. The different nature of the soils.-4. Their more or less favourable exposure to the sun.-5. The seasons being more or less propitious.-6. The culture being more or less attended to. The bell, or winter pear, according to an American Journal, may be brought to great perfection, and grow to sixteen inches in circumference, by wrapping up the fruit and branch in cloth, so as to protect them from the early frosts of October and November. Messrs Sobolewsky and Horner, of St Petersburgh, have announced the discovery of the process of the French engineer Bon, and of Messrs Murdoch and Windsor, for extracting gas from wood or coal, and applying it to the purpose of illumination. Their greatest difficulty consisted in absorbing the smoke which exhaled from the gas, and in giv-" ing brightness and purity to the flame; for, in all experiments made in foreign countries, or in Russia, the flame, was always weak and bluish, not very luminous, and at-tended by a mephitic smell. After many ineffectual experiments, they at length succeeded in obtaining a clear |