92 TJie Scottish Naturalist 



reaches about 400 species of Phanerogams, though the mountain plants are 

 conspicuous by their absence in the vicinity of Banff. Among the more interest- 

 ing plants of the neighbourhood may be noted Carex incurva, Senebiera Corott- 

 ofns } Habenaria albida and H. viruiis, Scilla verna, Merlensia maritima t 

 Pyrola secunda, Linncea borealis, Anagallis tenella, Sambucus Ebuius, and Cm-ex 



pendula. 



The members of the various societies supped together the same evening in 

 the Fife Arms Hotel. 



Saturday was devoted to an excursion westward to Boyndie, the Boyne, 

 Portsoy, and Cullen, where lunch was taken. During the excursion, visits 

 were made to the Old Church at Boyndie, Craigherbs with the adjacent camps, 

 the ruins of the Castle of the Boyne, the Serpentine Quarry of Portsoy, the old 

 camp and the Castle of Findlater, and the Old Kirk of Cullen and Cullen 

 House. During the excursion Mr. Home acted as' guide to all points of 

 geological interest ; and kindly drew up the subjoined notes on the geology of 

 the districts visited. 



Neighbourhood of Banff. — Between Macduff and Gamrie there is a 

 great development of the clay slate series of Banffshire, consisting of shales, flags, 

 and grits, which, owing to the curvature of the strata have been thrown into a 



: succession of anticlinal and synclinal folds. The ripple-marks on the surface of 

 the beds, the false bedding in the beds of grey wacke, the pebbles in the grits 

 and conglomerates, unquestionably point to the conclusion that they are ancient 

 sedimentary rocks. But when we cross the Deveron, the rocks gradually assume 

 a crystalline aspect. The thin bedded flags and shales are converted into mica 



. schists, which in the more advanced series of metamorphism, merge into knotted 

 schists. These gradations may be followed along the shore between Banff 

 Harbour and the Links of Boyndie. Still more intense, however, is the nature 



• of the metamorphism in the rocks visible at low tide on the west shore of 



Boyndie Bay. The reefs consist of soft unctuous hydro-mica schists alternating 



with bands of pebbly quartzite, which have been stained by infiltration of iron 



■oxide from the Old Red Sandstone strata that formerly covered them. In this 



case also, the pebbles in the grits point to the sedimentary origin of the strata, 



■ even though the matrix in some places has been changed into micaceous quartz- 

 schist. Resting on the truncated edges of these crystalline rocks in Boyndie 

 Bay, there are two small outliers of old red sandstone, composed of con- 

 glomerates and grits. From the character of the blocks in the conglomerate, 



it is evident that we have represented at this locality a fragment of the deposit 

 which accumulated along the ancient shore line in the Old Red Sandstone 

 Period. They connect the Old Red area of Gamrie with those of Cullen and 

 Buckie. At Blackpots there is a thick deposit of finely laminated clay, which 

 has yielded numerous liassic and oolitic fossils ; but there can be no doubt of 



■ its glacial origin, from the fact that it contains at one point of the section frag- 

 ments of glacial shells. 



PORTSOY District. — At Portsoy, a visit was paid to the marble quarry, 

 where the relations]of the serpentine to the diorite were discussed. The diorite, 

 which occupies the greater part of the section from the mouth of the Durn 

 Burn, westwards to the marble quarry, is of very variable character. When 

 •typically developed, as, for example, round the battery, it is an extremely beauti- 

 ful rock, showing under the microscope large crystals of horn blende, with the 

 normal cleavage angle, diallage. labradorite felspar, and magnetite. Within a 



