The Scottish Naturalist. 357 



and variable sands and clays towards its upper part. 

 But by turning to the plate of sections, p. 264, Vol. II., it 

 will be seen that the coarse sands and pebbles of the higher 

 haugh do not coincide with the position of similar beds in the 

 lower haugh, but are found to rest upon a bed of well-stratified 

 red and blue clay bands, that may be seen (within the great 

 curve immediately below " Mailer " on the map that also 

 accompanies p. 264, Vol. II.) boldly standing up twelve feet 

 above low-water mark, and therefore occupying exactly the 

 same position with regard to the present river that the coarse 

 accumulations of the loiuer haugh do. How then were the 

 beds of the upper haugh placed in their present position ? Is 

 it to be assumed that when the waters were first let loose from 

 their icy bondage, they first cut a channel through the boulder 

 material and clays that filled the lowland to the present chan- 

 nel's depth, and after sweeping the red and blue clay deposits 

 clean of all purely glacial debris, supplied their place with 

 purely fluviatile pebble beds, and sands, and clays ; which must 

 have been first rolled and ground in the channel below, and by 

 some phenomenon that is now not to be found, lifted over the 

 cliffs, first the big pebble beds, and then the gravel and sand, 

 and finally, the clays, or brick-earths, at the top. There is no 

 evidence in the upper beds of the heterogeneous scattering 

 incidental to such powerful floodings, but they bear in their 

 mode of deposition, in their well-rolled pebbles, carefully 

 grouped into extensive beds, in the lines and angles, conform- 

 able and unconformable, synclinal and anticlinal, that are met 

 with in every foot of the gravels and sands, an evidence, 

 not to be mistaken, of constant running water — not of a whole 

 deluge, but of a stream not more significant than that of the 

 river Earn; sorting and arranging, and re-assorting and re- 

 arranging for an enormous period of time (historically speaking), 

 and winding and twisting from side to side of the valley, pulling 

 down and building up, and making all fair and level again, just 

 as the river Earn is now wandering about, pulling down and 

 reconstructing the lower haugh (see former paper) when clays 

 predominated where sands now obtain, when a wider flat was 

 at the mercy of the stream, whose efforts were not opposed by 

 civilised man. That ancient river flowed along what is now 

 the top of the red and blue clay deposit, i.e., some 16 or 20 

 feet higher than the bottom of the present stream ; and it there 

 has left its autobiography, that like an old edition is lying upon 



