333 



Scottish pleistocenes. The shells are the well known Astarte arctica^ 

 Natica clausa, Tellina proxima, 8fc. 



At Stracheres, on Kineddart Water, six miles inland, the same 

 shells are found in the boulder clay, in a broken state ; and opposite 

 Kineddart Castle near by, they are found entire in a sand-bed about 

 thirty feet above the rock, and overlaid with the same ferruginous 

 gravel. 



The noted clay bed, containing boulders with lias fossils, at Black- 

 pots, near Banff, Mr Chambers considers as one of the brick clay 

 beds. 



At this latter situation the author found a large terrace or ancient 

 sea margin at 64 or 65 feet above the present sea level, and corre- 

 sponding in elevation to one seen in various other parts of the island. 

 He traced an alluvial terrace of very conspicuous appearance, at 

 about 167 feet above the sea, along both sides of the Deveran Biver 

 and the minor vale of Turreff, the town of Turreff being seated on it. 

 Another, somewhat higher, is equally prominent in the Kineddart 

 valley. 



In the Deveran valley, opposite to Eden Castle, Mr Chambers 

 discovered what he regards as a fine example of an ancient moraine. 

 It commences at the border of a tributary rivulet at Auchinbeddie, 

 and curves for a mile upwards along the hill side, forming an irre- 

 gular ridge of detrital matter about thirty feet high : the other wing 

 of the same moraine is traceable on the other side of the rill. The 

 little valley of the tributary stream has been the bed of the glacier 

 by which this moraine was formed. On the surface, at short inter- 

 vals, are flat indentations, surfaced with alluvial matter, and corre- 

 sponding in level with the two terraces ; so that they may be assumed 

 as having been formed by the sea, when it was at the corresponding 

 relative levels. 



The author connected this fact of a submergence posterior to the 

 period of local glaciers, with the fact, which he had ascertained in 

 Arran, that that period again was subsequent to a former submer- 

 gence, during which the noted terrace of erosion round the west coast 

 of Scotland (twenty-five feet above the present sea level) was formed ; 

 and, seeing it thus proved that the period of local glaciers was one 

 of elevation, inferred that the cause of the lower temperature of that 

 era was simply our mountain valleys being raised within the region 

 of the snow line. 



