196 THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 
ings of caves not yet dug, and which testify of a period when 
the sea stood about thirty feet higher on our coasts than at 
present. A multitude of stacks and tabular masses lie 
grouped in front, perforated often by squat, heavy arches ; 
and stacks, caverns, buttresses, crags, and arches, are all 
alike mottled over by the thickly-set and variously colored 
pebbles. There is a tract of scenery of this strangely 
marked character in the neighborhood of Dunottar, and two 
other similar tracts in the far north, where the hill of Nigg, 
in Ross-shire, declines towards the Lias deposit in the Bay of 
Shandwick, and where, in the vicinity of Inverness, a line 
of bold, precipitous coast runs between the pyramidal wooded 
eminence which occupies the south-eastern corner of Ross, 
and the tower-like headlands that guard the entrance of the 
Bay of Munlochy. In the latter tract, however, the conglom- 
erate is much less cavernous than in the other two.* 
The sea-coast of St. Vigeans, in Forfarshire, has been 
long celebrated for its romantic scenery and its caves; and 
though it belongs rather to the conglomerate base of the up- 
per formation than to the great conglomerate base of the 
lower, it is marked, from the nature of the materials — ma- 
terials common to both— by features indistinguishable from 
those which characterize the sea-coasts of the older deposit. 
Its wall of precipices averages from a hundred to a hundred 
and eighty feet in height—no very great matter compared 
with some of our northern lines, but the cliffs make up for 
their want of altitude by their bold and picturesque combina- 
tions of form; and I scarce know where a long summer’s 
day could well be passed more agreeably than among their 
wild and solitary recesses. The incessant lashings of the sea 
have ground them down into shapes the most fantastic. Huge 
stacks, that stand up from anid the breakers, are here and 
* See Note N. 
