Geological Features of the District of Buclian. 47 



The question then arises, How came the flints there, and whence ? 



Mr. Hugh Miller, cautioning the young geologist against concluding 

 that because he finds a rock resting upon gneiss, it is therefore low in 

 the geological scale, instances, as an example of the error such a con- 

 clusion would lead to, the flints and chalk fossils of Banfl" and Aberdeen, 

 lying immediately over it in these counties, and adds, " It is probable 

 that the denuded members of the cretaceous group once rested upon it, 

 there."* Mr. Jamieson too in the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal 

 states the same opinion, adding, that it will probably be found in some 

 of the hollows of this part of Scotland." t 



This is one theory. That the lower beds, and the chalk of this very 

 bed itself, have been removed by denudation, leaving the flints resting 

 on the granite. 



Opposed to this theory is the fact, that the flints are invariably water- 

 worn. Tru6, even according to it they would have presented such an 

 appearance, but not necessarily to such an extent, and it seems that a 

 denuding agency sufficiently powerful to produce the rolled eflect noted, 

 would have removed them as well as the other beds, especially as they 

 occur not in hollows, but always on the sides, and near the summits of hills. J 



Mr. Nicol states his opinion thus : — " Probably these recent secondary 

 formations once existed here, or may still be covered by the sea, and 

 connected with the similar beds on the Moray Frith. This opinion is 

 confirmed by the occurrence of lias, containing coal at Hogenaes, in the 

 south of Sweden, where it rests on gneiss and is covered by chalk. "|| 

 This leads on to another theory which has been suggested to account for 

 these flints, namely: — That, however such secondary beds may have 

 once existed here, these individual water-worn flints owe their origin to 

 a transporting agency, which has brought them from the chalk formations 

 of the northern continent. 



The volcanic and tidal agencies, (the latter modified by local currents,) 

 assume a direction between south-west and north-east. All the mountain 

 ranges and great formations of our island assume, in general, that direc- 

 tion. The great mountain range of Norway assumes the same. I am 

 too unacquainted with Norwegian geology, to be able skilfully to connect 

 it with Scottish. At Christiania there is a group belonging partly to the 

 lower, and partly to the upper silurian rocke.§ True chalk with flints 

 has been clearly determined in some parts of Denmark.^ This Danish 

 group may have been continued into Norway at one period, and after- 

 wards removed by denudation, the same agency transporting the flint 

 nodules to our own shores. 



It may bear against such a supposition of transportation, that the 

 direction of the currents seem usually to have been from south-west to 



♦ Old Red Sand. .3d. Ed. p 262. t 1831, Vol. 10, p. 163. 



X A few individual specimens are found scattered over the hollows ; the mass, 

 however, as stated in the text, is inviuiahly on or near the tops of the hills. 

 II Geol. of Scot., p. 188. § Ansted, I. p. 118. t Il>- P- 461. 



