48 TOWN GEOLOGY. [n. 



immediately above or below the chalk. The blocks of 

 " Sarsden " sandstone those of which Stonehenge is 

 built and the "plum-pudding stones" which are 

 sometimes found with them, have no kindred with the 

 northern pebbles. They belong to beds above the 

 chalk. 



Now if, seeing such pebbles about your town, you 

 inquire, like a sensible person who wishes to under- 

 stand something of the spot on which he lives, whence 

 they come, you will be shown either a gravel-pit or a 

 clay-pit. In the gravel the pebbles and boulders lie 

 mixed with sand, as they do in the railway cutting- 

 just south of Shrewsbury ; or in huge mounds of fine 

 sweet earth, as they do in the gorge of the Tay about 

 Dunkeld, and all the way up Strathmore,, where they 

 form long grassy mounds tomauns as they call them 

 in some parts of Scotland askers as they call them in 

 Ireland. These mounds, with their sweet fresh turf 

 rising out of heather and bog, were tenanted so 

 Scottish children used to believe^-by fairies. He that 

 was lucky might hear inside them, fairy music, and 

 the jingling of the fairy horses' trappings. But woe 

 to him if he fell asleep upon the mound, for he would 

 be spirited away into fairyland for seven years, which 

 would seem to him but one day. A strange fancy ; 

 yet not so strange as the actual truth as to what these 

 mounds are, and how they came into their places. 



Or again, you might find that your town's pebbles 

 and boulders came out of a pit of clay, in which they 

 were stuck, without any order or bedding, like plums 

 and raisins in a pudding. This clay goes usually by 

 the name of boulder-clay. You would see such near 

 any town, in Cheshire and Lancashire ; or along Leith 



