94 DUNNET HEAD SUBMERGED ! CHAP. vm. 



" The beds have been burst through by the ocean, and 

 where dry land once was, the grampus now rolls, and 

 the tall ship speeds on her way to the farthest ends of 

 the earth. Amazing change ! 



" ' Art, empire, earth itself, to change is doomed ; 

 Earthquakes have raised to heaven the humble vale, 

 And gulphs the mountain's mighty mass entombed ; 

 And where the Atlantic rolled wide continents have 

 bloomed.' 



" Who told Beattie this ? It seems to prove Lyell's 

 theory of the sameness of ancient and existing causes 

 for geological changes in the earth's surface. And the 

 change is still going on ; and ' come it will, the day 

 decreed by fate,' when not a vestige of the sandstone of 

 Dunnet Head will be found above the encroaching 

 ocean. 



" What induces me to think so is this : 1st, Dunnet 

 Bay does not, in my opinion, owe its existence to a fault, 

 but has been literally hammered out by the force of 

 the Atlantic waves. The sandy links are the broken 

 remains, in part, of the dispersed strata; and were 

 they now to become solidified, they would be found as 

 rich in fossil remains as the present beds are barren. 

 2d, The ocean tempests are telling surely on the western 

 face of the beds of Dunnet Head; and time alone is 

 wanted to effect their ruin. 3d, The beds on the south, 

 at Brough, are in some places in a mouldering, crumb- 

 ling state, and the sea will ultimately effect a junction 

 with the upper end of Dunnet Bay. Dunnet Head will 

 for some time be an island ; but it will ultimately be 



