114 FOSSILIFEROUS BEDS. CHAP. x. 



" The cliffs are now about forty feet high. The bitu- 

 minous bed underneath is charged with the remains of 

 fish. I used to wonder how the bed here, after running 

 fifty paces or so, suddenly became much harder and 

 highly siliceous. The sea has worn it into ruts deep 

 ruts and the remains of fish can be seen peeping out of 

 the sides. There are numerous fossil plants here. 



" On we go, and soon tread upon a highly siliceous 

 bed, very rugged, and worn into many strange shapes 

 and gnarled knots. A little after, we pass a fossiliferous 

 bed, charged, as usual, with fragments of fish. In a 

 short while, we meet something like an abrupt wall of 

 rock stretching across the path, over which we must 

 climb. Once up, we find that the sea, which has told 

 on every bed we have hitherto passed, has made no 

 impression here. A highly siliceous bed stretches from 

 the land in a long slope, sheer down into the waves, 

 nearly as entire' as it was thousands of years ago, when 

 the real red sandstone beds once continuous across the 

 Firth from Orkney to Caithness lay upon it; and though 

 the billows break at every tide with tremendous force, 

 the siliceous bed seems to lie as firm and unworn as 

 ever. The wildest north-west winds that ever blew, and 

 all the rushing force of the dashing waves, have availed 

 but little in shaking the foundations or even abrading 

 the surface of this hard siliceous rock. 



"No bed similar to this neither on the east to 

 Castlehill, nor on the west to Reay is to be seen at this 

 part of the coast. The beds have everywhere been broken 

 down, more or less. 



