144 VISIT TO HOLBORN HEAD. CHAP. xi. 



upward, downwards, and athwart, now in the sea, now in 

 the air, thick as midges over some forest brook in an 

 evening of midsummer." 



The geologists passed on towards Dunnet Bay. 

 They crossed Dunnet sands, and at length reached the 

 tall sandstone precipices of Dunnet Head, with their 

 broad decaying fronts of red and yellow. They had 

 reached the upper boundary of the Lower red formation, 

 and found it bordered by a desert, and void of all trace 

 of life. They plied hammer and chisel, but found not a 

 scale, not a plate, nor even the stain of an imperfect 

 fucoid. 



On the following day the brother geologists wandered 

 along the shore of Thurso "West, Dick pointing out the 

 boulder clay between the Bishop's Castle and Scrabster 

 Harbour. They ascended Holborn Head, went along 

 the precipices to the Clett, after which Hugh Miller 

 chiselled out with his own hands the fossil fish that 

 Eobert Dick had set apart for him. He did not cut his 

 hands as Dick had done, for Hugh was an accomplished 

 mason before he became a geologist. There was one 

 particular sight that struck Hugh very much while stand- 

 ing on the top of the rocks at Holborn Head, and looking 

 down with Dick into the deep sea-green water, underlying 

 the lofty cliff called " Slater's Leap." Hugh Miller 

 afterwards described it splendidly in his Lectures on 

 Geology. He says : 



" Perhaps the most striking scenic peculiarities of the 

 Old Eed Sandstone are to be found in its rock-pieces. 

 The Old Man of Hoy, with its rural rampart of rock- 



