194 DUNBEATH WATER. 



of them. The sea must once have stood over the whole 

 of these elevations. 



Anxious to make the most of the limited time at his 

 disposal, Dick passed up Dunbeath Water, while daylight 

 was but a mere glimmer, picking his way among the 

 boulders as he best could. Keeping on the right hand of 

 the burn, he came to a magnificent cliff of dark boulder 

 clay containing marine shells. " I stood," he says, " in 

 amazement at the scene, in the dim light of the morning. 

 I would willingly have sat down on a stone and waited 

 the coming of the day. But the whole breadth of the 

 county lay before me, with mires and moors unutterable. 

 To linger here might be fatal, should darkness overtake 

 me. I might never be able to struggle out of these 

 horrible moors. So 'On, on' was the watchword ! 



" But observing many white specks of, I could not 

 tell distinctly what, 'I darklins grapit;' and you will 

 hear with interest, that the first object I got between my 

 finger and thumb was a specimen of Turritella terebra ! 

 That shell is now on its way to you by post. 



" I passed on, and found that there was much of the 

 dark clay in this spot, and of great height. Stopping at 

 another section I picked out another specimen of Turri- 

 tella, a broken hinge of Lutraria, broken Mactra, 

 Cyprina, and other shells. By this time it was nine 

 o'clock; and as the daylight was good I saw almost 

 every variety of granite red sandstone, and abundance 

 of old red conglomerate. 



" To wait and stoop, and minutely scrutinize, was out 

 of the question. I moved on from section to section, 



