228 GILL'S BURN. 



Not another article did I find, although I tried until 

 the incoming tide threatened to cut off my retreat to 

 the land. And then I fled." 



Dick went on with his ramblings, and sent, as usual, 

 the results to Hugh Miller. He went to Barrogill and 

 Gills Bay on the Pentland Firth, marking the dips of 

 the flags and red sandstone. At the junction of Gills 

 Burn with the Firth he found several beds of bituminous 

 shale, containing fossil coprolites and large seaweed 

 plants not unlike a stout bough. This was afterwards 

 engraved in Hugh Miller's Testimony of the Rocks. Dick 

 found the beds of clay slate interlacing with the huge 

 mass of red sandstone before him, and up Gills Burn he 

 saw a beautiful section of boulder clay. ' No less than 

 three little streams have cut their course through the 

 boulder clay, laying bare their internal structure most 

 beautifully. In one of those little streams you walk 

 up into the very bowels of the earth, with a perpendi- 

 cular wall on each side of you, picking out at your leisure 

 Crassena, Mactra, Cyprina, Turritella, Dentalium, chalk, 

 flints, pieces of Oolite, and such like. 



" Freswick Burn is nothing, Harpsdale is nothing, the 

 Haven of Mey is nothing to a geologist, compared with 

 this. I wish you no higher gratification than an hour 

 spent among the clay and shells at Gills Bay. This 

 section is noticeable because it exhibits at the base, 

 just where it rests on the red sandstone, a bed of 

 gravel and shells broken and intermixed together 

 a thing I never saw in connection with any other sec- 

 tion. I have seen, here and there, small gravel nests of 



