364 ROLLED PEBBLES ON MORVEN. CHAP. xxi. 



of it, I can see with my eyes and handle with my hands 

 the successive strata of which it was originally com- 

 posed. First, close at my feet, is a bed of rolled pebbles. 

 That is the lowest exposed formation. Next, over that, 

 is a bed of limestone. Then a bed of the ordinary 

 Caithness flagstone; and over that a bed of boulder 

 clay. 



" Now, on looking attentively at the rolled pebbles, 

 I find that they are similar to the rock on which they 

 rest. Consequently the hills hereabout were as much 

 stone as they are now before the pebbles were rolled. 

 Next, we can see that these pebbles were rolling about 

 in the lime, for they are crusted with lime just as almond 

 sweetmeats are with sugar. Consequently the lime- 

 stone was once soft and loose, and the pebbles had sunk 

 amongst the lime, which now lies above them. Then a 

 soft muddy clay was brought by water, and laid above 

 the lime. The whole was hardened into stone. Was it 

 beneath or above the water ? That is a question ; but 

 stone it became. 



"And then another change occurred. Some great 

 power came into action, breaking up the rocks, and 

 making clay out of them, in some places a hundred feet 

 thick. We know that the clay had become stone, foi 

 we often find great lumps of stone amongst the boulder 

 clay, which forms the surface soil of the county." 



There was another thing that excited Dick's observa- 

 tion. When at the top of Morven, 2331 feet above the 

 sea, he was much struck by the bed of rolled pebbles that 

 graces its top and north front. "How long had they 



