A SUMMER RAMBLE AMONG THE HEBRIDES. 199 



kingdom. An undulating platform of Old Red Sandstone, 

 in which we see, largely developed in one locality, the lower 

 formation of the Coccosteus, and in another, still more largely, 

 the upper formation of the Holoptychius Nobilissimiis, forms, 

 if I may so speak, the foundation deposit of the district, 

 the true geologic plane of the country ; and, thickly scattered 

 over this plane, we find numerous detached knolls and patches 

 of the Weald and the Oolite, deposited like heaps of travelled 

 soil, or of lime shot down by the agriculturist on the surface 

 of a field. The Old Red platform is mottled by the outliers 

 of a comparatively modern time : the sepulchral mounds of 

 later races, that lived and died during the reptile age of the 

 world, repose on the surface of an ancient burying-ground, 

 charged with remains of the long anterior age of the fish ; 

 and over all, as a general covering, rest the red boulder-clay 

 and the vegetable mould. Mr Duff, in his valuable " Sketch 

 of the Geology of Moray," enumerates five several localities 

 in the neighbourhood of Elgin in which there occur outliers 

 of the Weald ; though, of course, in a country so flat, and in 

 which the diluvium lies deep, we cannot hold that all have 

 been discovered. And though the outliers of the Oolite have 

 not yet been ascertained to be equally numerous, they seem 

 of greater extent ; the isolated masses detached from them 

 by the denuding agencies lie thick over extensive areas ; and 

 in working out the course of improvement which has already 

 rendered Elginshire the garden of the north, the ditcher at 

 one time touches on some bed of shale charged with the cha- 

 racteristic Ammonites and Belemnites of the system, and at 

 another on some calcareous sandstone bed, abounding with 

 its Pectens, its Plagiostoma, and its Pinnae. Some of these 

 outliers, whether Wealden or Oolitic, are externally of great 

 beauty. They occur in the parish of Lhanbryde, about three 

 miles to the east of Elgin, in the form of green pyramidal 

 hillocks, mottled with trees, and at Linksfield, as a confluent 



