200 THE CKUISE OF THE BETSEY ; OK, 



group of swelling grassy mounds. And from their insulated 

 character, and the abundance of organisms which they inclose, 

 they serve to remind one of those green pyramids of Central 

 America in which the traveller finds deposited the skeleton 

 remains of extinct races. It has been suggested by Mr Duff, 

 in his " Sketch," a suggestion which the late Sutherland- 

 shire discoveries of Mr Robertson of Inverugie have tended 

 to confirm, that the Oolite and Weald of Moray do not, in 

 all probability, represent consecutive formations : they seem 

 to bear the same sort of relation to each other as that mu- 

 tually borne by the Mountain Limestone and the Coal Mea- 

 sures. The one, of lacustrine or of estuary origin, exhibits 

 chiefly the productions of the land and its fresh waters ; the 

 other, as decidedly of marine origin, is charged with the re- 

 mains of animals whose proper home was the sea. But the 

 productions, though dissimilar, were in all probability con- 

 temporary, just as the crabs and periwinkles of the Frith of 

 Forth are contemporary with the frogs and lymnea of Flan- 

 ders moss. 



I had little time for exploration in the neighbourhood of 

 Elgin ; but that little, through the kindness of my friend Mr 

 Duff, I was enabled to economize. We first visited together 

 the outlier of the Weald at Linksfield. It may be found 

 rising in the landscape, a short mile below the town, in the 

 form of a green undulating hillock, half cut through by a 

 limestone quarry ; and the section thus furnished is of great 

 beauty. The basis on which the hillock rests is formed of 

 the well-marked calcareous band in the Upper Old Red, 

 known as the Cornstone, which we find occurring here, as 

 elsewhere, as a pale concretionary limestone of considerable 

 richness, though in some patches largely mixed with a green 

 argillaceous earth, and in others passing into a siliceous chert. 

 Over the pale-coloured base, the section of the hillock is ribbed 

 like an onyx : for about forty feet, bands of gray, green, and 



