i 



244 RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 



a state of chalky friability, seemed to be fragments of those 

 smaller bivalves, belonging to the genera Donax, Venus, and 

 Mactra, that are so common on flat sandy shores. But when 

 the sea washed over these shells, they could have been the 

 denizens of at least no flat shore. The descent on which 

 they occur sinks downwards to the existing beach, over which 

 it is elevated at this point two hundred and thirty feet, at 

 an angle with the horizon of from thirty-five to forty degrees. 

 Were the land to be now submerged to where they appear 

 on the hill-side, the bay of Gamrie, as abrupt in its slopes 

 as the upper part of Loch Lomond or the sides of Loch Ness, 

 would possess a depth of forty fathoms water at little more 

 than a hundred yards from the shore. I may add, that I 

 could trace at this height no marks of such a continuous ter- 

 race around the sides of the bay as the waves would have 

 infallibly excavated in the diluvium, had the sea stood at a 

 level so high, or, according to the more prevalent view, had 

 the land stood at a level so low, for any considerable time / 

 though the green banks which sweep around the upper part 

 of the inflection, unscarred by the defacing plough, would 

 scarce have failed to retain some mark of where the surges 

 had broken, had the surges been long there. Whatever may 

 in this special case be the fact, however, I cannot doubt that 

 in the comparatively modern period of the boulder clays, 

 Scotland lay buried under water to a depth at least five times 

 as great as the space between this ancient sea-beach and the 

 existing tide-line. 



