274 KAMBLES OP A GEOLOGIST. 



on the opposite side of the Frith. The deep-red colour of the 

 boulder-clay, as exhibited by the wayside in the water-courses 

 and the water, for every runnel was tumbling down big 

 and turbid with the rains, intimated, when, after leaving 

 Cullen some six or seven miles behind me, I passed from a 

 bare moory region of quartz rock into a region of woods and 

 fields, that I was again upon my ancient acquaintance, the 

 Old Red Sandstone. And the section furnished by the Burn 

 of Tynet showed me shortly after that the intimation was a 

 correct one, and how generally it may be laid down as a rule, 

 that at least the more impalpable portions of the boulder-clay 

 are derived from the rocks on which it rests. The ichthyo- 

 lite beds appear in the course of the burn. They have fur- 

 nished several good specimens, among the others, the spe- 

 cimen of Coccosteus figured by Mr Patrick Duff in hi? 

 " Sketches of the Geology of Moray /' and they are, besides, 

 curious, as being the first to exhibit to the traveller who ex- 

 plores from Gamrie westwards, that peculiar style of colour- 

 ing which characterizes the Old Red ichthyolites of the shires 

 of Moray and Nairn, and which differs so strikingly from the 

 more sombre style exhibited by the other ichthyolites of 

 Banffshire, with those of Cromarty, Ross, Caithness, and 

 Orkney. Instead of bearing, like these, one uniform hue, as 

 if deeply shaded with Indian ink, they are gorgeously attired, 

 especially when newly laid open, in white, red, purple, and 

 blue. The day, however, was ill suited for fishing Pterich- 

 thyes and Osteolepi out of the Tynet : the red water was roar- 

 ing from bank to brae; here eddying along the half-sub- 

 merged furze, there tearing down the boulder-clays in raw, 

 red land-slips ; and so, casting but one eager glance at the 

 bed where the fish lay, I travelled on, and entered the tall 

 woods to the east of Fochabers. The rain ceased for a time ; 

 and I met in the woods an old pensioner, who had been evi- 

 dently weather-bound in some public-house, and had now taken 



