RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 277 



those of an unskilfully-folded pamphlet, have been strangely 

 mixed together, so that page last succeeds in some places to 

 page first, and, of the intermediate pages, some appear at the 

 beginning of the work, and some at the end. It is not until 

 we reach the western confines of the county, some two or three 

 miles short of the river Spey, its terminal boundary in this 

 direction, that we find the beds comparatively little disturbed, 

 and arranged chronologically in their original places. In the 

 eastern and southern parts of the shire, rocks widely separated 

 by the date of their formation have been set down side by side 

 in patches, occasionally of but inconsiderable extent Now the 

 traveller passes over a district of grauwacke, now over a re- 

 formation of the Lias ; anon he finds himself on a primary 

 limestone, gneiss, syenite, clay-slate, or quartz-rock ; and yet 

 anon amid the fossils of some outlier of the Old Red. The 

 geological map of the county is, like Joseph's coat, of many 

 colours. I remember seeing, when a boy, more years ago 

 than I am inclined to specify, some workmen engaged in pull- 

 ing down what had been a house-painter's shop, a full cen- 

 tury before. The painter had been in the somewhat slovenly 

 habit of cleaning his brushes by rubbing them against a hard- 

 cast wall, which was covered, in consequence, by a many-co- 

 loured layer of paint, a full half-inch in thickness, and as hard 

 as a stone. Taking a little bit home with me, I polished it 

 by rubbing the upper surface smooth ; and, lo ! a geological 

 map. The strata of variously hued pigment, spread originally 

 over the uneven surface of the hard-cast wall, were cut open, 

 by the denudation of the grindstone, into all manner of fan- 

 tastic forms, and seemed thrown into all sorts of strange neigh- 

 bourhoods. The map lacked merely the additional perplexity 

 of a few bold faults, with here and there a decided dike, in 

 order to render it on a small scale a sort of miniature tran- 

 script of the geology of Banff; and I have very frequently 

 found my thoughts reverting to it, in connection with deposits 



