I 



578 RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 



of this broken character. On a rough hard-cast basis of gra- 

 nite I have laid down in imagination, as if by way of priming, 

 coat after coat of the primary rocks, gneiss, and stratified 

 hornblend, and mica-schist, and quartz-rock, and clay-slate ; 

 and then, after breaking the coatings well up, and rubbing 

 them well down, and so spoiling and crumpling up the work 

 as to make their original order considerably a puzzle, I have 

 begun anew to paint over the rough surface with thick coat- 

 ings of grauwacke and grauwacke-slate. When this part of 

 the operation was completed, I have again begun to break up 

 and grind down, here letting a tract of grauwacke sink into 

 the broken primary, there wearing it off the surface alto- 

 gether, yonder elevating the original granitic hard-cast till 

 it rose over all the coatings, Primary and Palaeozoic. And 

 then I have begun to paint yet a third time with a thick Old 

 Red Sandstone pigment; and yet again to break up and wear 

 down, here to insert a tenon of the Old Red deep into a 

 mortise of the grauwacke, as at Gamrie, there to dovetail it 

 into the clay-slate, as at Tomantoul, yonder, after laying it 

 across the upturned quartz-rock, as at Cullen, to rub by much 

 the greater part of it away again, leaving but mere remainder- 

 patches and fragments, to mark where it had been. Lastly, 

 if I had none of the superior Palaeozoic or Secondary forma- 

 tions to deal with, I have brushed over the whole, by way of 

 finish, with the variously-derived coatings of the superficial 

 deposits ; and thus, as I have said, I have often completed, 

 in idea, after the chance suggestion of the old painter's shop, 

 my portable models of the geology of disturbed districts like 

 the Banffshire one. The deposits of Moray are greatly less 

 broken. Denudation has partially worn them down; but 

 they seem to have almost wholly escaped the previous crump- 

 ling process. 



