RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 279 



CHAPTE R IV. 



THE prevailing yellow hue of the Elgin houses strikes the 

 eye of the geologist who has travelled northwards from the 

 Frith of Forth. He takes leave of a similar stone at Cupar- 

 Fife, a warmly-tinted yellow sandstone, peculiarly well suit- 

 ed for giving effect to architectural ornament ; and after pass- 

 ing along the deep-red sandstone houses of the shires of Angus 

 and Kincardine, and the gneiss, granite, hyperstene, and mica- 

 schist houses of Aberdeen and Banff shires, he again finds 

 houses of a deep red on crossing the Spey, and houses of a 

 warm yellow tint on reaching Elgin, geologically the Cupar- 

 Fife of the north. And the story that the coloured build- 

 ings tell him is, that he has been passing, though by a some- 

 what circuitous route of a hundred and fifty miles, over an 

 anticlinal geological section, down in the scale till he reached 

 Aberdeen and had gone a little beyond it, and then up again, 

 until at Elgin he arrives at the same superior yellow bed of 

 Old Eed Sandstone which he had quitted at Cupar-Fife. 

 Both beds contain the same organisms. The Holoptychius 

 of Dura Den, near Cupar, must have sprung from the same 

 original as the Holoptychius of the Hospital and Bishop-Mill 

 quarries near Elgin ; and it seems not improbable that the 

 two beds, thus identical in their character and contents, may 

 have existed, ere the upheaval of the Grampians broke their 



