RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 297 



course, in allusion to their feathered neighbours, the designa- 

 tion of the " JRosemarkie kaes" Cromarty, however, is two- 

 thirds surrounded by the waters of a frith abounding in sea- 

 fowl ; and the little fellows of Rosemarkie, indignant at being 

 classed with their kaes, used to designate us with hearty em- 

 phasis, in turn, as the " Cromarty cooties" i. e. coots. 



A little higher up the valley, on the western side, there 

 occurs in the clay what may be termed a group of excava- 

 tions, composing a piece of scenery ruinously broken and 

 dreary, and that bears a specific character of its own which 

 scarce any other deposit could have exhibited. The excava- 

 tions are of considerable depth and extent, hollows out of 

 which the materials of pyramids might have been taken. The 

 precipitous sides are fretted by jutting ridges and receding 

 inflections, that present in abundance their diversified alter- 

 nations of light and shadow. The steep descents form cycloid 

 curves, that flatten at their bases, and over which the ferru- 

 ginous stratum of mould atop projects like a cornice. Be- 

 tween neighbouring excavations there stand up dividing walls, 

 tall and thin as those of our city buildings, and in some cases 

 broken at their upper edges into rows of sharp pinnacles or 

 inaccessible turf-coped turrets ; while at the bottom of the hol- 

 lows, washed by the runnels which, in the slow lapse of years, 

 have been the architects of the whole, we find cairn-like ac- 

 cumulations of water-rolled stones, the disengaged pebbles 

 and boulders of the deposit. The boulders and pebbles pro- 

 ject also from the steep sides, at all heights and of all sizes, 

 like the primary masses inclosed in our ancient conglome- 

 rates, when exhibited in wave-worn precipices, forcing upon 

 the mind the conclusion that the boulder-clay is itself but an 

 unconsolidated conglomerate of the later periods, which oc- 

 cupies nearly the same relative position to the existing vege- 

 table mould, with all its recent productions, that the great 

 conglomerate of the Old Red Sandstone occupies in relation 



