424 KAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 



stratified primary rocks. Immediately over the town, on the 

 brow of the eminence, where the granitic axis had been laid 

 bare in digging a foundation for the Free Church manse, I 

 saw numerous masses of schistose-gneiss, passing in some of 

 the beds into a coarse-grained mica-schist, and a lustrous 

 hornblendic slate, that had been quarried from over it, and 

 which may be still seen built up into the garden-wall of the 

 erection. I walked out towards the west, to examine the 

 junction of the granite and the Great Conglomerate, where 

 it is laid bare by the sea, little more than a quarter of a mile 

 outside the town. There was a horde of noisy urchins a 

 little beyond the inn, who, having seen me alight from the 

 mail-gig, had determined in their own minds that I was en- 

 gaged in the political canvass going forward at the time, but 

 had not quite ascertained my side. They now divided into 

 two parties ; and when the one, as I passed, set up a " Hurra 

 for Dundas," the other met them from the opposite side of 

 the street, with a counter cry of " Anderson for ever." Im- 

 mediately after clearing the houses, I was accosted by a man 

 from the country. " Ye'll be seeking beasts," he said : 

 " what price are cattle gi'en the noo T " Yes, seeking beasts" 

 I replied, " but very old ones : I have come to hammer 

 your rocks for petrified fish." " I see, I see," said the man ; 

 " I took ye by ye'er gray plaid for a drover ; but I ken some- 

 thing about the stane fish too : there's lots o' them in the 

 quarries at Skaill." 



I found the Great Conglomerate in immediate contact with 

 the granite, which is a ternary of the usual components, some- 

 what intermediate in colour between that of Peterhead and 

 Aberdeen, and which at this point bears none of the caul of 

 stratified primary rook by which it is overlaid on the brow 

 of the hill. When the Great Conglomerate, which is mainly 

 composed of it here, was in the act of forming, this granite 

 must have been one of the surface rocks of the locality, and 



