THE OLD RED SANDSTONE SYSTEM. 683 



strata lie flat or nearly so, not having been invaded by igneous rocks. In proximity to 

 the latter, the sandstone forms considerable and precipitous hills, with rounded dome-like 

 summits, in connection with lower bluffs, which affect the mural form, and display a 

 tendency to separate into huge quadrangular masses. The Brecon and Caermarthen fans, 

 and the Ochills in Scotland, are some of its most imposing appearances, Ben Clach, in 

 the latter chain, being 2182, and the King's Seat 2100 feet high. " We find the upper 

 formation," says the historian of the deposit, Mr. Miller, " associated with scenery of 

 great though often wild beauty ; and nowhere is this more strikingly the case than in the 

 province of Moray, where it leans against the granitic gneiss of the uplands, and slopes 

 towards the sea in long plains of various fertility deep and rich, as in the neighbourhood 

 of Elgin, or singularly bleak and unproductive, as in the far-famed heath near Forres. 

 Let us select the scene where the Findhorn, after hurrying over ridge and shallow, amid 

 combinations of rock and wood, wildly picturesque as any the kingdom affords, enters on 

 the lower country, with a course less headlong, through a vast trench scooped in the pale 

 red sandstone of the upper formation. For miles above the junction of the newer and 

 older rocks, the river has been toiling in a narrow and uneven channel, between two 

 upright walls of hard grey gneiss, thickly traversed, in every complexity of pattern, by 

 veins of a light red, large-grained granite. The gneiss abruptly terminates, but not so 

 the wall of precipices. A lofty front of gneiss is joined to a lofty front of sandstone, like 

 the front walls of two adjoining houses ; and the broken and uptilted strata of the softer 

 stone show that the older and harder rocks must have invaded it from below. We stand 

 on a wooded eminence, that sinks perpendicularly into the river on the left, in a mural 

 precipice, and descends with a billowy swell into the broad fertile plain in front, as if the 

 uplands were breaking in one vast wave upon the low country. The river travels along 

 under pale red cliffs, wooded atop. It is through a vast burial yard that it has cut its 

 way a field of the dead so ancient, that the sepulchres of Thebes and Luxor are but of 

 the present day in comparison resting-places for the recently departed, whose funerals 

 are but just over. These mouldering strata are charged with remains, scattered and 

 detached as those of a churchyard, but not less entire in their parts occipital bones, 

 jaws, teeth, spines, scales the dust and rubbish of a departed creation." 



Every where the sandstone presents evidence of being a littoral deposit, frequently 

 showing the tidal ripple-mark as plainly as the sands of our present shores ; but the dif- 

 ferent members of the series appear to have been deposited under different circumstances. 

 The lower tilestone formation seems an accumulation of sediment in calm water, while 

 the upper conglomerate is a compost of water-worn boulders, which show considerable 

 attrition, and proclaim the action of strong oceanic currents* In various localities the 

 sandstone exhibits a countless profusion of singular depressions, in the form of rings, 

 horse-shoes, or almonds, small in the English districts, but often nearly a foot in diameter 

 in Scotland, easily perceptible by their pale yellow colours, contrasting with the dark red 

 of the surrounding rock. These impressions point to the marking of the surface of the 

 strata with blotches, the origin of which is obscure, but consisting of a softer material 

 than the mass they distinguish, which the subsequent action of water or of the atmo- 

 sphere has partially or entirely worn away. In former times superstition converted 

 these appearances into supernatural phenomena. According to the tradition of the 

 English borders, a mare and her foal, belonging to the chapelry of Sapey, having been 

 stolen by a woman, who led them down the bed of a stream, to avoid the discovery of 

 their traces, the patron, St. Margaret of Audley, interposed, and ineffaceably imprinted 

 upon the rock the footprints of the animals and those of the woman's pattens, as a 

 memorial of the sacrilegious crime. 



It was at one time imagined, that the old red sandstone system contained few or no 



