GEOLOGY 15 
abundantly found in the crystalline area north of the Highland Fault. 
It is quite frequently exposed in artificial openings within Aberdeen 
itself. In the Geological Museum of the University there is a core taken 
from a deep boring driven at Sandilands Chemical Works, in the centre 
of the town, which went 600 ft. through Old Red Sandstone conglomerate 
without reaching the underlying granite. Another familiar town section 
is the right bank of the river Don, between the old and new bridges, 
which is a high cliff of Old Red Sandstone. Outliers of a larger size 
occur between Turriff and Gamrie Bay, along Strathbogie (the Rhynie 
area), in the Elgin district, at Tomintoul and elsewhere. The Gamrie 
section is well known for its abundant fish fauna, proving its Middle Old 
Red Sandstone age. ‘The Rhynie patch, now famous for its plant remains, 
is usually regarded, though less certainly, as of Middle Old Red age. 
Fossils, such as Eurypterids, are occasionally found in the sandstone 
quarry and may yet establish more definitely the horizon. The Old Red 
beds of Moray Firth localities have yielded many fossils, as, for example, 
the fish-bed of the Tynet Burn near Fochabers. 
C. Mesozoic.—At Elgin the interest of the Old Red Sandstone has 
been overshadowed by Permo-Triassic (or ‘ New Red ’) deposits, which 
have a total extent of some nine miles. Their reptilian remains were 
exhaustively described by Huxley and others about 1860. Many new 
forms have been found since that time. 
Some fifty years ago a most unexpected mass of clay, crowded with 
Jurassic fossils (of Kimmeridge age), was exposed at Plaidy in central 
_ Aberdeenshire. The clay rests on boulder-clay and is no doubt ice- 
carried from the Moray Firth area. A similar Jurassic clay, full of 
Ammonites, is found on the coast at Blackpots, near Banff. 
The remnants of the Cretaceous system are even more suggestive. 
Over a ridge of high ground in East Aberdeenshire, from near Ellon to 
Sterling Hill, south of Peterhead, great numbers of rolled flints can be 
picked up off the fields. They are full of Upper Chalk fossils. Collections 
of these are kept in Aberdeen University and the British Museum. In 
the same neighbourhood, at Moreseat in the parish of Cruden, there is 
known an extensive deposit of ‘ Greensand ’ several hundred yards long 
and 30 ft. thick, crowded with fossil casts of Lower Cretaceous 
(and perhaps Upper Jurassic) age. Pebbles of White Chalk itself are 
not uncommon in Aberdeenshire clays, and though Chalk has nowhere 
been found 7m situ it has been dredged from the sea-floor off F raserburgh, 
and trawlers frequently bring up large flints from the bed of the North 
Sea. And finally, a large collection of Cretaceous (Neocomian) fossils 
from gravel-pits near Fraserburgh was described last year in the Geological 
Magazine by Cumming and Bate, who regard the deposits as ice-carried 
from the Moray Firth district. The White Chalk pebbles found in 
Aberdeenshire, as pointed out some years ago by William Hill, are 
_ lithologically unlike other British and foreign chalks, and may represent 
4 
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higher zones of the Chalk, not known elsewhere, laid down on the extreme 
northerly shallow-water margin of the old Chalk Sea. 
D. Trrtrary.—Even of Tertiary times there are tattered fragments 
known. Some curious mounds called the Kippet Hills—near Collieston, 
