18 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF ABERDEEN AND DISTRICT 
mere local movement, for striz pointing between S. and S.E. are found 
from Elgin by Fraserburgh, Huntly and Fyvie to a point three and a half 
miles north of the Firth of Tay. Erratics from the N.W. are found 
as far south as Stonehaven and probably as far as Gourdon and Johns- 
haven: they include Cambrian ‘ pipe rock ’ and Torridonian sandstone, 
Elgin sandstone and Huntly rocks. Sutherlandshire granites (e.g. Rogart 
granite) have been transported to Elgin. 
(2) Second Ice-sheet—The coastal strip from Stonehaven to beyond 
Peterhead was traversed from S.S.W. by ice which brought with it a 
copious red bottom moraine, formed by the grinding up of the soft 
red shales of the Strathmore syncline, and erratics from the Old Red 
shales, sandstones, conglomerates and lavas. 
Stria, erratics and boulder clays prove that ice with which the 
‘Strathmore Ice’ coalesced moved northward towards the whole south 
coast of the Moray Firth from Fraserburgh to Inverness. 
The paths of both these ice-sheets were abnormal—not such as ice 
able to move out freely from the Scottish centres of accumulation would 
have chosen ; and this holds true even if those centres were not the same 
for both, as was very probably the case. ‘The Scottish ice was evidently 
compelled to turn south-east and south in the one case and north and 
finally north-west (across Caithness) in the other by the presence of 
Scandinavian ice in the bed of the North Sea. It is inconceivable that 
while Scandinavian ice continued to occupy the North Sea there could 
be in North-east Scotland a deviation from the earlier movement from 
the north-west to the later movement from the south without very extensive 
deglaciation. At two places peat and peaty material caught up in the 
red ground moraine of the Strathmore Ice give indication of an inter- 
glacial period of mild climate, and of the probably complete disappearance 
of the ice before the advent of the Second Ice-sheet. In the Burn of 
Benholm the red boulder clay enclosing peat rests on the dark shelly 
boulder clay discussed below. 
Scandinavian Ice in Scotland (?)—In recent years quite a number of 
easily recognisable Scandinavian erratics (rhomb porphyries, laurvikites) 
have been found in North-east Scotland, particularly at Bay of Nigg 
(14 boulders) : one was discovered nine miles inland. 
A dark shelly boulder clay occurs at a number of localities in Aberdeen 
and Kincardine. No Scandinavian boulders have yet been found in it, 
but the fact that it contains numerous shells, most in fragments and many 
striated, shows that the ice of which it formed the ground moraine must 
have traversed the sea-floor. This shelly clay seems to be the lowest 
and oldest of all the glacial deposits in the districts where it is found. 
If the Scandinavian ice did not actually bring in the shelly clay, its pressure 
offshore forced in upon the land from the north-eastward part of the 
native ice that had previously passed over the bed of the North Sea. The 
aggregation of boulders at Bay of Nigg suggests that there the Scandinavian 
ice must have invaded or closely approached our shores. 
(3) Third Ice-sheet—Mers de glace from the Northern Highlands and 
from the region east and west of the Great Glen converged on the head of, 
and moved eastward along, the Moray Firth. From Elgin onward the 
