﻿12 James Durham — The " Karnes " of NeivpoH, Fife. 



falling on it would soon find or form little channels, which, would 

 grow to small and then larger streams as they ran seaward ; great 

 streams like the Mo tray would soon cut deep and broad courses, 

 continually widened and lowered as the stream wound backwards 

 and forwards on its tortuous seaward way. During a great part of 

 the time that has elapsed since the elevation of the land, the Motray 

 has evidently confined its channel to the north side of its valley, 

 scooping out a broad and deep hollow, leaving the great flat-topped 

 Kame at Straiton to record the vast amount of matter it has ex- 

 cavated, its fortification-like front being due to indentations caused 

 by the windings of the river, which at present flows close to the 

 foot of this great terrace. While a large stream like the Motray 

 cleared out a broad plain, tiny rivulets cut narrow but ever-deepening 

 channels, the loose rubbish sliding down their banks frequently 

 compelling them to change their courses, and so isolating the various 

 mounds and ridges, the rain falling on the loose materials would 

 readily obliterate any appearance of vertical cutting, and so form 

 the rounded tops of the cones and backs of the ridges. 



Occasionally the Kames present forms so peculiar that it is difficult 

 to realize that rain and running water alone have shaped them ; but in 

 every doubtful case a careful examination of the surroundings satisfied 

 me that they have been moulded by this action and no other. One 

 feature in particular I found very puzzling, viz. the small lakelets 

 that often occupy the deepest hollows among the Kames, it being 

 difficult to imagine any force that could hollow out lake-basins, 

 operating here ; and as the action of either running water or the 

 waves of the sea would necessarily leave at least one side of the 

 hollow lower than the centre, one solution that presented itself 

 was that the bottoms of the hollows had somehow sunk; but all the 

 observations made were by no means confirmatory of the hypothesis, 

 it being quite apparent that a hollow through which no stream had 

 flowed must have been filled up by matter washed down from its 

 banks by the rain ; indeed not long ago one of these pools was 

 almost completely filled up by the action of an unusually heavy fall 

 of rain in a single night. The solution of the difficulty is, however, 

 simple enough ; the pools are found in oval- shaped hollows, separated 

 from each other, as well as from the drained areas, by comparatively 

 trifling barriers; their oval hollows are the wider parts of the miniature 

 valley of some vanished streamlet, while the barriers which block up 

 their ends, and so form them into basins, are the narrower parts of 

 the valley partially filled up by gravel washed down from its banks, 

 the narrower parts being of course much more readily filled up than 

 the wider. Other similar little difficulties as readily disappeared 

 upon a closer acquaintance with them, leaving no doubt in my mind 

 that the remarkable forms of the Kames are the ordinary every-day 

 work of subaerial denudation, not the product of cataclysmal waves 

 of ocean, nor of glacier nor iceberg, nor of abnormal sea-currents, 

 but by the unobtrusive unhasting unresting influence of the rainfall. 

 In conclusion, I will briefly re-state the argument of the paper : — 

 1. — The mounds, ridges, and terraces of sand, gravel, and shingle, 



