﻿10 James Durham — The " Karnes " of Newport^ Fife. 



are numerous vertical rock faces that can be traced along horizontal 

 parallel lines at various levels, which so closely resemble the rocks 

 of the present sea-shore, that there is no reason to doubt that they 

 are old sea-levels, which as the land rose were successively washed 

 by its waves. From the fact that between the bases of the higher 

 lines of cliffs and the tops of those beneath them, there are usually 

 gently sloping declivities, one is apt to conclude that the upward 

 movement had not been uniform ; but it is well to bear in mind 

 that the height of the cliff is by no means a trustworthy measure of one 

 period of rest, as the following fact illustrates. From the rocks at 

 the upper light-house at Tayport to a point half a mile to the 

 westward, there is a break in the line of cliff, that elsewhere almost 

 uninterruptedly forms the margin of the estuary; the break is 

 occupied by a series of gravel terraces, which, beginning very little 

 above the reach of the tide, succeed each other a good way up the 

 hill-sides in rises of from five to ten feet, and as the present sea-cliff 

 is equal in height to two or three of these terraces, it is apparent 

 that it must have formed the shore-line during the various elevations 

 of the land to which they bear testimony, and remains the shore- 

 line still. But whether the land rose per saltum, or with an unin- 

 terrupted gradual motion, the sea has left lasting testimony of its 

 presence in the form of a line of great cliffs, which can be traced 

 along all the hills, between 150 and 200 feet above the datum-line 

 of the Ordnance Survey. In colouring the accompanying map, I 

 have adopted the higher level, in order to show the geography of 

 the district when the Kames were covered by the sea. (See Plate I.) 

 That these waterworn gravels and sands are not, as some have 

 suggested, ancient deposits of the Tay, is, I think, very evident. The 

 late Dr. William Ehind made a careful estimate of the gravels of 

 the estuary, and found that seventy-five per cent, of them consist of 

 fragments of the rocks along its margin ; while, as has been stated, 

 the constituents of the Kames are nearly all far-travelled. There is 

 indeed little doubt that we owe to the ancient glaciers the intro- 

 duction into this district of the materials which form these Kames. 

 As they slowly drew back over the lowlands, they must have 

 gradually buried hill and valley under a thick layer of the stones 

 which they carried on their surface, with gneiss and mica-schist 

 and granite from the Highland mountains, with Old Eed Conglomerate, 

 and Old Eed Sandstone from the formations on the flanks of the 

 Grampians, and with greenstones and basalts from the rocks in the 

 vicinity. These rock-fragments would be mostly angular, as, after 

 they were broken off the hill-sides, they had merely rested on the 

 surface of the glacier, until they were deposited on the track of the 

 receding ice. Such fragments as found their way through crevasses 

 to the bottom of the glacier were crushed and ground beneath it, 

 and on its withdrawal formed " till," which in this neighbourhood 

 is a compact mass of light brown clay enclosing smoothed and 

 scratched stones, mostly local, and nearly as solid and tenacious as 

 rock itself, and not at all to be confounded with the materials of 

 the Kames. 



