64 A SECTION OF THE CLIFFS NEAR NEWBIGGIN 



Midway between the extremities of the gravel-bed the best 

 development is seen. Here it is composed of gravel varying 

 in size from a hazel nut to well rounded boulders, the largest 

 I have seen measuring slightly over five feet in girth. Patches 

 of fine gravel and coarse sand are common. In this position 

 also, pebbles consisting of fragments of arenaceous strata 

 derived from the adjacent rocks predominate, but a larger 

 quantity of foreign material is intermixed. 



Fragments which have travelled a considerable distance 

 are, of course, small, and often being much weathered, 

 difficult to recognise. The principal of them are porphyrites 

 (Cheviot), abundant and well preserved ; granite with pink 

 felspar, very much weathered and crumbling when removed ; 

 granite (probably Aberdeen) ; whin, always much weathered 

 and derived from the dykes exposed on the coast; Carboni- 

 ferous limestone, not at all common ; small fragments of 

 gneissic and schistose rocks occasional ; flints. These last 

 are old chalk flints, usually broken and angular in form, 

 occasionally flaked as if broken by impact with other stones. 

 Some are of a bright red colour, and all are hard and have 

 lost their facile cleavage. Rarely, more complete specimens 

 occur which have been but slightly affected by water action. 

 These generally contain traces of organic remains, but the 

 fossils are not sufficiently perfect to make them of much value. 

 Their presence here seems to indicate the existence, some- 

 where in the bed of the North Sea, of Cretaceous deposits, 

 probably derived from the chalk formation which at one time 

 appears to have existed in the North of Scotland, of which the 

 rounded water-worn flints of Aberdeen are remains. Flints 

 occur in great abundance in parts of that county. In some 

 places the ground is covered with them, e.g., the Black Hills 

 near Peterhead, where the cultivated land is white with 

 bleached flints ; the paths are paved with them, and heaps 

 from the soil are everywhere abundant. No trace of the chalk 

 from which they have been derived is to be seen. All along 

 the shore, wherever the granite formation admits of a beach, 



