1866.] JAMIESON CAITHNESS. 275 



but, owing to the want of good sections, the arrangement of these 

 various deposits was then obscure. It is, however, as follows : — 

 Commencing at the surface we have — Thickness 



in feet. 



1st. Water- worn gravel and sand, stratified, often rather coarse and 

 pebbly, and somewhat ferruginous. Contains no fossils, so far 

 as I have seen 10 to 25 



2nd. Unstratified pebbly mud of a dark-grey tint, hard, and diffi- 

 cult to pierce. The stones in it are of small size, but numerous, 

 and some of them glacially scratched. In the upper part I 

 could see no shells ; but shell-fragments occur in the lower part, 

 increasing in numbers towards the base. Some of the shell- 

 fragments show distinct traces of glacial action 20 to 30 



3rd. Fine brownish sand, in some places rich in shells. This sand 



is interstratified with the upper part of the subjacent bed 1 to 2 



4th. Fine dark-grey silt, free from stones, containing Arctic shells 

 complete, and apparently in situ; they are, however, mostly 

 decayed and somewhat crushed, so that it is difficult to extract 

 them. This silt is very firm, as if much compressed, and the 

 greater proportion of it consists of fine muddy sand. The base 

 of this bed has not been exposed, but it has been excavated by 

 Mr. James Runciman (who was so good as to lay it open at my 

 request) to a depth of 10 feet. No difierence in the quality is 

 to be seen to this depth ; no stones. The upper surface of this 

 silt is about 150 feet above the sea. 



Here, then, we have a thick mass of drift, exactly like that of 

 Caithness, clearly overlying a glacial-marine silt, with shells in situ. 

 The broken shells in this coarse upper drift seem to have been derived 

 from the beds below. In one part of the bank I found, at the bot- 

 tom of the coarse pebbly mud, beds of fine silt with broken shells 

 and confused stratification ; these seemed to be ordinary marine 

 beds disturbed from their original position by the agency that lodged 

 the overlying drift. Where this disturbing action was so great as to 

 completely break up and destroy the fine silty layers then we should 

 have sections like those of Caithness, where the mass is unstratified 

 from top to bottom, and I believe in many places of the King-Edward 

 banks this will be found to be the case. Large boulders are rare in 

 the King-Edward district, but I saw one of Greywacke from 3 to 

 4 feet in length, which seemed to have dropped out of the coarse 

 pebbly mud. 



Eig. 7. — Section across King-Edward valley. 



K Stream. S. 



¥/;r/»>/ -^^s^ ■'^/, 



Line of sea-level. 



A. Grreywacke and clay-slate, 



B. Glacial deposits. 



In a notice of these King-Edward (the name is a corruption of 

 Kinedart) beds in the 14th vol. of the Quart. Joum. Geol. Soc. 1858, 

 p. 525, I remarked that the shells in the fine silt were often crushed 

 in a remarkable way, as if by sudden pressure from above. 



