Vol. 62. j GLACIAL PERIOD IN ABERDEENSHIRE, ETC. 21 



they had been swept down from above by the same agency as that 

 which carried off the flints. At the granite-quarry on the west side 

 of Stirling Hill, there is a like absence of flints on the crest of the 

 ridge, but they are found plentifully in the hollow to the north of 

 the quarry, where they are mixed with much coarse granitic sand, 

 which seems to have been scoured off the rock by the passage of the 

 ice. At the Hill of Coldwells, although there are no flints on the 

 south side, these make their appearance as soon as we reach the top, 

 where they are in many places quite plentiful. The bare granite 

 crops out all over the summit of Longhaven and Stirling Hills, 

 especially along the seaward front of the latter. At Coldwells, 

 which lies farther inland and attains a somewhat greater height, 

 the denudation has been less complete, and the rock is scarcely 

 exposed. 



Another proof of the northward movement of ice along the east 

 side of Aberdeenshire may bo mentioned. When the railway- 

 cutting at New Machar Station was in progress, I observed that the 

 edges of the nearly-vertical beds of gneiss were bent over at the 

 surface from south or south-west to north or north-east, as if by 

 the passage of ice coming from the southward. This station is 

 about 9 miles north-north-west of Aberdeen. Esker-like mounds 

 of gravel may be traced a little inland along the coast from 

 Belhelvie northward, throughout the parish of Foveran, on to the 

 village of Newburgh on the Eiver Ythan. These mounds occa- 

 sionally have some Red Clay on the top, and contain fragments 

 derived from the red sandstones. They probably mark the border 

 of the stream of ice which came along the coast from the south, 

 during the time of the deposition of the Red Clay. 



IV. Question op Submergence. 



It is quite clear to me that this Red Clay has been brought to 

 Aberdeenshire by a drift of ice from the south, at a time when the 

 coast was submerged beneath water to a level exceeding 300 feet 

 above the present coast-line. Whether this submergence was 

 caused by a depression of the land beneath the present sea-level, or 

 by a sheet of water hemmed in between the ice and the land, is 

 not quite clear. The evidence afforded by the Red-Clay beds in 

 Aberdeenshire is not conclusive on this point, for as yet they have 

 failed to yield any instance of a bed of undisturbed sea-shells in 

 what would seem to be their original habitat ; although such 

 instances do occur to the southward at Montrose, Enrol, Elie, and 

 probably some other localities. In Aberdeenshire, the few shells 

 met with in the Red Clay arc generally more or less broken, and may 

 have been transported from a distance ; it is true that a few whole 

 ones have also been found. 



V. Succession of Beds — an Older Boulder-Clay Discovered. 



The whole of our Glacial Beds in Scotland are, no doubt, later 

 than the Forest-Bed Series of the Norfolk coast, perhaps later even 



