532 REV. R. B. WATSON ON THE GREAT DRIFT-BEDS WITH SHELLS 



former section. In the angle of the bank and the flat, this bed of stones is over- 

 laid by the remains of a bed of sand. Both of these beds seem to be superficial 

 deposits of a later period, when the basin was occupied by a loch or inland sea- 

 bay, the currents of which had deeply eroded the red and yellow clays. 



Elsewher? in the flat other superficial beds besides these can be made out, — 

 not indeed all at any one spot, yet distinctly enough, to a thickness of 8 feet : 



1. At the bottom coarse water-worn gravel, what this rests on is not seen ; 



2. Above this fine clay, with equisetum roots apparently of the period of the 

 clay, but this is not certain ; 3. Sandy gravel; 4. Coarse gravel; 5. Sandy clay; 

 6. Loose coarse gravel, or small rolled stones. In this last bed nearly every 

 stone, both greenstone and felstone, was so thoroughly disintegrated that the 

 whole bed seemed at first to be merely sand. 



At the very head of this basin a burn goes off* to the west or north-west, in 

 w^hich a deep section of the boulder-clay is given ; and between this burn and the 

 Cloinoid Burn, just to the east of the clachan of Cloinoid, is a deep land-slip in 

 the boulder-clay, which strongly conveys the impression of how deep the clay is. 



The boulder-clay banks press closely in on the burn above this, and at 520 

 feet above the sea is a waterfall over the edge of a great bed of felstone porphyry, 

 and from the foot of the fall the boulder-clay rises 110 feet perpendicular; but 

 above this the valley rapidly opens out to a mere depression in the contour of the 

 hill, and the boulder-clay thins out more and more. 



The next great glen to the west is that of the Scoradale Burn or Slaodrigh 

 Water, in which, and all its tributaries, the boulder-clay banks are very large. 

 Up one of these tributaries I found a bank of the clay 130 feet high at 310 feet 

 above the sea, and in the main burn they seem even larger. I examined them 

 carefully, however, only in the Croghcrever Burn, which joins the Slaodrigh Burn 

 from the north-west, about a mile above the sea. At the junction of the burns, 

 50 feet above the sea, one gets a very good view of the mass of the beds, which 

 are here from 00 to 100 feet high. Just above the junction is a steep but some- 

 what ragged face of the boulder-clay (Plate XXII. fig. 9). Here the soft 

 shales at the bottom rise on the left to about 15 feet, but diminish in height 

 down the stream. Above the rock are ten or twelve feet of coarse gravel and sand 

 plainly stratified. Above this is boulder-clay 50 feet, with traces of bedding, and 

 perhaps somewhat looser than usual. I found a few fragments of shell about 

 the middle of the bank. They had been washed out by the rains, and I could 

 not trace them to any particular spot. The nature of the bank prevents a very 

 close examination of it in detail. 



Just above this is a bank which a year ago presented a remarkably fine 

 section. Being very deeply channelled by water-courses, its details were well 

 shown, and it was also remarkably rich in shells. Scarcely a trace, however, 

 now remains of it, so completely has it been washed away or buried in its own 



