OLD RED SANDSTONE OF WESTERN EUROPE. BT 
or not there may be still older conglomerates and sandstones bearing to this 
mass a relation somewhat like that which it bears itself to the conglomerates 
of Reay, but lying concealed under the sea, must always be matter of conjecture. 
In any case an enormous interval of time must have elapsed between the forma- 
tion of the underlying crystalline rocks and that of this basement conglomerate, 
though no strata belonging to this interval may have been laid down or preserved 
within the district. 
2. Braemore and Ousedale Sandstones—At the mouth of Ousedale Water 
the conglomerate just described passes under a series of red sandy and 
shaly beds. Thick bands of dull chocolate-red and reddish-grey sandstone, 
with courses of dull red sandy shale, are found cropping out along the slope 
of the valley, and running out to sea in successive ‘shore-reefs. Several 
thick zones of the same dull red sandy shale occur in the upper part of 
the group, while in the lower two-thirds the beds are chiefly of sandstone, 
but with occasional courses of shale. It is noteworthy how abundantly 
pink orthoclase occurs in the matrix of many of the sandstones. In one 
particular bed, exposed at a little fishing creek below Badbea, the composition 
is so felspathic, and the felspar so fresh and distinctly cleavable, that the rock 
might readily be mistaken for a porphyry vein. The total thickness of this group 
in the Ousedale locality may be between 400 and 500 feet. No fossils were 
observed in it. 
The same group of red sandstones and shales, faulted on the west side 
against the granite, runs up the Ousedale valley into the Langwell Water. 
On the further side of the Scarabia Hills it reappears, and covers several square 
miles of surface, filling the valley of Braemore, and stretching westwards under 
the Maiden Pap, Smean, and Morven. Exposed in the Berriedale Water, and 
in the gullies descending from the hills on either side, it presents everywhere 
the same dull chocolate-red hue as at Ousedale. The sandy shales strongly 
remind one of some of the red shales at the base of the Lower Old Red Sand- 
stone in Lanarkshire and elsewhere. 
Above the coarse conglomerate of Sarclet comes a series of red sandstones, 
and red, green, and grey shales, and calcareous flagstones. Between Ellen’s 
Goe and the Stack of Ulbster this series of strata can hardly be less than 800 
feet thick. It may perhaps be placed on the same parallel as the red shales 
and sandstones of Braemore, like which it rests on coarse conglomerate, and is 
covered by red brecciated conglomerate ; but it contains a considerable admix- 
ture of greenish and grey calcareous flagstone, showing that the peculiar type 
of the Caithness Old Red Sandstone had already appeared. Traced northwards, 
the group appears to assume still more of that type, and it becomes impossible 
to draw any line between it and the group of sandstones No. 4. 
VOL. XXVIII. PART II. 5 F 
