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OLD RED SANDSTONE OF WESTERN EUROPE. 379 
stone. The felspar is the predominant ingredient, and likewise enters largely, 
in a comminuted state, into the composition of the paste. The rock has thus 
a strongly felspathic character, and has evidently been in great part derived 
from the detritus of such a gneiss as that already referred to as exposed on the 
north side of the Scarabin range. Owing, indeed, to the remarkably fresh and 
crystalline nature of the felspar, many portions of the fine-grained breccia 
would at first be most probably set down as granite, or some variety of the 
intrusive porphyries of the old metamorphic rocks. As seen at Badbea, this 
brecciated mass has a thickness of at least 300 feet. It passes upward into 
pebbly sandstones. 
Owing to the fault already mentioned as flanking the Scarabin Hills on the 
south and emerging on the coast-cliffs at Berriedale, the Badbea breccia is 
brought up again along with the sandstones which cover it, forming together 
the projecting headland Ceann Leathad nam Bo. It retains here the same 
characters as at Badbea. By a rapid reversal of dip, the breccia or brecciated 
conglomerate arches over to the north-east under its overlying sandstones. 
The section then continues an ascending one as far as the Latheron synclinal 
axis. Eastward from that part of the coast, however, the whole series rises 
again to the surface, until, as already stated, the lower strata are once more 
brought up along the Sarclet anticline. Although the rocks round Sarclet are 
not exactly similar to those exposed about Berriedale and southwards, we are 
probably not far from the truth in placing the conglomerate seen at Ulbster 
on the same horizon with that of Badbea. Two bands of conglomerate occur 
on the coast of Ulbster,—the upper one measures only a few feet in thickness ; 
the lower is about fifty feet thick, and contains angular fragments of quartz-rock, 
sandstone, &c. This conglomerate zone cannot be followed far inland. It seems 
to die out before reaching the shore again, on the other side of the Sarclet axis. 
This northward attenuation of the thick conglomerates and breccias of Badbea 
affords further evidence of the position of the ancient shore, and that the more 
open water of Lake Orcadie lay to the north. 
Turning inland from the Berriedale shore, we find the conglomerate running 
along the hill-tops on the left side of the Berriedale Water, with the red shales 
and sandstones emerging from beneath it, and cropping out along the lower 
slopes. On the right bank of the stream, outlying portions rise into the 
Maiden Pap, Smean, and Morven, but are so blended with the next succeeding 
sandstones as to form with these one continuous group. 
4, Langwell and Morven Sandstones and Conglomerates.—Between Badbea 
and the Berriedale Water, the breccias now described pass up into a thick 
series of dull chocolate-red, grey, and yellow sandstones, with layers of 
dull-red and olive-coloured shales and of fine conglomerate. They form the 
