
OLD RED SANDSTONE OF WESTERN EUROPE. 433 
below the sandstone just referred to. Yet so uneven must have been the 
bottom on which these deposits accumulated, that the underlying quartz-rock 
rises up into the red sandstone, and has the ends of its highly inclined 
beds wrapped round by it. No bands of shale and no trace of calcareous 
nodules was observed at this locality, nor have any fossils yet been obtained 
here. 
2. The South Coast of Lake Orcadie from Buckie to the Spey.—These Cullen 
patches form the last outlying portion of the Old Red Sandstone of the Moray 
Firth. About five miles of a rough rocky coast, where the metamorphic rocks 
run out in sharp ledges into the sea, now intervene, and on the west side of 
this interval we finally enter upon the main area of the formation. Evidence 
of the great waste of the conglomerates and sandstones of this region is 
afforded, as we approach that main area, by the red boulder-clay scars, which 
are full of fragments from these deposits. On the east side of Buckie 
harbour the red rocks occur 7m situ. Thence they may be traced, as they were 
originally by Dr Matcotmson, up the valley of the Spey and through the vale 
of Rothes; westwards by the valley of the Lossie, round the base of the 
Pluscardine and Forres hills into the gorges of the Findhorn as far as Sluie, and 
by Lethen Bar and the base of the hill of. Rait into the valley of the Nairn, up 
which they extend along the northern declivities of the Highlands, into the 
hollow of the Great Glen. Throughout this wide region the rocks were shown 
by Dr Matcotmson to preserve the distinctive lithological characters of 
their subdivisions, and to maintain likewise a paleontological uniformity. By 
means of his only too brief researches, it was made for the first time possible 
to compare the development of the Old Red Sandstone on the opposite shores 
of the Moray Firth. His descriptions of localities are so minute and accurate 
that reference may be made to them for details, which thus need not be inserted 
in the present memoir. 
Dr Ma.cotmsov, as already stated, arranged the Old Red Sandstone of the 
borders of the Moray Firth in three divisions. His lower division, consisting 
of—(a) conglomerates; () red sandstone and shales, and (c) argillo-calcareous 
sandstones and conglomerates, and containing an ichthyic fauna of the Caith- 
| Tess type, is that with which we have at present to deal. He believed that 
these strata were surmounted conformably by what he called the central or 
| cornstone division, containing Bothriolepis, Holoptychius, &c. There can be now 
| no doubt that the central division in which these fossils occur, and which he 
rightly identified with the deposit of Clashbennie, represents the Upper Old Red 
/ Sandstone. I shall adduce evidence to show that, in spite of the want of good 
] 
| Sections, that division must really lie here, as elsewhere, unconformably on 
| older parts of the Old Red system. It occurs as a strip, with detached out- 
| VOL, XXVIII. PART IL. du 
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