48 MR FRANCIS J. LEWIS 



poor crop of oats and barley is grown in unfenced patches on those parts where a thin 

 wash of sand and clay is present. 



Away from the villages the moors are as yet untouched, and this is the case over the 

 whole of the upper part of the Bragor basin. 



Whilst the general sequence corresponds with that recorded from the Gress river 

 basin, the basal beds are thicker and give more information concerning the conditions 

 under which the peat began to form. 



The general sequence found over this area is as follows : — 



Characteristic Plants. 



1. Scirpus csespitosus. 



2. Eriophorum vaginatum. 



3. Betula alba. 



4. Eriophorum vaginatum. 



5. Salix Arhuscula. 



6. Empetrum nigrum. 



7. Structureless peat with seeds of Potentilla 



Comarum, Menyanthes trifoliata, Viola palus- 

 tris, Potamogeton prxlongus, Phragmites com- 

 munis. 



Accompanying Plants. 



1. Sphagnum, Calluna vulgaris (generally scarce, but 



more plentiful near the present surface of the 

 peat). 



2. Calluna vulgaris. 

 Rhacomitrium lanuginosum. 

 PolytricJium sp., Sphagnum. 



3. Corylus Avellana. 

 4. 



5. Empetrum nigrum (scarce). 



Betula nana, Potentilla Comarum, Viola paludris. 



6. Potentilla Comarum, Sphagnum. 

 7. 



Sand and peaty clay. 

 Rock. 



The fifth and sixth beds are very like the basal beds found in the Highland districts. 

 Such a vegetation must have grown under sub-arctic conditions after the ice had left this 

 area. It is interesting to find that the seeds of aquatic plants occur in a bed distinct 

 from and below this. Beds formed of aquatic plants below the arctic vegetation 

 frequently occur in other districts, such as Cape Wrath and Shetland, but they are not 

 continuous like the upper layers of peat, but appear in one section and are absent in 

 another only a few hundred yards away. Such beds must represent the vegetation 

 growing in small marshy pools and near springs after the retreat of the ice, when 

 the drier portions of the moorland were clothed with creeping willows, Empetrum, dwarf 

 birch and other arctic plants. It is noteworthy that such occasional beds of aquatic 

 vegetation do not appear in the hilltop and hillside peat such as the Spey-Findhorn and 

 Findhorn-Nairn watersheds (3). In those localities the topography was unsuited for the 

 formation of such marshy pools, and the moorland appeared to be of a distinctly drier 

 type than in the low-lying districts. 



The lower forest consists of a thick bed of birch, and generally exhibits features 

 which tend to show that rapid denudation was going on during its formation. The 

 peat in this bed is much decomposed ; the wood is frequently badly preserved, and some- 

 times little but the bark remains. Where exposed in the banks of streams, the bed is 

 often seen to consist of birch bark closely pressed together without any intervening 



