74 A VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF THE MORAY BASIN. 



dry. The land lowers here, and there is a fringing belt of better 

 land intervening between its uplands and the coast-line. From 

 Port Gordon to Fochabers are extensive links and flat waste land 

 clothed in gorse as far as the right bank of Spey — perhaps two 

 miles square in extent. At this point the high distant lands of 

 Moray, and beyond them the summits of Ben Aigan and Ben 

 Einnes, appear, beyond the pass of Sourdan and Craigellachie, and 

 in the middle distance across the Spey the better- wooded country 

 of the plains or Laigh o' Moray. Near Fochabers and Garmouth 

 succeed great wastes of river-rolled channel, through which winds 

 the many streams of the ever-shifting bed of Spey, and then we 

 enter upon the great Plain of Moray. 



Our own experiences of this coast are somewhat fragmentary. 

 On the 14th July 1890, Harvie-Brown, accompanied by Mr. James 

 Brown of Forres, drove down to Covesea by a very tortuous and 

 zigzag road in the Plain of Moray, past Newton Struthers, Alves 

 and Duffus, and, sending the trap to Hopeman, walked the shore- 

 line from Covesea, under the yellow sandstone cliffs — some seven 

 miles. They then drove on to Burghead, where they inspected 

 the old Eoman Well, a huge cistern cut out of the solid sandstone 

 rock, and arched over with stone and brick. 



In the sandstone cliffs, which weather out very yellow and 

 ochreous on the surfaces, are many curious arches, caves, and two 

 remarkable stacks, which are also tunnelled by the sea. At high 

 tide their bases are submerged, but as we saw these stacks they 

 stood up from a bed of sand — a surrounding tide-washed plain of 

 level sand, beneath which, no doubt, they were solidly founded 

 upon the underlying sandstone rock, which lies at right angles 

 with the cliff face, forming a great platform or under-cliff. But 

 the sea cannot fail to destroy these massive pillars in course of 

 time ; indeed, they appear even now to be tottering to their fall, 

 and are far eaten into by the water, as are also the adjoining cliffs 

 and caves. The cliffs are about 100 feet high, and Peregrine 

 Falcons used to frequent them, if they are not indeed still 

 residents. With the exception of a few Herring Gulls, an odd 

 pair or two of Common Gulls, Jackdaws, Kestrels, Eock Pipits, 

 Starlings, and one or two pairs of Oyster-catchers, little bird-life 



