PHYSICAL FEATURES. 



77 



very shallow, nowhere perhaps more than three feet in depth. It 

 consists of open water interspersed with great reed-beds, the 

 liaunts of innumerable Coots, but of fewer Water-Hens, which, as 

 Captain Dunbar Brander informed us on the spot (May 13th, 

 1885), have decreased in number owing to the depredations of 

 the pike. It is interspersed also with other forms of lower growth 

 of aquatic vegetation and sedges, the special haunts of vast 

 numbers of Black-Headed Gulls, a few pairs of Pochards and 

 Shovellers and Little Grebes, through which Captain Dunbar 

 Brander's flat-bottomed punts can easily be poled by a man sitting 

 or standing in the stern. Water-lilies have been introduced of 

 late years, and are thriving, and we saw the reddish orange leaves 

 of last year looking ghostly beneath the surface. Outside the 

 boundaries of the present loch-area, and towards the east end, is a 

 marshy piece of land interspersed with shallow pools of water, and 

 rushy puddles — the favourite feeding-ground of the Shovellers and 

 Mallards, and the nesting-ground of a number of Eedshanks. 



On all sides extend level or undulating sandy plains and ridges 

 — similar in general appearance to others found all over the plains 

 of Moray, some under agriculture, more under plantation, many 

 glistening with sand and bent grass — and round the loch edges are 

 outcrops of the curious calcareous chert or silicious semi-lime- 

 stone protruding from the sandy soil. The east end of the loch 

 has a hard and solid stony flooring, and is about two feet deep. 

 At a certain season of the year, and during only two or three days 

 at most, a fresh-water univalve shell rises to the surface, and is 

 wafted by the wind in large numbers to the shore — nautilus- 

 fashion — but at will the operculum can be drawn over the orifice 

 of the shell, and the living animal can sink again to the bottom. 

 There is much geological interest attaching to the close vicinity of 

 Loch Spynie — the strange reptiliferous sandstones of Elgin being 

 here very clearly observable, though we ourselves did not inspect 

 them. 



Beyond the undulating plains and sandy ridges, which have 

 much influence on the clear dry climate of Elgin, and towards the 

 coast, the sandhills and bents of Lossiemouth were visible, and 

 these have been most suddenly occupied by breeding pairs of 



