90 A VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF THE MORAY BASIN. 



atmosphere, and beyond, in dark contrast, the waters of the 

 Moray Firth. This is intensified and accentuated if the far-away 

 shore and water are under the shadow of a great northern cloud, 

 and if the sun, glancing away as it were beneath the cloud, lights 

 up these dazzling sands and the dark sea, shot with cat's-paws in a 

 crisp breeze beneath the dark pall of cloud above, the scene is. 

 indeed lovely. Any one residing at Forres may witness these 

 beautiful gleams of gold and sunlight from the summit of the 

 tower of Forres, if he chooses his time and season ; and thus also 

 appear the sands of Culbin to the traveller over the watershed 

 between Spey and Findhorn who looks ahead ! 



Of the ancient history of the Garden of Moray and the great 

 sand-inundation we prefer not to speak in detail. Its aspects 

 have not changed greatly during the past hundred years. The 

 history, mixed up to a large extent with tradition and vague 

 uncertainty, is not, we consider, worth our time and trouble to' 

 unravel, for the purposes of our present volumes. Those who are 

 curious from an antiquarian standpoint will find abundant scope 

 for theory and deduction from facts, amongst the earliest of our 

 general and local historians. Thus, if we entirely credit, over such a 

 span of years, the records of Hector Boece, Buchanan, and others, we 

 find the great cataclysm or extraordinary sand-inundation took 

 place at varying dates about the end of the eleventh century or 

 beginning of the twelfth century, suddenly overwhelming the 

 fertile ' Granary of Moray.' The said Granary of Moray, however, 

 was, as late as the seventeenth century, spoken of as existent, and 

 its site described. The probability is, therefore, that the principal 

 devastation must have been completed prior to the year 1695, as 

 is narrated in the Act of Parliament then made to prevent the 

 pulling of bents, Ammophila arundinacea, thus : ' The Barony of 

 Culbin, and house and yards thereof, is quite ruined, and over- 

 spread with sand.' The real rental of the parish of Dyke has been 

 affected to the estimated extent of £3000. — (Forsyth, A Survey 

 of the Province of Moray, p. 175.) 



Since then there seems to have been evidence of a more 

 gradual approach of the sand over the fertile land, before the 

 influence of prevailing winds from the west, a cycle of change, 



