92 A VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF THE MORAY BASIN. 



But in the long winding hollows bent grass grows more 

 luxuriantly, and the fierce wind sweeps clean long reaches of 

 water-rolled pebbles of a former beach — the favourite haunts of 

 King-Plover and Tern — and more inland the hollows are clothed 

 in creeping bush and sand-loving dwarf scrub, the white sandhills 

 rising abruptly on either hand. Outside the line of sandhills, and 

 along the ocean's verge, are miles of clean wet sand, smooth and 

 gently sloping, between Findhorn and the Old Bar of the ancient 

 river Findhorn, whose former course remains to some extent 

 marked out by the deeper valleys of the sandhills and the silted 

 up Loch of Buckie. 



The sands of the Culbins, as on many other links of Scotland, 

 are so finely comminuted as to seem almost like powdery snow 

 in consistency ; and the wing-strokes of a rising bird can be seen, 

 left impressed on the surface, as we have ourselves repeatedly 

 observed. Moreover, where the Ring-Plover or Shieldrake, or the 

 rarer Sand-Grouse, runs (or waddles) over the loose-grained sand- 

 hills, a running half-obliterated mark only is left as the light sand 

 runs towards the centres of the footprints. (See under Sand- 

 Grouse.) 



The Culbin sandhills occupy an area of about seven (?) miles in 

 length and three in breadth, between the mouth of the Findhorn 

 and Findhorn Bay, and nearly to Nairn, and reach altitudes of 

 from 10, 20, 30, 60, to 120 feet. At one time the whole extent of 

 ground at present occupied by these vast piles of sand was equally 

 fertile with the Laigh of Moray. 



In a gale of wind these sands of Culbin present to the eye a 

 moving mass of drifting sand, climbing one great sandhill of some 7 

 or 80 feet in height, but going into spin-drift of sand at the summits, 

 and pouring down in miniature avalanches and sandfalls on the lee- 

 sides, and rushing again headlong up or along the sides of the next, 

 with a continuous yellow rippling gleam as of thousands of yellow- 

 fleeced sheep. But this should be viewed from some safe out- 

 post and shelter, away from the sandhills themselves: because 

 amongst them the eyes and the senses become dimmed and 

 blunted, and the walking becomes heavier and heavier with every 

 step, for boots and pockets become heavily laden with sand, which 



