94 A VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF THE MORAY BASIN. 



the photographic artist. Only perhaps in early morning or 

 late evening, under the influence of a rising or setting sun- 

 light, or under phenomenal effects of daylight, such as a dark 

 bank of cloud in the north and brilliant sun upon the sandhills ; 

 can definite contours and skylines and shadows from the fleeting 

 clouds be obtained. Under certain other atmospheric conditions 

 also, these yellow sandhills seem as white as driven snow if viewed 

 from a distance. Under most ordinary conditions imagine a rolling 

 inland agricultural country, which for miles in succession has been 

 ploughed and prepared for seed in spring, and rolled after the 

 seed has been just sown, without a hedge or even a wire-fence to 

 throw a shadow to relieve its sameness, then place it under a 

 brilliant sun and cloudless sky, and one could not tell it from the 

 Culbin sands, or the Culbin sands from it, if it were painted or 

 coloured yellow. Much as we desired to illustrate this unique 

 place, neither photography nor the artist's brush has been able 

 to give us anything that we could reproduce, which would give 

 our readers a proper idea of it, and we have been compelled to 

 abandon the hope of illustrating it at all. Sometimes, owing 

 to mysterious aerial currents, breaks appear in the monotony. 

 Little ridges of sand get heaped up to the height of an inch 

 or so above the general level, and these miniature ramparts 

 give a little shelter to the sand immediately to leeward. 

 Thus scalps or clean smooth spaces, or trays of all shapes and 

 sizes, appear and slightly relieve the deadness of the surface. 

 Break the surface of one of these trays with a footprint, and then 

 do the same close to their margins where the sand is seen drifting 

 before the wind, and it is found that while the impression made 

 upon the former retains its sharp edges and correct outlines for 

 many minutes, those made around the edges at a few inches dis- 

 tance, rapidly fill up again with the drift. Where the sand has 

 by some former eddy or air-current been formed into a sharp- 

 edged cone or ridge, the sand in a heavy wind takes the appear- 

 ance of a water- (or sand-) fall, and we have watched a new sand- 

 hill thus in course of formation, and endeavoured to make a rough 

 sketch of the appearance. As has been shown by previous writers 

 when describing the Culbins, a gale of wind acting upon the higher 



