122 A VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF THE MORAY BASIN. 



would otherwise join across its bed, the glorious river plays and 

 frets upon the surface of, perhaps, the deepest pool through- 

 out its long course, and then, again released, widens still further, 

 and increases still more in velocity, scarping away its shifting 

 banks, altering its channel, heaping up the gravel and sand and 

 debris, often defying human ingenuity and skill to restrain it, and 

 forming a mighty delta of ever changing islands. Then, still 

 maintaining its accelerated speed, though resolutely stayed for a 

 short space by the great Bar, with renewed madness and suicidal 

 plunge dashes headlong into the sea at Kingston. 



Quite a feature of Lower Speyside is the annually shifting delta 

 of stones, and gravel and sand. We had crossed it by the railway 

 bridge upon the coast-line between Banff and Elgin, but not until 

 1893 did we have an opportunity of personally and intimately 

 becoming acquainted with it. In the early days of August of that 

 year we resided for a time at Fochabers, fishing, by the kind per- 

 mission of the Duke of Richmond and Gordon's factors, for 'finnock' 

 and sea-trout, and in the course of our time we visited the delta 

 between the railway bridge and the sea, or rather the inner basin 

 formed by the Bar. There is not much to say about the delta, save 

 that it is entirely composed of gravel and sand, forming islands, 

 which, along with the banks of the river, are partially clothed in 

 low scrub of alder and willow, and at that season were haunted by 

 innumerable Sedge Warblers, Whitethroats, and Willow Warblers, as 

 also by Eose Linnets, Yellow-hammers, and Greenfinches. Oyster- 

 catchers were vociferous overhead, flying to and fro, and Sand- 

 martins also were very abundant. The latter breed in large and 

 numerous colonies in the surface drift which overlies the old red 

 sandstone cliffs, which are such prominent features in the river-side 

 scenery of Speyside below Craigellachie and Eothes, throughout 

 some sixteen miles of its course. We saw the salmon fishermen 

 make heavy hauls of fine salmon, where the river reunites its strag- 

 gling branches at the junction with the basin behind the Bar, some 

 individual fish weighing up to 30 lbs., 35 lbs., 45 lbs., and so on. 

 We could not help the sickening sensation which we always feel 

 when we see the noble fish tapped on the head, while they still 

 struggled vainly in the cod of the seine. We saw a glance 



