FAUXAL POSITION. 



143 



bottomed with mud in the midst of an universal top-dressing of sand 

 shoaling on either side — about half a mile wide, and with pre- 

 cipitous submerged banks — a famous resort of many excellent sea- 

 fish, such as skate and ling and flounders, or ' Witches.' On 

 either side of these precipitous banks the floor of the Firth of 

 Moray is of pure sand, except in certain parts, such as Burghead 

 Bay, under the shallow waters of which, the roots and boles of 

 ancient pines are still to be seen in a well-preserved state, rooted 

 in muddy, peaty soil of great tenacity, and overlaid by a thin 

 stratum of granitic sand, the same as that of which the Culbin 

 Hills and general coast-lines are formed. It would be easy for us 

 to enlarge upon this descriptive part of our subject, but we are 

 only traversing well-beaten ground, and compiling or repeating 

 what has been far more ably and far more fully told before, so 

 we must refer our readers to these fuller accounts, and especially 

 to an admirably compressed account of the ancient and present- 

 day state of the coast of Moray in the £lgi7i Courant of November 

 1855, as well as to the more finished and detailed works of the 

 Moray Historians already often referred to. Perhaps more than 

 enough has here been said for our purpose under ' Faunal Position ' 

 of our area. 



Of the Great Bird-wave ^ which undoubtedly enters the Moray 

 Firth, and which can only be rivalled or exceeded in Scotland by 

 those which strike our coasts in the Firth of Forth, and at the 

 Pentland Skerries, many detachments escape from the pressure, 

 via the valleys which open up on the south shore of the Firth — 



' When speaking thus of bird-waves being influenced by land-contours, our 

 readers will understand us to mean the lower travelling strata of migrants. It 

 has been explained by Herr Heinrich Gatke, that birds on migration pass over 

 Heligoland at varying and often vast altitudes, and such as do pass over at these 

 great heights, are not aSected by the comparatively shallow depressions or raised 

 ridges and mountains of our country ; but often, far beyond our power of vision, 

 speed on their way without wanting to rest or feed en route, and, it may be, desir- 

 ing to complete their long aerial journey between their summer and winter quarters, 

 in one long-sustained flight, often of hundreds and even thousands of miles (see 

 Gatke's Birdn of Helifjoland, English translation : David Douglas, Edinburgh, 1895). 

 But it appears to us that it is to the lower travelling strata, in autumn and spring 

 that we are mainly indebted for extension of range and increase of many of our 

 breeding birds in Britain. These are naturally more easily intercepted by favour- 

 able localities, where they may be induced to rest and feed en route. 



