t of edible species,
occur in layers in a siliceous stratified sand, overlaid by a bed of
bluish-colored silt. I picked out of the sand two entire specimens of a
full-grown Fusus, little more than half an inch in length,--the _Fusus
turricola_; and the greater number of the fragments that lay bleaching
at the foot of the broken slope, in a state of chalky friability, seemed
to be fragments of those smaller bivalves, belonging to the genera
_Donax_, _Venus_, and _Mactra_, that are so common on flat sandy shores.
But when the sea washed over these shells, they could have been the
denizens of at least no _flat_ shore. The descent on which they occur
sinks downwards to the existing beach, over which it is elevated at this
point two hundred and thirty feet, at an angle with the horizon of from
thirty-five to forty degrees. Were the land to be now submerged to where
they appear on the hill-side, the bay of Gamrie, as abrupt in its
slopes as the upper part of Loch Lomond or the sides of Loch Ness,
would possess a depth of forty fathoms water at little more than a
hundred yards from the shore. I may add, that I could trace at this
height no marks of such a continuous terrace around the sides of the bay
as the waves would have infallibly excavated in the diluvium, had the
sea stood at a level so high, or, according to the more prevalent view,
had the land stood at a level so low, for any considerable time; though
the green banks which sweep around the upper part of the inflection,
unscarred by the defacing plough, would scarce have failed to retain
some mark of where the surges had broken, had the surges been long
there. Whatever may in this special case be the fact, however, I cannot
doubt that in the comparatively modern period of the boulder clays,
Scotland lay buried under water to a depth at least five times as great
as the space between this ancient sea-beach and the existing tide-line.

CHAPTER II.

Character of the Rocks near Gardenstone--A Defunct Father-lasher--A
Geological Inference--Village of Gardenstone--The drunken
Scot--Gardenstone Inn--Lord Gardenstone--A Tempest threatened--The
Author's Ghost Story--The Lady in Green--Her Appearance and
Tricks--The Rescued Children--The murdered Peddler and his
Pack--Where the Green Dress came from--Village of Macduff--Peculiar
Appearance of the Beach at the Mouth of the Deveron--Dr. Emslie's
Fossils--_Pterichthys quadratus_--Argil