ittle I may have had to do with the making of them up; I have
always to keep my blunderbuss full charged to the muzzle,--not wishing
harm to any one, but bound in duty to let drive at all and sundry who
would make war upon the passengers, or attempt running the conveyance
off the road; and, finally, as my friend Mr. Joss takes the "Principia"
to _his_ coach-top, I take pockets full of fossils to the top of mine,
and amuse myself in fine days by working out, as I best can, the
problems which they furnish. Yes, I rather think _I am_ a coach-guard."
And so, taking my seat beside my red-coated brother, who had guessed the
true nature of my occupation so much more shrewdly than myself, I rode
on to Elgin, where I passed the night.

It is difficult to arrange in the mind the geologic formations of
Banffshire in their character as a series of deposits. The pages of the
stony record which the county composes, like those of an
unskilfully-folded pamphlet, have been strangely mixed together, so that
page last succeeds in some places to page first, and, of the
intermediate pages, some appear at the beginning of the work, and some
at the end. It is not until we reach the western confines of the county,
some two or three miles short of the river Spey, its terminal boundary
in this direction, that we find the beds comparatively little disturbed,
and arranged chronologically in their original places. In the eastern
and southern parts of the shire, rocks widely separated by the date of
their formation have been set down side by side in patches,
occasionally of but inconsiderable extent. Now the traveller passes over
a district of grauwacke, now over a re-formation of the Lias; anon he
finds himself on a primary limestone,--gneiss, syenite, clay-slate, or
quartz-rock; and yet anon amid the fossils of some outlier of the Old
Red. The geological map of the county is, like Joseph's coat, of many
colors. I remember seeing, when a boy, more years ago than I am inclined
to specify, some workmen engaged in pulling down what had been a
house-painter's shop, a full century before. The painter had been in the
somewhat slovenly habit of cleaning his brushes by rubbing them against
a hard-cast wall, which was covered, in consequence, by a many-colored
layer of paint, a full half-inch in thickness, and as hard as a stone.
Taking a little bit home with me, I polished it by rubbing the upper
surface smooth; and, lo! a geological map. The _strata_ of va