New_ Red, or variegated Sandstone formation." I
remember that some thirteen years ago,--in part misled by authority, and
in part really afraid to represent beds of such an enormous aggregate
thickness as all belonging to one inconsiderable formation,--for such
was the character of the Old Red Sandstone at the time,--I ventured,
though hesitatingly, and with less of detail, on a somewhat similar
statement regarding the sandstone deposits of the parish of Cromarty.
But true it is, notwithstanding, that the stratified rocks of the Black
Isle are composed generally, not of the analogues of three systems, but
of merely a fractional portion of a single system,--a fact previously
established in other parts of the district, and which my discovery of
this day in the Burn of Killein served yet farther to confirm in
relation to that middle portion of the tract in which the parish of
Avoch is situated. The geologic records, unlike the Sybilline books,
grow in volume and number as one pauses and hesitates over them;
demanding, however, with every addition to their bulk, a larger and yet
larger sum of epochs and of ages.

The sun had got low in the western sky, and I had at least some eight or
nine miles of rough road still before me; but the day had been a happy
and not unsuccessful one, and so its hard work had failed to fatigue.
The shadows, however, were falling brown and deep on the bleak Maolbuie,
as I passed, on my return, the solitary cairn; and it was dark night
long ere I reached Cromarty. Next morning I quitted the town for the
upper reaches of the Frith, to examine yet further the superficial
deposits and travelled boulders of the district.

I landed at Invergordon a little after noon, from the Leith steamer,
that, on its way to the upper ports of the Moray and Dingwall Friths,
stops at Cromarty for passengers every Wednesday; and then passing
direct through the village, I took the western road which winds along
the shore towards Strathpeffer, skirting on the right the ancient
province of the Munroes. The day was clear and genial; and the
wide-spreading woods of this part of the country, a little touched by
their autumnal tints of brown and yellow, gave a warmth of hue to the
landscape, which at an earlier season it wanted. A few slim streaks of
semi-transparent mist, that barred the distant hill-peaks, and a few
towering piles of intensely white cloud, that shot across the deep blue
of the heavens, gave warning that the