inches in length, no workman having ever found a
complete specimen, such as occurs in the Lias-shale at Cromarty, in
which they may be found nine inches in length. 3. But perhaps the most
satisfactory proof, and one that in itself may be deemed sufficient, is
the frequent occurrence of pieces of Lias-shale, with their embedded
Ammonites; which clearly show that the Lias had been broken up, tossed
about in some violent agitation of the sea, and churned into clay, just
as some denudating process of a similar nature swept away the chalk of
Aberdeenshire, leaving on many of its hills and plains the water-worn
flints, with the characteristic fossils of the Cretaceous formation."

[12] A description of Miss Bond and of her "Letters" here referred to,
is given in the fifth chapter of "My Schools and Schoolmasters."

[13] The story here referred to is narrated in "Scenes and Legends of
the North of Scotland," chap. XXV.

[14] _Scaur_, Scotice, a precipice of clay. There is no single English
word that conveys exactly the same idea.

[15] Mr. Dick has since disinterred from out the boulder-clays of the
Burn of Freswick, _Patella vulgata_, _Buccinum undatum_, _Fesus
antiquus_, _Rostellaria_, _Pes pelicana_, a _Natica_, _Lutraria_, and
_Balanus_.

[16] That similarity of condition in which the hazel and the harder
cerealia thrive was noted by our north-country farmers of the old
School, long ere it had been recorded by the botanist. Hence such
remarks, familiarized into proverbs, as "A good _nut_ year's a good
_ait_ year;" or, "As the _nut_ fills the _ait_ fills."

[17] For this story, see "Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland,"
chap. XXV.

[18] "In the River St. Lawrence," says Sir Charles Lyell, "the loose ice
accumulates on the shoals during the winter, at which season the water
is low. The separate fragments of ice are readily frozen together in a
climate where the temperature is sometimes thirty degrees below zero,
and boulders become entangled with them; so that in the spring, when the
river rises on the melting of the snow, the rocks are floated off,
frequently conveying away the boulders to great distances. A single
block of granite, fifteen feet long by ten feet both in width and
height, and which could not contain less than fifteen hundred cubic feet
of stone, was in this way moved down the river several hundred yards,
during the late survey in 1837. Heavy anchors of ships, lying on the
shore, have in like