Twice Elginshire has been the scene of catastrophes without parallel in Scotland. In 1694 the barony of Culbin--a fine estate, with a rent roll in money and kind of £6000 a year, belonging to the Kinnairds, comprising 3600 acres of land, so fertile that it was called the Granary of Moray, a handsome mansion, a church and several houses--was buried under a mass of sand in a storm of extraordinary severity. The sandy waste measures 3 m. in length and 2 in breadth, and the sand, exceedingly fine and light, is constantly shifting and, at rare intervals, exposing traces of the vanished demesne. This wilderness of dome-shaped dunes divided by a loftier ridge lies to the north-west of Forres. The other calamity was the Moray floods of the 2nd and 3rd of August 1829. The Findhorn rose 50 ft. above the ordinary level, inundating an area of 20 sq. m.; the Divie rose 40 ft., and the Lossie flooded all the low ground around Elgin. The floods tore down bridges and buildings, and obliterated farms and homesteads. AUTHORITIES.--Lachlan Shaw, _History of the Province of Moray_ (Gordon's edition, Glasgow, 1882); _A Survey of the Province of Moray_ (Elgin, 1798); W. Rhind, _Sketches of the Past and Present State of Moray_ (Edinburgh, 1839); E. Dunbar Dunbar, _Documents relating to the Province of Moray_ (Edinburgh, 1895); C.A. Gordon, _History of the House of Gordon_ (Aberdeen, 1890); C. Rampini, _History of Moray and Nairn_ (Edinburgh, 1897); C. Innes, _Elgin, Past and Present_ (Elgin, 1860); J. Macdonald, "Burghead" (_Proceedings of Glasgow Archaeological Soc._), (1891); Sir T. Dick Lauder, _The Wolf of Badenoch_ (Glasgow, 1886); _An Account of the Great Floods of August 1829 in the Province of Moray and Adjoining Districts_ (Elgin, 1873).