1. The conglomerate, a deep red and well-marked deposit, skirts the base of the mountains, and in some places is of vast thickness, betwixt Stonehaven and Blairgowrie. This rock is composed of fragments of the primary series, gneiss, mica-slate, quartz, and porphyry; the granite constitutes the paste in which these are set and agglutinated together. Excellent sections are to be seen in those localities, where the principal rivers, the North and South Esks, the Wast Water, the Isla, and the Ericht, make their passage in debouching upon the plains. In all these defiles the cliffs are precipitous, and often very picturesque, their variegated and bright flesh-colored sides forming a pleasing contrast with the dark waters as they eddy into pools, or dash headlong over their broken ledges. A momentary inspection of this composite rock leaves not the shadow of a doubt upon the mind as to its derivative origin, while its vicinity to the great chain where its several ingredients are to be found as directly points to the quarry whence it was hewn: not, it may be, slowly accumulating, as generally asserted, during the lapse of indefinite periods of time, but rapidly brought together and consolidated, as so many of the sharp angular edges of the materials most unequivocally attest. The finer beds that occur in the vicinity would seem to have been the talus or outgoing of the coarser conglomerate, formed of the minute particles of the same ingredients which had accumulated in the more tranquil hollows of the sea-bottom. The slaty fissile sandstone of Coventry Quarry near Fettercairn (so remarkably tilted up and welded literally to the igneous dyke), stretching throughout the north-east and south-west parts of the counties of Kincardine and Forfar, and prevailing over the districts of Auchtergaven, Crieff, and Callander, may be mistaken in many places for the clay-slate itself slightly altered in texture and appearance. These conclusions as to the derivative origin of the conglomerate are fully confirmed and borne out by the fact, that the deposit is everywhere found precisely where such materials would be collected, all around the shores of the Scottish Highlands, overlying or fringing the base of the crystalline rocks, filling up the creeks and bays of the primeval world. After thousands of years the massive blocks of syenite, chiseled and half-dressed, are still lying in the quarries of Upper Syria, while the cities for which they were preparing are heaps of ruins in the desert. Nature, left to her own operations, treasures up the waste occasioned by the elements and other forces, and by thus raising outworks and buttresses protects her crystal foundations against the inroads of consuming time.