of the northern shores of the Moray Frith; for there the nearest Lias, bearing in a western direction from the clay, is that of Applecross, on the other side of the island; and the materials of the boulder-deposits of the north have invariably been derived in the line, westerly in its general bearing, of the grooves and scratches of the iceberg era. But on the southern shore of the frith, where that westerly line passed athwart the Liasic beds of our eastern coast, organisms of the Lias are comparatively common in the boulder-clays; and here, at Blackpots, we find an extensive deposit of the same period formed of Liasic materials almost exclusively. Fragments of still more modern rocks occur in the boulder-clays of Caithness. My friend Mr. Robert Dick, of Thurso, to whose persevering labors and interesting discoveries in the Old Red Sandstone of his locality I have had frequent occasion to refer, has detected in a blue boulder-clay, scooped into precipitous banks by the river Thorsa, fragments both of chalk-flints and a characteristic conglomerate of the Oolite. He has, besides, found it mottled from top to bottom, a full hundred feet over the sea-level, and about two miles inland, with comminuted fragments of existing shells. But of this more anon. CHAPTER III. From Blackpots to Portsoy--Character of the Coast--Burn of Boyne--Fever Phantoms--Graphic Granite--Maupertuis and the Runic Inscription--Explanation of the _quo modo_ of Graphic Granite--Portsoy Inn--Serpentine Beds--Portsoy Serpentine unrivalled for small ornaments--Description of it--Significance of the term _serpentine_--Elizabeth Bond and her "Letters"--From Portsoy to Cullen--Attritive Power of the Ocean illustrated--The Equinoctial--From Cullen to Fochabers--The Old Red again--The old Pensioner--Fochabers--Mr. Joss, the learned Mail-guard--The Editor a sort of Coach-guard--On the Coach to Elgin--Geology of Banffshire--Irregular paging of the Geologic Leaves--Geologic Map of the County like Joseph's Coat--Striking Illustration.