Topographical, statistical, and historical gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 2

SHU
668
SIM
served at the farm of Nethertown, and bears the
well-known motto, — ' For Scotland's covenanted
work of Reformation.' The ashes of one of the
Covenanters repose in the churchyard, and his grave-
stone bears the following inscription : — " Here lyes
the bones of "William Smith, who lived in Moremel-
len, who, with others, appeared in arms at Pentland-
hills, in defence of Scotland's covenanted work of
Reformation, in anno 1666; agreeable to the word
of God, in opposition to popery, prelacy, and per-
jury, and was murdered on his return home near
this place." This parish has given birth to some
eminent men : viz., Mr. John Miller, professor of
law in the University of Glasgow, well-known to
the public as a learned author; Dr. Matthew Baillie,
the celebrated anatomist and physician, who was son
of Dr. James Baillie, minister of Shotts, and brother
to the celebrated Joanna Baillie; and Mr. Gavin
Hamilton, the celebrated historical painter. Dr.
Cullen, the talented physician, began his practice in
this parish. — Two cattle and horse fairs are held
annually at the Kirk of Shotts on the 3d Tuesdays
of June and November, respectively, O. S. — A rail-
way has been projected from Shotts to the Wishaw
and Coltness railway. Its length will be 8 miles,
5 furlongs, 183 yards; and estimated expense about
£70,000.
SHUNA, an Hebridean island in the parish of
Kilbrandon, Argyleshire. It lies 1| mile south of
Torsa, and the same distance south-west of the en-
trance of Loch-Melfort ; and is separated from the
Slientime-moorand the peninsula of Craignish on the
east, by a sound of between 1 mile and nearly 2 miles
broad ; and from the island of Luing on the east by
a very narrow strait, called the Sound of Shuna.
Its greatest length from north to south is about 3
miles; and its greatest breadth is nearly li mile.
Its surface is a continuously rolling, tumulated, and
broken ground, whose tiny summits nowhere rise
higher than about 200 feet above sea-level. It pos-
sesses much of that intricate mixture of land and
rock which, with the aid of wood and culture,
abounds in mild and soft pictures of rural beauty;
it derives picturesqueness from its encincturement
with intricate bands of sea, overhung by the lofty
and hard featured heights of island and continent;
and it has everywhere such a profuse and curious
interspersion of natural woods of birch and alder,
with protuberant rocks, and with pendicles of culti-
vated and pasture-land, as to look, from end to end,
like a large sea-girt ornamental park. Though to-
pographically grouped with the slate islands, it pos-
sesses little or none of the clay-slate so prevalent in
Luing and Seil, Easdale, Lunga and Scarba; yet it
presents interesting objects of study to a geologist;
and at each end it has a bed of dark-blue crystalline
limestone, which has long been wrought for econo-
mical purposes.
SHURIRY (Loch), a lake about 1± mile long,
in the parish of Reay, Caithness-shire. The river
Forss issues from it, or, more properly, traverses it;
but, above the lake, bears the name of the Torran.
SIBBALDIE. See Applegarth.
SICCAR-POINT. See Cockburnspath.
SIDLAW, Seedlaw, or Stoi-aw HILLS, a
long ridge or chain of heights, extending north-east-
ward and east-north-eastward from Kinnoul-bill, on
the left bank of the Tay, in the immediate vicinity
of Perth. The chain is detached from the Ochil
range only by the intervention of the Tay and the
Earn ; just as the latter range is detached from the
Lennox-hills only by the intervention of the vale of
the Forth; and jointly with these ranges it forms
the Lowland screen, or the screen on the Lowland
side, of what, without any great accommodation of
language, may be called a continuous valley along
the skirt of the Highland frontier, from the vale of
the Leven in Dumbartonshire to the German ocean
at Stonehaven. To the more marked and emphatic,
and to the popularly designated p<irt of this great
valley or ' Strathmore,' belongs the screen of the
Sidlaws. Yet the heights are not strictly either a
range or a chain. They extend with considerable
ridgy regularity from Kinnoul hill, north-eastward
to a point a little distance south-east of the town
of Forfar; they there fork into two lines, the one
of which goes off in undulations and detachments,
yet with very observable continuity nearly eastward
to the sea at Redhead, while the other proceeds ir-
regularly north-eastward, becomes almost lost in the
vicinity of Brechin, and afterwards rallies and strag-
gles on along the Lowland side of the How of Kin-
cardine to the sea at Stonehaven. Such in extent
are the Sidlaws in the large and properly geographi-
cal sense ; though, in the popular application of the
name, they are very generally restricted to their
sweep through Forfarshire from the parish of Lundy
on the south-we,st to the promontory of Redhead on
the east : see Forfarshire. Many of the hills, of
which the celebrated Dunsinnan [which see] is the
most remarkable example, are isolated in position,
and have conical summits. Some, such as the hills
of Lower, of Dunnichen, of Dumbarrow, and others,
are rounded and detached, and overhang intervening
valleys. In some instances, as in the ridge of the
Tulloes, which runs along the southern frontier of
the parishes of Inverarity, Dunnichen, and Kirkden,
the heights form a long flat regular range of moder-
ate elevation. The greatest altitude is about 1,406
feet above sea-level ; but this, or an altitude very
little inferior, is attained by many of the summits.
Seen from Fifeshire, they appear a lofty brown
mountain-barrier drawn out like a huge rampart to
cover the interior of Perthshire and Angus. Some
of them are cultivated to the summit, and many
which, 50 years ago, were covered all over with
stunted heath, now seem to groan beneath loads of
green umbrageous timber. The prevailing forma-
tion of the Sidlaws is the old red sandstone, — part
of the vast bed which so curiously waves in several
great and successive curvatures across Forfarshire.
On the side facing Strathmore, the strata dip to the
north at an angle of about 45° ; but they diminish
in dip as the hills are crossed, till on the side facing
the Lowlands, especially in the upper part of Car-
mylie, they become nearly or altogether horizontal.
The sandstone is of various colours, red, brown,
gray, white, with a slight tinge of green ; and it is,
in some instances, susceptible of a remarkably smooth
polish. The strata alternate with beds of shale, and
occasionally with some beds of conglomerate which
measure from 50 to 100 feet in thickness. Trap-
rocks, chiefly of greenstone, and to some extent of
porphyry, occur plentifully in intersecting veins,
and occasionally in surmounting nodules and masses.
An impervious boulder-formation covers a large part
of the surface.
SIMPRIN, an ancient but suppressed parish, now
united to Swinton, and consisting of some wavy
swells and their intervening plains in the lower
Merse, Berwickshire. It is chiefly remarkable as
the parochial charge, from 1699 till 17U7, of the
well-known Thomas Boston of odoriferous memory,
and afterwards minister of Ettrick. The session-
register during the whole period of his incumbency,
is all in his autograph, and is still preserved. The
church in which he officiated was small, mid has long
been an utter ruin. A large barn — in this case quite
as interesting an object as the church — was em-
ployed by him as the scene of ordinances at all