moraines ; and marks of glacial action arc everywhere. Looking up from these deep glens at the hills in fine frosty sunny winter weather, after the first November snow in 1872, I saw the edges of beds of rock near the highest tops in every direction.
They dip at various angles, and in various directions ; they slope down one side of a glen, cross it and rise up the opposite hill-side. I could see no faults to account for the shape of the country. I saw beds on the east side of Glenfalloch, in the face of A Bheinn Mhor (the big hill), passing along jagged peaks on the ridge, and along the hill-face for many miles, like the grain of wood in a carving.
They proved, by simple inspection, that these peaks were made as the teeth of a saw are, by working out part of the solid.
It seemed manifest that all these radiating Scotch glens were carved out of the long folds which extend longitudinally from N.E. to S.W. according to the Geological Maps. Looking north, south, east, or west, the hills and dales in this region appeared to me as they appeared to Sir Roderick Murchison and Professor Geikie, "monuments of enormous denudation." But the debris next the rock is everywhere glacial, and the work of running water is everywhere insignificant when compared with the glacial work which water is destroying.
I could find no record of the presence of the sea about the watershed, which is nearly a thousand feet above the sea-level. All the marks tell of the action of enormous local glaciers, which radiated from this tract.
From this watershed of Scotland, down by Glenurchy, and Loch Awe, and Loch Fyne, and Loch Lomond, and Loch Long, swept great masses of ice which ground the whole of the mountain-ridges between these grooves. It ground the whole ridge of Ceantire Prom Glenfalloch to Dumbarton down the Clyde, over Bute and pas Arran, ice more than 1400 feet thick went horizontally towardt Belfast Lough.
The Ordnance Survey have furnished a map of Arran which is as good as a model. You take the giant's view of it, and see the shape of the local ice-systems plainly recorded. On the ground all known marks prove that all these glens contained glaciers.
But all round the western coast are marks upon rocky points, which prove the passage of ice horizontally between Arran and Ceantire at more than a thousand feet above the present sea.
In the Isle of Man the hills are scored horizontally, and scratched stones and blocks of quartz are near the highest top.
As I now read my record the ice was continuous between Scotland and Ireland.
XVI. But on the top of Scotland near Dalwhinny, and near the top of Beinn Wyvis near Dingwall, I have seen great blocks of tht same stone which I found upon chalk hills at Fairhead in Antrim. I have followed ice-grooves and erratics over Scotland and over the backbone of Norway. I left the tracks only at the edge of the Polar basin. They seemed to cross hills into Finland and Russia.
