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1. Notice of Striated Rocks in East Lothian and in some adjoining Counties

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2014

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Extract

I know no more interesting problem in geology than the question, What was the great agency which brought the surface of northern Europe into the condition in which it is now occupied by man? and it seems marvellous that geologists should not yet be agreed as to what that agency was.

Our own country of Scotland is strewed with boulders, many of immense size, and which we allow have been somehow transported to their present sites from remote regions. Rocks on our hill-sides have been ground down, smoothed, and striated by ponderous bodies which have come against and rubbed upon them.

Type
Proceedings 1878–79
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1880

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References

page 263 note * The observations recorded in this paper were made by me several years ago. But I regret to find that by the formation of a new walk in the Cemetery, most of the smoothed and striated rock referred to has been removed. A very small portion only remains. This I discovered since the paper was read, and after the proof sheets had come to me for revisal. Happening then to be in Stirling, I went to the Cemetery and found what I have now stated.

page 266 note * With reference to this boulder, Mr Maclaren says:— “To reach the spot where it lies, it must have passed over extensive tracts of country from 500 to 600 feet lower than this spot. Even were all Scotland converted into a mer de glace, like Greenland, no moving mass in the shape of a glacier could carry this boulder (and there are many such) from its native seat in Perthshire or Argyleshire to Habbie's Howe. An iceberg from the West or North Highlands, and floating in a sea 1500 or 2000 feet above the present level of the Atlantic, is an agent capable of effecting the transportation of the stone, and offers, I think, the only conceivable solution of the difficulty”; (Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal for 1846, vol. xl. p. 138). Referring to this boulder, and to another of mica slate on the Pentlands, weighing about ¾ of a ton, the late Professor Nicol says:— “When it is considered that these masses must have been carried upwards of 40 miles in a direct line, floating ice seems the only agent to which their transportation can be ascribed” (London Geological Society Journal, vol. v. p. 23).