REPORTS ON EXCURSIONS. 283 



On the western side, or from S.W. round to N., the ridge 

 between Loch Long and the valley almost parallel to it, up which 

 the railway has come, does not rise beyond 928 feet above sea- 

 level. Consideration of these facts suggests that the water in 

 flowing to Loch Lomond has lost its road, an idea apparently sup- 

 ported by the curious course of the northern branch of the 

 Douglas Water. Rising on the north slopes of Tullich Hill, and 

 flowing at first north, it soon veers round circularly till it runs a 

 little south of west, then abruptly turns southward when it 

 reaches the valley parallel to Loch Long, where it shortly again 

 tends farther to the west, but on nearing the deeper hollow of 

 Glen Douglas it circles to the S.E., and meeting the short branch 

 from the south-west, the uniied stream flows E. and E.S.E. to Loch 

 Lomond. But it is really more likely that the watershed of what 

 is now the drainage area of Loch Lomond once extended to the 

 west of Loch Long, and that the hollow occupied by this arm of 

 the sea is of more recent origin than Glen Douglas. 



Mr. Peach, of the Geological Survev, savs that an anticlinal 

 axis passes a little to the east of this point, running N.E. and S.AY., 

 that the strata between this point and Arrochar are very much 

 altered and twisted, more so than those to the north and to the 

 south, that the main joints in the rocks run north and south, thus 

 determining the direction of the deep northern part of I^och 

 Lomond, and that the dip to the westward of the anticline is 

 toward Loch Long. The directions of the dip and of the joints, 

 combined w^ith the steep slope of the hillside above Loch Long, 

 account for the fissures and slips noticed on our previous visit, 

 and recorded in the report published in these Transactions, Yol. 

 lY., N.S., p. 360. The party was informed that observations 

 show that a slow movement of the ground towards the loch 

 is still in progress, to the extent of three-quarters of an inch 

 during the last eighteen months. 



Erom the railway on the hillside above Loch Long splendid 

 views are obtained of the loch and of the hills on the farther 

 side, the principal summits being — The Brack, fully 2,500 feet; 

 Ben an Lochain, 2,955 feet; Ben Arthur, or The Cobbler, 2,891 

 feet, most picturesque of all; Ben Narnain, 3,036 feet; and Ben 

 Crois, 2,785 feet. 



Nothing special falls to be recorded about the plants in the 



