34 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



scientific enquirer they have ever since been objects of much 

 interest. They carry the mind back to a time when the whole 

 of Northern Europe, and Asia, as well as the northern part of 

 America, was under ice action, as is amply indicated by the 

 groovings, striae, and polished rock surfaces found throughout 

 these countries. Nowhere are these evidences of ice action better 

 marked than in the Island of Bute. 



Lying on the hill-side at Glen Galium, near Kilchattan, are 

 transported boulders of such gigantic size, that one is inclined to 

 look under them to make sure that they are not an outcrop of the 

 rock. Often have I stood on the hill side above St. Blane's 

 Ghapel, admiring the romantic landscape, the rounded outlines of 

 the hillocks, the numerous boulders wide-spread on every side, 

 the deep glens and lakes, all emphatically indicating severe and 

 long-continued ice action. 



Near St. Blane's Chapel tliere is a massive circular building 

 called the "Devil's cauldron." The guide-book to Bute says 

 "it is a wall nearly 30 feet in diameter, and about 4J feet in 

 height, with a gateway 9 feet wide, externally narrowing to 

 3 feet inside. It is of great strength, many of the stones 

 of which it is composed being of immense size. There is 

 growing in the centre of this building a very lofty pine, called 

 the dreaming tree." The tree and walls are now in ruins, and 

 scattered all around are stones of such huge dimensions that one 

 would imagine that only Fingal and his giant sons, with super- 

 human strength, could have riven them from the neighbouring 

 rocks, but it is evident at a glance that a greater power than theirs 

 was at work, rending the rocks into fragments, and scattering 

 them as boulders over hill and glen. That power seems to have 

 been land-ice, or ice carried forward by water; it may, however, 

 have been both combined. The ice appears to have moved from 

 the south-west, directly over Kilcliattan clay-field, which is evident 

 from the immense number of large boulders laid down in Kil- 

 chattan Bay, exactly in the line of the clay-field. 



In Scotland there are very few traces of the Tertiary period. 

 What have been preserved to us are merely sufficient to prove 

 that it was of a comparatively warm character, but the evidence 

 is decisive that it was succeeded by anotlier period of which the 

 climate was so severely Arctic, that it is doubtful whetlier 

 vegetable or animal life could exist, at least on land. This was 



