220 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



out of the confusion of tongues, having failed to 

 assure me whether it might be the Lachan an Damh, 

 or the lovely and secluded Corrie-an-Lachan (Hollow 

 of the Lake) mentioned in the geology of Clydesdale 

 and Arran, I gave up the very laudable endeavour 

 and strolled on towards Clonaig, where exists a 

 seemingly artificial mound ; and hard by a whisky 

 shop, a most remarkable V-shaped chasm, running 

 in an easterly and westerly direction, that confers an 

 impression of its being freshly torn open by an 

 earthquake. And still, although European com- 

 motions yet find their seismograph in the hill of 

 Comrie, the line of the Caledonian canal, and maybe 

 in the waters of Loch Lomond, that shake with 

 periodic ague (guide-book to Comrie), no historical 



whin dyke ; and so fresh-looking that it would ap- 

 pear to have run flaming only yesterday. Let us set 

 out from Loch Gilphead for a morning's drive to the 

 secluded bay of Carsig, and stop where its solitary 

 kirk and manse look over the sound. The rowan 

 berries about here ripen as well for conserves as they 

 did in the days of the sea-kings, a basket of wild 

 rasps may be found in the shade or blaeberries picked 

 on the rocks. Alpine flowers and insects do not 

 meet the sight as in Perthshire, although the Scotch 

 Argus and darkish mountain variety of the green 

 veined butterfly move among the willow herbs 

 in the glens ; and then two of these glens are glens, 

 glens of erosion cut out of the solid rock by the 

 action of ice as uniform as a railway cutting. One 



Fig. 126. — Old Granite Crater, Arran. From the north-west. 



earthquake, as far as I know, has been heard to growl 

 among the contorted schists of this secluded bay, 

 where the herring fisher would probably laugh at 

 the conjecture. 



Volcanoes, however, are rarely found from which 

 lava streams have not flowed, granite ones seeming 

 among the exceptions, as nothing is seen near my 

 antique crater but certain veins penetrating the old 

 mud, politely termed slate, at Tornidneon. The 

 darker whin dykes that lie around its feet are all of 

 the succeeding age ; forming smoothhard promontories 

 very convenient for a header off of a sultry noon, and 

 very interesting to trace across country to their 

 probable outbreak. But if we leave the island of 

 Arran for the western shore of Cantyre, we may find 

 a far more appalling lava stream than a common 



coming down on the south of the bay to whose 

 head I have frequently wandered when the moths 

 began to flit to visit a dairy farm for milk, a good 

 Scotch mile off with a bull on the road : another 

 tumbling down more precipitously on the north, 

 with a queer miscellaneous moraine heap at the 

 bottom, and rounded and scratched rocks not a few ; 

 an enjoyable clamber there is up it in the mountain 

 air to watch the sun set ruddy behind the Paps. But 

 in order to visit my lava flow you must leave the 

 glaciers, take boat and ply the oar to the low islets 

 running up to the bay's mouth and visit the first at 

 the entry of the inlet, lying nearly north and south. 

 Here is its sketch made under the disadvantage of 

 a little wind and Highland shower with the stores 

 packet in the offing. 



