Cuchulh^i Hills in Skye. 97 



the most perfect union which I have seen of all the appear- 

 anies which recall the presence and action of a glacier, is in 

 a deep corry immediately to the north-west of Garsven, which 

 I have marked the Bottomless Corry (having forgotten the 

 Gaelic synonyme), where the whole opening of the corry 

 which must have formed the channel of the glacier when 

 it was present, is ground and shaven over in such a way, 

 as to leave not a single protuberance in the direction in which 

 the ice-flood must have passed over it, whilst a band of trans- 

 ported blocks form, with surprising regularity, a kind of 

 elongated semioval round the mouth of the corry, quite un- 

 distinguishable from those which a glacier would deposit 

 under similar circumstances. This point deserves to be cited, 

 as of primary importance in the decision of the question of 

 Scottish glaciers.* 



On the whole, then, I conclude that the CuchuUin hills 

 contain the strongest evidence which it is possible to unite, 

 for the indirect proof which the subject alone admits of gla- 

 cial agency ; and I will briefly state the reasons why I attach 

 peculiar weight to this evidence. 



First, The proverbial hardness of the rock increases, to a 

 material extent, the difficulty which must always be felt 

 (even where we speak of a soft limestone) to find an agent 

 whose power shall be sufficiently great and long continued, 

 to produce such prodigious abrasions as we are here forced 

 to admit. Hypersthene is equally little obnoxious to the 

 action of weather and of running water, a fact sufficiently 

 established, but which we will here support upon the neutral 

 testimony of Dr MacCulloch : — " There is nothing more re- 

 markable in the hypersthene rock than its uncommon power 

 in resisting the efi^ects of time and weather. * * * Dg. 

 tached fragments of it are indeed found ; but as they have 

 fallen so they lie, unchanged, no accumulations of sand and 

 gravel, from their decomposition, being found in the valley ; 

 the small and partial deposits of clay that here exist having 

 evidently resulted from the wasting of the soft veins, not 



* In the Map, Plate IV. , some of the points presenting the most con- 

 spicuous glacier- markings are coloured red. 



VOL. XL. NO. LXXIX. — JANUARY 1846. G 



