Transactions. 37 



sand, shingle, and similar materials. These we know to be 

 the products of water in some or all of its modifications 

 referred to at the outset of the paper. As a boulder, equally 

 with a man, may be known by the company it keeps, we can 

 have no difficulty in deciding that its condition and position 

 are due to the same causes, viz., the action of water. We 

 have now completed what may be called the introduction, 

 and are prepared to enter upon the consideration of the sub- 

 ject itself, viz., the History of a Crichton Boulder. 



This, however, would require a minute and searching 

 enquiry into the birth, life, death, and burial of the subject 

 of our enquiry — its histoiy in short from the moment at which 

 it was detached from its parent rock, in the distant moun- 

 tains, till it was deposited far from its original home in its 

 present resting place. I need hardly say that neither your 

 time nor mine allows of this ; at present at least. 



Let me in a few words indicate what I believe to be its 

 real history, hoping to be able on some other occasion to 

 bring it before you at greater length. This boulder was, dur- 

 ing the glacier epoch, when this part of the country was in 

 the same condition as Greenland now is, detached from its 

 parent rock far up in the mountains to the north by the ac- 

 tion of frost ; thence it was precipitated to the glacier below, 

 which slowly carried it to the distant ocean, then some hun- 

 dreds of feet higher than it now is. There for ages it was 

 subjected to the action of the waves, which rounded and 

 polished it. Thus fitted for the building of the Great Archi- 

 tect — for he has a purpose in everything — it was firmly im- 

 bedded in the shore ice during winter. Then released from 

 its bonds by the summer sun, it was carried off from the shore 

 and deposited in its present position on the side of the 

 valley then submerged. Subsequently an iceberg, detached 

 from the ever-moving ice-river, swept along in its southern 

 course, and, with a mass of harder rock fixed in its body, 

 ground its surface as it passed over it, leaving those striae to 

 tell future ages of its previous conditions. It has now fulfilled 

 its destiny, and kind nature covers it up in a grave of mud 



