1898-99.] Notes on the Natural History of Lochfynehead. 13 
are nothing but the remains of great tablelands which were 
originally raised above the water in the shape of a hog’s back, 
and the cutting and carving of hills and mountains have been 
due entirely to the “guttering” caused by rains and snows 
over unnumbered ages. The Duke maintains, on the contrary, 
that our mountains are true mountains, and have been pro- 
duced, like the Pyrenees and Alps, by earth movements— 
subsequently, of course, much denuded and carved out by 
atmospheric influences. Our mountains had in the most 
recent geographical times, perhaps just before the introduc- 
tion of man into this part of the globe, been under water to 
the extent of at least 1500 or 2000 feet. His Grace is 
sceptical of those great ice-sheets walking over the tops of 
our hills, but he believes in a glacial age the conditions of 
which were exactly the same as glaciers now. If the Duke’s 
theory is correct, that a great submergence of the land and a 
re-emergence out of the ocean have taken place in quite recent 
times, all the theories about the slow erosion of valleys are 
dissipated. The elevation of a submerged land out of the ocean 
would intensify the action of river valleys and water to such 
an extent as to make it impossible to measure how much work 
might have been done, and the time it took under such con- 
ditions. The argument that the antiquity of man upon the 
earth is quite inconceivable, from the fact that human imple- 
ments have been found in valleys which it must have taken 
an enormous time to cut out, has often been proved fallacious. 
Flinders Petrie said the other day in this city that in the 
valley of the river, and also in the limestone plateau out of 
which the Nile had carved the valley, paleolithic flints had 
been found, showing the existence of man as far back as 5000 
B.C., and probably farther. But not many years ago Chevalier 
Bunsen argued in the same way that Egyptian civilisation was 
many thousand years older than the ordinarily received chron- 
ology, basing his argument upon the depth at which certain 
objects had been found in the alluvial deposit of the Nile 
valley. Some time afterwards, however, a brick bearing the 
name of Mehemet Ali, who died in 1849, was found at a still 
greater depth! 
The junction of the porphyry with the mica-schist may be 
seen at many points in the district. The porphyry varies in 
