35 



Gamrie it extends in a strip into Rhynie. Again, it 

 appears in Glenlivet and beyond Tomintoul, where it is 

 lost in the spurs of the Grampians. On the Findhorn 

 river it does not reach nearly such an elevation, but 

 comes to an abrupt termination at Sluie. Looking 

 at these facts, the theory is, that the present backbone 

 of the northern part of Great Britain was an island 

 in the Old Red sea. No doubt there has been enor- 

 mous denudation, and the waves of that period may 

 have, in bays, lashed the base of the Cairngorms. But 

 there is no evidence to prove that it ever covered these 

 mountains, or that they have been forced up through the 

 stratified beds of the system. Again, as pointed out above, 

 an almost continuous strip of the same formation runs 

 round the coast to Caithness, where it is much more fully 

 developed. Then, moving round to Cape Wrath, it appears, 

 in detached portions it is true, but almost continuous, down 

 the western coast till near the Sound of Sleat. Between 

 these two coast bands, the great mass of the country 

 is gneiss. What is meant, therefore, by all this is, to 

 show either that a great part of the North of Scotland 

 was an island in the Devonian Sea, or that denudation 

 has been so enormous as to obliterate the system, which 

 we do not believe. With the space at command, we 

 cannot go more into the general distribution of the 

 system in Britain in support of the theory, but we are 

 convinced that, in its main features, it is correct * 



A word on Palaeontology in passing. We know that 

 the waters swarmed with fish. Their remains have been 



* Since the above was in type, my attention has been called by Dr Gordon 

 to Professor Geikie's great paper on the "Old Red Sandstone of Western 

 Europe," read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 1st April, 1878, and 

 which I had not before seen. In it Professor Geikie promulgates the same 

 views as the theory I ventured to suggest. 



C 



