122 EXCURSIONS IN STIRLINGSHIRE. 



magnificent series of escarpments, rendered all the more prominent 

 from the unequal hardness of the various rocks acted upon, and 

 we can see the very gullies it made in finding its way over the 

 brow of the hill into the heads of the Fin and Ballagan Glens. 

 Stretching along the north-west front of the Fintry and Kilpatrick 

 Hills, and sometimes detached from the hill-traps, are more than 

 forty masses of felspar (the Dumbarton Castle Rock forming the 

 last of the series in a south-west direction), and these masses now 

 appearing along the north-west escarpment of the hills, as large, 

 hard, intensely glaciated knobs, give to the locality its peculiar and 

 interesting features. In our immediate neighbourhood are two 

 very interesting glens on the north-west face of the range — the 

 Easter and Wester Corries of Balglass. In the corries the hill- 

 traps are seen to rest on a series of thin-bedded shales and rows of 

 cement-stone nodules, giving a very peculiar and pleasing effect to 

 the landscape. These beds appear to be lying almost horizontal, 

 and are greyish in colour, a few of the bands being much lighter than 

 the others, and one or two are of a light pinky red. They extend 

 right through below the hills and out-crop again in the lower 

 reaches of the Campsie, Fin and Ballagan Glens. This series of 

 beds is not very fossiliferous, but in them have been detected a 

 few plant remains, fish scales and worm tracks, which would seem 

 to show that they were laid down in a fresh-water lake. They are 

 computed to reach a thickness of close on one thousand feet, and 

 the traps which overlie them are much about the same thickness, 

 while the old red sandstone crops out from under them." The 

 return journey was made by Fin Glen, the sides of which are 

 composed of boulder-clay and are cut into numerous gullies. 

 Among the clay are to be found pieces of quartz which have been 

 carried down from the Highlands. The burn has a fair volume 

 of water, and in its course are two falls. In one of the corries 

 near the head of the glen Saxifraga hypnoides, Rubus saxalilis, 

 Cystopteris fragilis, Polypodium Phegopteris and Lycopodium 

 Selago were noted. Vaccinium Vitis-Idma was found blooming 

 freely in the corrie west of Balglass. In Fin Glen goldilocks 

 {Ranunculus auricomus) and the yellow mountain-saxifrage 

 {Saxifraga aizoides) were seen. In a shady nook near one of the 

 cascades the prickly shield-fern {Aspidium aculeatuvi) and the 

 rather rare hairy rock-cress {Arab is hirsutd) were common. The 



