198 Dr Buckland on the former Existence of Glaciers, fyc. 



ranged glacial detritus ; also the ground on which Mr Smith's farm, near 

 Doune, is situated. Having thus proved that glaciers once occurred in 

 the glens and mountainous districts of Scotland, Dr Buckland was anxious 

 to ascertain the amount of evidence which Stirling and Edinburgh would 

 afford of their action at points but little raised above the level of the sea, 

 and far distant from any group of mountains. He had noticed in 1824, 

 on the summit of the hill at Stirling, that the surface of the trap then re- 

 cently uncovered, between the castle and the church, was polished and 

 striated, but at his last visit those proofs had been obliterated. The 

 grooves and scratches, described by Sir James Hall on Corstorphine Hill, 

 near Edinburgh, and on the Calton Hill, Professor Agassiz informed 

 him, entirely resemble the effects produced by the under-surface of mo- 

 dern glaciers. In his recent examination, in company with Mr M'Laren, 

 of the Castle rock at Edinburgh, he found polished and striated surfaces 

 at the north-west and south-west angles ; and at the base of the north- 

 west angle a nearly horizontal portion of the rock covered with wide 

 strife, ranging cast and west.* Some of these scratches and rounded sur- 

 faces, Dr Buckland says, may have been produced by stones projecting 

 from the sides or bottom of floating masses of ice, but that it is impossi- 

 ble to account by this means for the polish and strise on rocks at Black- 

 ford Hill, two miles south of Edinburgh. On the southern face of this 

 hill, at the base of a nearly vertical cliff of trap, is a natural vault, par- 

 tially filled with a breccia composed of gravel and sand cemented by a 

 modern infiltration of carbonate of lime. The sides and roof of the vault 

 are highly polished, and covered with strife, irregularly arranged with re- 

 spect to the whole area, but parallel over limited extents. It is impossi- 

 ble, Dr Buckland observes, to refer those strife to the action of pebbles 

 set in motion by water, because fragments of stone moving in a fluid can- 

 not produce continuous parallel lines ; and because, if they could pro- 

 duce them, the striae would be parallel to the direction of the current. 

 It is impossible, he also states, to refer them to the effects of stones fixed 

 in floating ice, as no such masses could have come in contact with the 

 roof of a low vault ; but that it is easy to explain the phenomena by thelong 

 continued action of fragments of ice forced into the cave laterally from 

 the bottom of a glacier, descending the valley, on the margin of which the 

 vault is placed ; and the irregular grouping of the parallel strife to the 

 unequal metion of the ice, charged with fragments of stone. The posi- 

 tion of the cave does not exceed 300 feet above the level of the sea, and 

 the proving of glacial action at this point, the author states, justifies the 

 opinion that glaciers may also have covered the Calton Hill, and the 

 Castle Hills of Edinburgh and Stirling. 



* The appearances on the Castle rock, noticed above, can scarcely be considered 

 glacier markings. 



