Bibliographical Notice. 469 
dinary excavating action, but only, as is now happening in Scandi- 
navia, that one portion of the land should rise or sink more rapidly 
than another. The absence of detritus in the west explains how the 
lakes once formed have long continued unfilled by river-washings.” 
On the other hand, “a wide mud-filled sea-bottom, with icebergs 
floating and stranding in its shallow waters,’’ was slowly lifted up on 
the eastern side of Scotland into a low undulating country, without 
such cliffs, and lochs, and inlets as mark the rugged western side. 
The little conical holes or pipes in the old Silurian quartzite, or 
altered sandstone, of Assynt have their recent analogues in the bur- 
rows made by “small Crustacea on the Kyle of Duirness in sand 
washed out of these very rocks.” Well may Mr. Nicol say, “yet 
the mind almost refuses to grasp the myriad ages that have inter- 
vened.”’ Again, to quote our author, “ Once the true history of the 
region is known and can be read off from a distance, there cannot be 
a more impressive lesson to the geologist than, from some lonely hill 
or moor in the Lewis, to trace the long line of strange fantastic 
mountains on the mainland, rising over the low gneiss platform on 
which they are built up. When we try to fathom the innumerable 
ages involved in these two steps in the history of the earth—and 
they are only two—the mind feels crushed with the interminable 
lapse of time, and is glad to seek repose in the view of the quiet 
ocean, with a few ships peacefully floating on its bosom. But it is 
only to be thrown back into the remote past. For was it not this 
ocean, these now invisible beating waves, that levelled that platform, | 
fashioned and laid down these high masses of conglomerate, and 
moulded all these mighty mountains into form? And that, too, is 
a pericd dating, not centuries or millenniums, but world-ages, 
counted by birth and death, the creation and extinction of tribes 
and families of plants and animals, before man had a place on the 
earth!’? Admirably, but from his own pomt of view alone, does 
Prof. Nicol sketch out the chief points in Scotland’s primeval history ; 
and some of its bearings on the living present are thus clearly indi- 
eated :—* To Scotsmen the structure of their own land should be 
specially interesting. We pride ourselves on being a_ peculiar 
people ; and, were we willing to forget it, our neighbours are not 
slow to remind us of the fact. Now, be our peculiarities good or 
bad—yvirtues or vices—they have been in part produced, in part en- 
couraged, by the character of the land in which we dwell. Like 
generous wine, they taste of the soil; they acquire new strength 
whenever they touch their mother earth. We rejoice in the skill 
and industry which have carried the rich culture of the Lothians far 
up the steep sides of the Lammermuirs and the Pentlands,—which 
have changed the skirts of Cairntable, where the Douglas defied the 
threats of England’s proudest king, into fields of waving corn, and 
have converted the black wilds of Buchan, where the Bruce sought 
refuge in dire extremity, into storehouses of cattle and grain. Let 
me ask, What would this skill and industry have availed, had not 
the soil contained the elements of that fertility they were to draw 
forth? Look at the merchant princess of the west, and tell me if 
