48 Proceedings of the Royal Tliysical Society. 



is two miles. At tlie inn itself, where the conglomerate 

 rests on the harder slates, 400 feet is lost in little over 

 half a mile. The general slope from the high country above 

 the inn down to the junction of the Ericht and Lornty, below 

 Craighall, a distance of over three miles, is fully 100 feet. 



III. The observers of the superficial deposits around Edin- 

 burgh have noted that their local character dominates over 

 their other more general relations to other districts. Beds 

 showing turbulent action, and quiet lacustrine deposits, have 

 distinctly marked areas round the city. The presence of 

 great boulders on Arthur Seat and the Pentlands, which must 

 have come from a site several hundred feet above their pre- 

 sent localities, are amongst our most noted geological puzzles. 

 In view of the general remarks on Alpine torrents at the 

 beginning of this paper, might not our local deposits be again 

 surveyed ? True notions of the amount of local denudation 

 of the rock strata must form the bases of our conclusions. 

 Erom several papers recently published, we see that the 

 assertion of many thousand feet covering Arthur Seat does 

 not meet with its once universal credence. And, if it is 

 granted, it is doubted whether the covering beds were those 

 of the upper carboniferous beds following the regular strati- 

 graphic sequence so dear to text-book geologists. Extensive 

 evidences of lateral pressure and shift prevail throughout 

 the district. Can it be denied that the contortions, faultings, 

 and downthrusts of the surrounding shale and coal fields, 

 aftected also the incumbent superficial deposits ? Of course 

 the geologist, according to his text-book, holds that either all 

 the successive strata up to the Mesozoic, the wrecks of which 

 constitute the Western Islands, were successively laid on 

 Arthur Seat to be afterwards swept away ; or, that a great 

 quiet prevailed through all the time from the Permian to the 

 Glacine period. But is this seeking out the true succession 

 shown in field observations ? The belief in the plug at the 

 summit of Arthur Seat is now questioned. If it be not 

 there, may not the old lakes round the hill and the large 

 boulders be the relics of torrents from ice-sheets at a higher 

 locality now washed away ? Professor Eleming noted that the 

 boulder clay takes its colour from the character of the rocks 



