258 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



time. They thought that the roads c were designed for 

 the chase, and that the terraces were made after the 

 spots were cleared in lines from wood, in order to tempt 

 the animals into the open paths after they were rouzed, 

 in order that they might come within reach of the 

 bowmen who might conceal themselves in the woods 

 above and below.' 



In these attempts of ' the country people ' we have 

 ^ an illustration of that impulse to which all scientific 

 knowledge is due the desire to know the causes of 

 things ; and it is a matter of surprise that in the case of 

 the parallel roads, with their weird appearance chal- 

 lenging enquiry, this impulse did not make itself more 

 rapidly and energetically felt. Their remoteness may 

 perhaps account for the fact that until the year 1817 

 no systematic description of them, and no scientific 

 attempt at an explanation of them, appeared. In that 

 year Dr. MacCulloch, who was then President of the 

 Geological Society, presented to that Society a memoir, 

 in which the roads were discussed, and pronounced to 

 be the margins of lakes once embosomed in Glen Roy. 

 Why there should be three roads, or why the lakes 

 should stand at these particular levels, was left unex- 

 plained. 



To Dr. MacCulloch succeeded a man, possibly not so 

 learned as a geologist, but obviously fitted by nature to 

 grapple with her facts and to put them in their 

 proper setting. I refer to Sir Thomas Dick-Lauder, 

 who presented to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, on 

 the 2nd of March, 1818, his paper on the Parallel Roads 

 of Glen Roy. In looking over the literature of this 

 subject, which is now copious, it is interesting to observe 

 the differentiation of minds, and to single out those 

 who went by a kind of instinct to the core of the ques- 

 tion, from those who erred in it, or who learnedly 



