1841-1882] ICE-ACTION i;i 



With respect to the main purport of your note, I hardly Letter 516 

 know what to say. Though no evidence worth anything has 



as yet, in my opinion, been advanced in favour of a living 

 being, being developed from inorganic matter, yet I cannot 

 avoid believing the possibility of this will be proved some 

 day in accordance with the law of continuity. I remember 

 the time, above fifty years ago, when it was said that no sub- 

 stance found in a living plant or animal could be produced 

 without the aid of vital forces. As far as external form is 

 concerned, Eozoon shows how difficult it is to distinguish 

 between organised and inorganised bodies. If it is ever 

 found that life can originate on this world, the vital pheno- 

 mena will come under some general law of nature. Whether 

 the existence of a conscious God can be proved from the 

 existence of the so-called laws of nature {i.e. fixed sequence 

 of events) is a perplexing subject, on which I have often 

 thought, but cannot sec my way clearly. If you have not 

 read \V. Graham's Creed of Science} it would, I think, 

 interest you, and he supports the view which you are 

 inclined to uphold. 



III. The Parallel Roads of Glen Roy, 1S41-S0. 



In the bare hilly country of Lochaber, in the Scotch Highlands, the 

 slopes of the mountains overlooking the vale of Glen Roy are marked 

 by narrow terraces or parallel roads, which sweep round the shoulders of 

 the hills with "undeviating horizontality." These roads are described by 

 Sir Archibald Geikie .t^ having long been "a subject of wonderment and 

 legendary story anion- the Highlanders, and for so many years a source 

 of sore perplexity among men of science." 1 In Glen Kin- itself there 

 are three distinct shelves or terraces, and the mountain sides of the valley 

 of the Spean and other glens hear traces of these horizontal "roads." 



The first important papers dealing with the origin of this striking 



controverting. Although I entered my protest against his 

 hypothesis, and have freely criticised his theoretical opinions. I most 

 willingly admit that the results of his unwearied devotion to the study of 

 those interesting phenomena with which he is so familiar have laid all his 

 fellow-workers under a debt of gratitude. - ' Mr. Darwin used to speak 

 with admiration of Mackintosh's work, carried on as it was under 

 considerable difficulties. 



1 The Creed of Science : Religious, Moral, an> Social,] »n, 1SS1. 



3 The Scenery of Scotland, 1887, p. 266. 



