212 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



Glen Roy would sink to the level of the second road. 

 A new lake of diminished depth would be thus formed, 

 the surplus water of which would escape over the Glen 

 Glaster col into Glen Spean. The margin of this new 

 lake, acting upon the detrital matter, would form the 

 second road. The theory of Sir Thomas Dick-Lauder, 

 as regards the part played by the cols, was re-riveted 

 by this new and unexpected discovery. 



I have referred to Mr. Darwin, whose powerful 

 mind swayed for a time the convictions of the scientific 

 world in relation to this question. His notion was 

 and it is a notion which very naturally presents itself 

 that the parallel roads were formed by the sea; that 

 this whole region was once submerged and subsequent- 

 ly unheaved; that there were pauses in the process of 

 upheaval, during which these glens constituted so 

 many fiords, on the sides of which the parallel ter- 

 races were formed. This theory will not bear close 

 criticism; nor is it now maintained by Mr. Darwin him- 

 self. It would not account for the sea being 20 feet 

 higher in Glen Gluoy than in Glen Eoy. It would not 

 account for the absence of the second and third Glen 

 Roy roads from Glen Gluoy, where the mountain flanks 

 are quite as impressionable as in Glen Roy. It would 

 not account for the absence of the shelves from the 

 other mountains in the neighbourhood, all of which 

 would have been clasped by the sea had the sea been 

 there. Here then, and no doubt elsewhere, Mr. Darwin 

 has shown himself to be fallible; but here, as elsewhere, 

 he has shown himself equal to that discipline of sur- 

 render to evidence which girds his intellect with such 

 unassailable moral strength. 



But, granting the significance of Sir Thomas Dick- 

 Lauder's facts, and the reasonableness, on the whole, of 

 the views which he has founded on them, they will not 



