142 THE BANK ACCOUNTANT. 



it is a good feasible theory, with a host of every- day 

 experiences to support it. I cannot square it, however, 

 with some of the facts. Why have all the travellers of 

 this part of the country come from the west, and none 

 from the opposite quarter ? We have masses in abund- 

 ance of blue schistose gneiss and micaceous schist from 

 the hills of Ross-shire, and blocks of basalt even from the 

 Hebrides, but we have no granites from Aberdeen, no 

 granitic gneisses or grauwackes from Banff or Moray, 

 no yellow sandstone from Elgin or Broughhead. The 

 hills of these countries are nearly as ancient as those of 

 Ross-shire or the Hebrides, and we have no winds so 

 violent as those which blow from the east ; but these 

 winds have failed to convey to us a single block from 

 those hills. There is another rather puzzling fact. The 

 conglomeration which in this part of the country forms 

 the inferior bed of the Old Red Sandstone, contains in 

 some localities large water-rolled blocks, scarcely inferior 

 in size to our more modern erratics. Now, there was 

 surely no ice in the days of the Old Red Sandstone. 

 But truce with the subject. Lyell's theory seems excel- 

 lent so far as it goes, though it may doubtless be pushed 

 too far. Ice was most probably but one of several 

 agents, the most ancient of which, such as floods and 

 currents, must have existed in the earliest eras. As for 

 the appearances described by Agassiz, do you not think 

 the glaciers which produced them might have existed 

 in those comparatively modern times when the greater 

 part of Europe was covered by forests, and the climate, 

 even to the coasts of the Mediterranean, was chill and 

 severe ? Hume, in his Essay on the populousness of 

 ancient states, tells us that the Tiber was frequently 

 covered with ice even so late as the days of Juvenal/ 

 From several letters of a geological character, which, 



