388 MAN OF SCIENCE. 



Loch Ness, is marked atop by its rectilinear character, 

 as if a ruler had been applied to it in the forming. The 

 coast of Caithness, as seen from the sea, presents exactly 

 the same appearance ; so also does the ridge which 

 extends from the hill of Cromarty far into the parish of 

 Resolis. In each case these ridges are composed of 

 Old Red of the lower formation, of sandstone, how- 

 ever, not low but high in this lower formation ; and the 

 rectilinear peculiarity seems to be one of its character- 

 istics. The ridge fronting that of the Leys, that to 

 which Craig-Phadrig belongs, is of an entirely different 

 character ; the outline is more than usually waved and 

 indented. It is composed of the great conglomerate, 

 and this wavy character seems as characteristic a con- 

 dition of it as the rectilinear outline is of the deposits 

 that overlie it. Deep under the rectilinear ridge the 

 fish-beds appear, as shown in the quarry of Inches ; but 

 to indicate their place with regard to their indented 

 ridge opposite, one has to draw a line in the clouds. 

 In the valley between these two ridges,- a portion 

 of the great Caledonian valley, there lie a number of 

 detached hills, of an appearance wholly different from 

 the hills on either side. Some of them are detached ; 

 some of them lie in chains, like birds' eggs blown, 

 and threaded. They are composed of sand and gravel, 

 and preserve a rude parallelism to the loftier hills behind, 

 just as rebounding waves preserve a parallelism to the 

 rock or mole from which they have been thrown back. 

 And these gravel hills are, as you anticipate, moraines. 

 They belong to a period when Loch Ness, that now 

 never freezes in even the severest winter, must have 

 existed as one vast mass of ice wedged into the earth, 

 and when a huge glacier filled the great glen of Scotland 

 from the east to the west sea. 



