June 



XXXIII 



No clearer lesson in glacial geology is needed than that 

 presented by the east shore of the Bay of Luce, ram. 

 easily to be read by the cyclist as he runs along maiden 

 the fine track between the headlands of Sinniness and 

 Craigengower. The road for a dozen miles lies level along 

 a raised beach, interrupted only once by the trap dyke of 

 Craignarget the Silver Crag. On the traveller's left hand 

 rises a green ' heugh ' (this monosyllable defies pronuncia- 

 tion save by a son of the soil) a huge, steep bank of 

 pasture, brindled with fern and whin ; on his right is the 

 rough sea shingle and the wide, glittering bay. 



That heugh, varying in height from sixty to a hundred 

 and twenty feet, marks the seaward end of the ancient 

 ice-field, and consists from top to bottom of boulder clay, 

 now closely clad with kindly verdure and flowers of many 

 hues. It was the bed laid down by the ice-mantle, which, 

 never resting, crept forward irresistibly from the high 

 grounds to the sea-level, planing smooth the underlying 

 rock strata, grinding the waste into stiff clay, and carrying 

 with it innumerable fragments of harder material till it 

 met the sea. There the ice-field broke off into bergs, 

 which floated away, leaving the tide to form its beach by 

 washing stones and boulders out of the underlying clay. 

 This is what is recognised all round the western Scottish 

 I 



