154 FORESTRY OF NORWAY. 



ice-fall from such heights as those of some of the moun- 

 tains around, 6,500 feet, and 7.620 feet a mile and a-half 

 above the level of the sea into a basin 3,980 feet below 

 that level, a fall of two miles and a quarter (Can it be !), 

 and there seems nothing difficult in further imagining it 

 excavating such basins as have been mentioned. 



Reference has been made to Loch Awe. The western 

 lochs of Scotland appear to abound in such pools, and in 

 chains of them. 



In Gairloch, there is at the head of the loch, I was in- 

 formed when there lately, a pool very much deeper than 

 the basin of the loch, and the basin of the Clyde beyond ; 

 separated from this by a low range of high land, on which 

 is situated Shandon, Row, and Helensburgh, is a dry valley 

 of much greater depth in its upper and middle stretches 

 than at its lower extremity. And a little beyond is Loch 

 Lomond, with a deep pool towards its upper extremity j 

 and another of less depth in the line of its basin a little 

 below and within sight of Inversnaid. 



In accordance with what has been said in regard to the 

 striae to be seen on the face of the rocks, two theories 

 have been advanced in regard to the production of such 

 striae observed elsewhere. 



Both theories attribute them to the action of ice. In 

 one of these, advanced and expounded in a volume entitled 

 Frost and Fire, by Mr J. F. Campbell, they are attri- 

 buted to the friction of icebergs and icefloes, drifting from 

 the north on ocean currents. In the other, advanced, 

 maintained, and illustrated by Agassiz, Ramsay, Lyell, 

 Chambers, Jamieson, and Geikie, they are attributed to 

 the grating action of glaciers, or land ice, formed where 

 they are seen, or at a somewhat higher level, and con- 

 tinuously descending in a state of flux to a lower level. 

 Thus does it appear to have been here. 



Professor Esmark in a paper On the Geological 

 History of the Earth, in Jamesons Journal, October 1826 



