Vice-P7xsideiii\s Address. 103 



question does not exceed eight or nine miles. Tlie breccias 

 reach a heiglit of 1300 feet, while the dominating point of 

 the intervening uplands is 1700 feet. Under present geo- 

 graphical conditions it is doubtful wliether perennial snow 

 and glaciers of any size at all could exist in the region of 

 the Lammermuirs at a less altitude than 7000 feet or more. 

 But between the breccias of Haddingtonshire and the 

 equivalent deposits in Berwickshire there is no space for any 

 intermediate range of mountains of circumdenudation of 

 such a height. Moreover, we must remember that under the 

 extremely uniform conditions which obtained in Paleozoic 

 times the snow-line could not possibly have been attained 

 even at that elevation. When the Devonian coral-reefs 

 described by Dupont were growing in the sea that over- 

 flowed Western Europe, to what height must the southern 

 uplands of Scotland have been elevated in order to reach the 

 snow-line ! We may make what allowance we choose for 

 the denudation which the Silurian rocks of the Lammermuirs 

 must have experienced since the deposition of the Old Eed 

 Sandstone, but it is simply a physical impossibility that 

 mountains of circumdenudation of the desiderated heig-ht 

 could ever have existed in the Lammermuir region at the 

 time the coarse breccias were being accumulated.^ It seems 

 to me, then, that these breccias are in every way better 

 accounted for by a lowering of temperature due to increased 

 eccentricity of the orbit. This view frees us from the 

 necessity of postulating excessive upheavals over very 

 restricted areas, and of creating Alps where no Alps could 

 have existed. 



When we consider the enormous thickness of the strata 

 that constitute any of our larger coal-fields, we can hardly 

 doubt that one or more periods of high eccentricity must 

 have occurred during their accumulation. It does not 

 follow, however, that we should be able to detect in these 



^ It may be objected that the conglomerates were probably not marine, but 

 deposited in lakes, the beds of which may have been much above sea-level. 

 But from all that we knoAV of the Old Red Sandstone of Scotland, it would 

 appear that the lakes of the period now and again communicated with the 

 sea, and were probably never much above its level. 



