Mr Hugh Miller on Boulder- Glaciation. 159 



made by him in railway cuttings near Edinburgh. "In 

 examining some of the blocks of larger size," he says, " we 

 find the upper surface and two of the sides finely dressed, 

 while the lower surface and the two ends are either much 

 less dressed or actually rough and angular. It is remark- 

 able," he continues, " that in such stones, though lying at a 

 great distance from one another, we find the direction of these 

 fine groovings which constitute dressing generally to correspond, 

 and to point in a direction E. and W. (i.e., the direction of the 

 rock-stria3 in the district). . . . This cannot well be 

 explained on any other supposition than that their surface 

 had been subjected in the position they now occupy to the 

 smoothing action of hard substances rolled by a current of 

 water from the west. . . . Some of the larger blocks are 

 polished on the upper and not on the under side. This evi- 

 dently shows that the clay did not close round them at once, 

 but that, after the part below was firm, the current above, 

 bearing other clay and stones with it, was still in motion." 



Ten years later, Mr Milne Home's notice was attracted by 

 certain boulders striated in situ on the shore at Joppa. He 

 suggested that similar observations should be made wherever 

 possible. 1 In 1845 and 1848, Mr Smith of Jordanhill ob- 

 served parallel striae on the upper surfaces of imbedded 

 stones on the shore of the Gareloch, near Glasgow. 



In 1852, my father brought into notice certain causeway- 

 like pavements of boulders near Portobello, which remain, so 

 far as I am aware, without any precise parallel. "There 

 occurs deep in the clay, at two several points on our coast, 

 what I have ventured to term pavements — for such is their 

 appearance — composed of boulder stones laid as in a common 

 pavement, with their smoother surfaces upwards, . . 

 grooved and rutted. As decidedly as the greenstone cause- 

 ways of our streets bear evidence in their scratched and 

 furrowed surfaces of the heavily-laden carts and waggons 

 that have passed over them, are these pavements of the 

 boulder-clay charged with evidence that great moving masses 

 had also dragged their ponderous weight over them. But 



1 On the Midlothian and' East Lothian Coalfields (Trans. Roy. Soc, 

 Edinb., vol. xiv., 1838, p. 311). 



