with Observations on the study of Terraces. 



7 



Mr. Kemp* Mr. David Milne,f Sir George S. Mackenzie,! and 

 James Thompson, Jr.$ Speaking of these Lochaber terraces, 

 Macculioch says : — 



The appearance of the parallel roads is so extraordinary as to im- 

 press the imagination of the most unphilosophical, nay even of the 

 most incurious spectator. * * * On each side of a long, hollow, 

 deep valley, bounded by dark and lofty mountains, and at a great ele- 

 vation, three strong lines are traced parallel to each other and to the 

 horizon, the levels of the opposite ones coinciding precisely with each 

 other. So rarely does nature present us in her large features with arti- 

 ficial forms, or with the semblance of mathematical exactness, that no 

 conviction of the contrary can divest the spectator of the feeling that 

 he is contemplating a work of art, a work of which the gigantic di- 

 mensions and bold features appear to surpass the efforts of mortal 

 power. 



Several views of the region are given by Macculioch. The 

 following is from Chambers^ who says of the three lines, that they 



extend for five or six miles on both sides of Glen Roy, and 

 look like "copy lines ruled for text." The first and second, 

 or two upper, were found by Macculioch to be 82 feet apart, 

 and the second and third 212 feet. A careful survey by Mr. 

 David Stevenson, according to Mr. Chambers, made the latter 

 212*37 feet, and the former 80-32 feet — a close approximation to 

 Macculloch's determination. The height of the uppermost above 

 high tide is 1139 feet; of the second 1059 feet; of the third 

 847 feet || 



* A writer in the Athenaeum, of September 23, claims for Mr. Kemp of Gala- 

 shiels, his having first investigated the inland terraces of Scotland, and slates that 

 his views, which are the same as are presented by Mr. Chambers, were noticed 

 in Chambers's Journal as early as 1840. 



t Jameson's Edinh. New Phil. Jour., vol. xliii, 839, 1847. 



t Ibid, xiiv, 1, with a map, Jan., 1848. A previous memoir by Mackenzie wa 

 read on the subject before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, in 1842, and a still 

 earlier publication appeared in Brewster's Phil, Jour, for 1833. 



§ Ibid, vol. xlv, p. 40, 1848. 



|| Macculioch observes, that the first is 927 feet above the level of the junction of 



the Roy and Spean. 



