492 SL GIDIGI SS JHOIR SI(GLOVBIN IES 
glacial excavation by Scotch geologists; diluvial and alluvial 
valley floors, the first at the head of Loch Carron, consisting of 
a wash of gravels in front of a local terminal moraine, the second 
in Glen Glass, traversed by a meandering stream ; numerous small 
rock-basin lakes in corries or cirques at the head of steep-sided 
glens, and many scattered tarns on the more even upland surfaces ; 
the famous ‘parallel roads” of Glens Roy and Gloy, just north of 
Ben Nevis, the relation of the altitude of these beaches to the con- 
trolling cols being clearly shown (a list of articles on this inter- 
esting locality may be found in Nature for May 20, 1880) + thie 
peculiar back-handed courses of the streams on the southern side 
of Strath Spean, strongly suggesting a modification of preglacial 
divides by glacial erosion and deposition, although not yet 
- locally studied and explained as far as I have been able to learn; 
the upper part of Loch Linnhe, one of the finest of the sea-lochs, 
or fiords, by which the western coast is so deeply indented; the 
twenty-foot sea bench occurs around the shore of this loch, all 
the villages, roads, and crofts being laid upon it; but it is too 
delicate for clear representation on these maps. 
It should be noted that western Scotland is a good example 
of a too irregular coast line. The submergence suffered by the 
western coast has drowned the lower ends of many straths, con- 
verting them into fiords, whose waters rise on the steep slopes 
of the mountain sides; thus the area of easily habitable ground 
has been unfortunately decreased. A great number of the pro- 
tected harbors might be to advantage exchanged for low ground 
on which the harbor-users could live. A highly irregular coast 
line is not alone an advantage to human development; it must 
be well proportioned to other advantageous features, as Ratzel 
has shown (Jahresber. Geogr. Gesell, Miinchen, 1894, 83). 
THE EASTERN LOWLANDS OF SCOTLAND. 
SINEEUS BB, Bal, Billy B2y BO AO, 47; AS, BB, SOc 
The lowlands have been denuded in Tertiary time on a belt 
of comparatively weak strata (Old Red and Carboniferous, rich 
in coal and iron,) between the more resistant rocks of the High- 
