the Mountains of Scotland. 121 
nature, immediately called forth two thoughts; the first, that one 
would have been incapable of distinguishing them oneself, and the 
second, that one must be very bold to establish such grandiose 
results upon bases of this kind. But these characters, recognized at 
first in a limited field, were found, ever the same, without modifica- 
tion, for a distance of 150 kilometres. Messrs. Peach and Horne 
have multiplied the number of these horizons, and their subdivisions, 
as well as the chief divisions of Professor Lapworth, are repeated 
in the entire region with the same precision. Each proof, taken 
separately, would seem of small value: but they are cumulative, 
and together form an indestructible whole. 
Professor Lapworth has shown that the apparent enormous thick- 
ness of the system was formed by a small number of beds, “piled 
again and again,” and indefinitely repeated, always with the same 
direction of dip. After this it becomes natural to ascribe the 
presence of this gneiss above the Silurian to this same phenomenon 
of “heaping.” There the proofs are of another order, and are drawn 
from the nature of these gneisses and mica-schists; for it can be 
shown that they have been subjected to tremendous movements, 
that their particles have undergone a true re-arrangement, which, 
however, allows the recognition here and there of certain portions, 
less altered, of the ancient gneiss of the coast or of the Silurian 
divisions. It is to be looked upon as a heterogeneous mass, crushed 
and pounded by mechanical action and reproducing, in consequence 
of a sort of general cleavage, the appearance of primitive stratification. 
In this way the existence of phenomena, hitherto acknowledged 
only in certain portions of the Alps, and in the Franco-Belgian 
coal-field, became recognized in the North of Scotland ; the displace- 
ment and horizontal carriage of thick superficial masses over several 
kilometres. Similar examples are now abundant; one led to the 
other. But ten years ago this was not the case, and I have been 
told that Professor Lapworth, seized by a kind of fever in facing 
the consequences which he saw successively opening out before 
him, in his dreams thought himself caught up in the cogs of these 
tremendous movements, and crushed along the planes of thrust. 
Few geological careers exhibit successes comparable to those of 
Professor Lapworth. In the South of Scotland, it was by means of 
Graptolites—lowly organisms of which the paleontological value 
might appear but slight—that he established horizons in a series 
that had defied all efforts, and the zones determined in the little 
corner of Dobb’s Linn are now detected all over Europe, and even 
in America. For the North of Scotland it is with still more 
insignificant data, with tracks of worms, with lithological differences 
of colour and grain, that he has fixed his horizons—horizons which, 
here again, have been found to possess unexpected constancy and 
extension. By the aid of these tools, forged by himself, and which 
others would have disdained, he has given the key to the geology 
of two great provinces of Scotland; he has thus done for the strati- 
graphy of the Highlands what Sir Archibald Geikie has done for 
the history of the eruptions of that region, and both names will 
