20 Reviews — Geikie's Buried Forests 



depth, 10 partly being worked and partly worked out. The adit 

 did not cross any veins which, separately, would entitle one to 

 particular expectations. On account of the very irregular and un- 

 equal distribution of the Silver, it must not be inferred that all these 

 veins contain no Silver. Although with regard to their thickness 

 many of the A'^eins may seem of little consequence, still they are 

 important, on account of their continuing most regularly from the 

 surface to the level of the adit, and, indeed, as far down as they 

 have been worked. Where several veins are close together and 

 form a group of veins, the Silver appears to have collected in greatest 

 quantity. — 0. L. N. F, 



S/E^V'IE^vVS. 



I. — On the Bueied Forests and Peat Mosses op Scotland, and 

 THE Changes of Climate which they Indicate. By James 

 Geikie, Esq., of the Geological Survey of Great Britain. 



[Commimicated by Aechibald Geikie, Esq., F.E.S., to the Eoyal Soc. Edin. 

 Vol. XXIV., Partii., pp, 363-384.] 



THE personal observations of the Author, and those of Prof. Young 

 (Glasgow University), are combined with a mass of recorded 

 and traditionary evidence, to arrive at the geological history of these 

 Mosses, the phenomena connected with which are stated to be three- 

 fold :— 



1st. The buried trees and condition of the country at the period of 

 their growth ; 



2nd. The causes which led to the destruction of those trees ; 



3rd. The present aspect of the Peat Mosses. 



The former abundance of forest trees in these countries (and also 

 in maritime Norway), even in our most northerly islands, where 

 cultivated saplings can but struggle for existence, is thus brought 

 forward. 



"Throughout the bleak Orcades and sterile Zetland large trees 

 have at one time found a congenial habitat. Of the main-land it is 

 difficult to say what region has not supported its great forests. The 

 bare flats of Caithness, the storm-swept valleys of the Western High- 

 lands, the desolate moory tracts of Perthshire and the North-eastern 

 counties, the peaty uplands of Peeblesshire and the Borders, and the 

 wilds of Carrick and Galloway, have each treasured up some relic of 

 a bygone age of forests." 



From the submergence of peat containing trees, and old forests, 

 around the British Isles, along the coasts of Brittany and Normandy, 

 and the Channel Islands, the author argues a continental condition 

 of these regions attached to the rest of Europe and each other before 

 the deposition of the marine beds of the Drift Formation, when " the 

 climate was still cold enough to nourish glaciers in the higher valleys 

 of our mountains." . . . . "a climate more nearly approaching 

 that of the wooded regions of Canada than to that which characterises 

 Germany at the present time." 



