120 Prof. C. Lapworth—The Secret of the Highlands. 
difficulty already referred to in the present distribution of marine 
terraces and raised beaches. Whichever way we view the question, 
we seem to come back to the conclusion formulated long ago by 
Hugh Strickland in regard to the Severn Valley beds. ‘The marine 
shells,” he says, “ which have been found in the gravel in Cheshire, 
Staffordshire, Shropshire, and Worcestershire, belong chiefly to 
existing species, and we must therefore assign a very recent epoch 
to the formation of these deposits. It appears also that the causes 
which transported the gravel were comparatively transient, for we 
can hardly suppose the sea to have occupied the central plain of 
England during a very long period without leaving some traces of 
Tertiary strata (Strickland wrote before the Quaternary deposits 
were separated from the Tertiary beds), especially in small valleys 
and basins, which might be sheltered from the action of the northern 
current” (Strickland, Mems. and Papers, p. 107). 
I have now examined, I hope with fairness and candour, the evidence 
of the high-level marine drifts containing shells found at so many 
scattered points near the coasts of Western Europe. I cannot find 
them testifying anywhere to those gigantic vertical movements of 
the earth’s crust over immense areas and within quite recent geo- 
logical times, which are required by the theory of a long-continued 
submergence advocated by Sir Charles Lyell and his followers. Nor 
do I see in them effects which can with the smallest probability be 
assigned to the action of ice in any form. I find in them, on the 
contrary, a consistent testimony to the presence and action of the 
same diluvial movement of which such ample evidence has been 
accumulated from other sources, and which alone seems to me com- 
petent to explain them. 
VI.—Tue Secret or THE HIGHLANDS. 
By Pror. Cuarues Lapwortn, F.G.S. 
| AVING gained a general comprehension of the probable physical 
and paleontological sequence among the Lower Paleozoic 
strata of the Southern Uplands of Scotland, as partly published in 
my memoirs upon the “ Moffat Series,” 1! and the Girvan Succession,” 
I felt myself at liberty last summer to commence the study of those 
rocks of the North-west Highlands, which are supposed to be of 
corresponding age. 
The area I fixed upon for examination was the coast region of 
Durness and Eriboll in North-west Sutherland. JI selected that 
especial area for several reasons. It is the only Highland district 
where Lower Palzozoic fossils have been obtained in comparative 
abundance. It lies wholly upon that enigmatical zone of country 
where it has been asserted that we have a demonstrably ascending 
succession from the basal Hebridian gneiss through fossiliferous 
Paleozoic limestones into the metamorphic gneiss “and micaceous 
schists and slates of the Central Highlands. It is the only area 
1 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., May, 1878. 2 Ibid., November, 1882. 
