208 D. Milne Some — Glaciation of the Shetlands. 



it was from the westward, as indicated not only by what he calls the 

 splendid strue on the rocks at Haroldswick, but by observing that 

 the " storm " side of Heog Hill was on its W.N.W. side, and was 

 polished on that side, for no less than 150 feet from its top. 



True, Mr. Peach says he has now altered his opinion as to the 

 direction of the drift in Shetland. Had this alteration of opinion arisen 

 from another and a recent examination by Mr. Peach, senior, of 

 the locality, it would have been conclusive. But Mr. Peach explains 

 that this alteration has arisen from his having, since making his 

 Report to Sir Eoderick Murchison and the British Association in 

 1864, " seen much more of the glaciation of Scotland, and thought 

 more about it." Now, his seeing and thinking more of the glaciation 

 of Scotland since he made that report, cannot alter the facts which 

 he allows he saw in Shetland ; and which incontestably prove the 

 Ice-movement there to have been from the north-westward. 



Unst, however, is not the only island where a discordance exists 

 between Mr. Peach's observations of the striae and those of Messrs. 

 Peach and Home. Mr. Peach, senior, examined Whalsay, a small 

 island situated a few miles to the east of the Mainland ; and there- 

 fore one of the first spots which would be passed over by the alleged 

 Scandinavian Ice-sheet. Messrs. Peach and Home say of this island, 

 that on both sides of it, there are striations showing an average 

 movement towards S. 28° W. On the other hand, Mr. Peach, senior, 

 says that, not satisfied with taking the direction of the stri^ at 

 places where he found the rocks exposed, he removed the drifted 

 clay and stones, in order to obtain a fresh surface ; and the scratches 

 at all the places (he says) " run nearly east and west," — which, 

 by true bearings, would be E.S.E. and W.N.W. Here, again, is. 

 discordance between Mr. Peach, senior, and the authors of the paper. 



Going farther south, viz. to Lerwich, Bressay Island, and the long 

 peninsular tongue of low-lying land, called Sandwich and ConingS' 

 burgh, we find strife marked on the map attached to the paper, 

 showing Ice-movements from the N.W. These discordant markings 

 Messrs. Peach and Home ascribe to local glaciers ; of which glaciers, 

 however, as it seems to me, there is not the slightest evidence, or 

 even possibility, considering the want of high hills or valleys to have 

 formed them. 



Therefore, as regards the stri^ on the Eastern Seaboard of the 

 Shetlands, it distinctly appears that, so far from confirming the 

 theory of an invasion of an Ice-sheet from the N.E., most of these 

 striae are at right angles to that direction. 



If next we turn to the Western Seaboard of the Islands, do we 

 find any proof of the extraordinary statement that the Ice-sheet, 

 when it impinged on the Islands, "veered" or " siuung round " to a 

 N.W. direction ? Messrs. Peach and Home suggest a presumption in 

 favour of this evolution, by saying, that thereby the Ice-sheet ivould 

 " follow the path of least resistance." But how can this be ? If the 

 Ice-sheet canie from Scandinavia, it would be about 400 miles long. 

 If it enveloped and overtopped " both the Orkneys and the Shetlands " 

 (as Dr. Croll supposed, p. 779), it must have had a breadth of at least 



