THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE, 



NEW SERIES. DECADE 111. VOL. II, 



No. III.— MARCH, 1885. 



os,ia-izsr-A.Xj j^s-TioXiiES. 



I. — On the Close of the Highland Controversy. 



By Professor Charles Lapworth, LL.D., F.G.S. ; 

 Mason Science College, Birmingham. 



LL those British geologists who have interested themselves in 

 the long-vexed question of the geological position and true 

 mode of origin of the Metaraorphic rocks of the Highlands of Scot- 

 land must have read with the greatest interest and pleasure the clear 

 and vivid "Report on the Geology of the North-West of Sutherland," 

 by Messrs. Peach and Home, in the pages of " Nature" ' for November 

 last ; and the manly and candid Introductory Observations by the 

 Director-General of the Geological Survey. Not only does the 

 publication of this Report put an end to one of the most keenly 

 agitated controversies in the history of Bi'itish Geology, but it explains 

 and harmonizes the diverse views of the contending parties. Tlie 

 issue appears to me to be most creditable to all concerned. For many 

 years the Highland controversy has appeared to outsiders, and to 

 those geologists who were unaware of the difficulties attending the 

 strati graph jj^ of the older rocks, as a trivial dispute between the 

 Geological Survey on the one hand and a few misguided amateurs 

 on the other. So simple and so irresistible appeared to be the facts and 

 arguments advanced by Sir Roderick Murchison and his followers in 

 proof of a naturally conformable upward succession from the unaltered 

 Silurian rocks of the North-West into the overlying metamorphic 

 rocks of the Highlands, that tliey carried conviction to the minds of 

 geologists of the first rank, from Lyell downwards. So overwhelm- 

 ing indeed was the concensus of opinion in favour of the general 

 accuracy of Murchison's conclusions, that those geologists, who have 

 so strongly denounced and so steadily endeavoured to disprove it, 

 have had by no means an easy or a pleasurable task. That they com- 

 mitted some mistakes and drew some erroneous conclusions during 

 the prosecution of their investigations was inevitable, from the very 

 novelty of the work, and the complicated nature of the stratigraphy. 

 But when these mistakes are set off against the gigantic error which 

 these investigators so successfully opposed, there will be found to 

 be a most substantial balance in their favour, for which the futui'e 

 student of these old rocks will give them due credit. 



The story of the origin, the publication and the extraordinary suc- 

 cess of the Murchisonian hypothesis of the Highland sequence, in spite 

 1 Nature, 1884, vol. xxxi. p. 29. 



DECADE III. — TOL. II. — NO. III. 7 



