NOETHEEN SCOTLAND. 



341 



Along many parts of the coast the water in the lochs resembles that of Loch 

 Stennis, in the Orkneys, which is briny at one end and fresh at the other ; and 

 like it they have two distinct faunas and floras.* 



What, then, is the cause of the contrast between the two coasts of Scotland, a 

 contrast which may also be observed with regard to the Baltic and Atlantic coasts 

 of Scandinavia ? Why have the ancient gulfs opening out upon the German 

 Ocean been filled up with alluvium and drift, whilst the innumerable indenta- 

 tions on the west have retained their primitive forms ? It is once more the 

 glaciers to which this phenomenon must be attributed. In the glacial age, as in 

 our own days, the moisture-laden winds came from the west and south-west, and 

 precipitation, mostly in the form of snow, was consequently most considerable alon»- 

 the western slopes. But they were not torrents which carried the waters back into 



Fig. 166. — Loch Etive. 

 Scale 1 . 250,000. 



Tiv^r ''^fV'^.i^^".;^ ~': v^sy. 



/ /' 



'f /â^i.^^^ 



Wof G 



7i,.:ym^ 





2 Miles. 



the sea ; they were glaciers. On the eastern slope the smaller amount of precipita- 

 tion only sufficed to maintain small glaciers, which never descended beneath the 

 upper valleys, and gave birth to rivers winding through the plain. The contrast 

 in the hydrographical features of the two slopes could not have been greater. 

 Along the eastern coast the sea threw up ridges of sand at the mouths of the gulfs, 

 in which the rivers deposited their alluvium, gradually filling them up, and 

 obliterating the original irregularities in the outline of the coast. On the west, on 

 the other hand, the enormous rivers of ice occupied the valleys through which 

 they took their course, and, instead of filling them up with alluvium, they scooped 

 them out still deeper. Every river of ice and every affluent which discharged 

 itself into it, from the right or left, thus shielded the inequalities in the ground 

 from obliteration ; and when the climate grew milder, and the glaciers melted 

 * Hugh Miller, '• Footprints of the Creator." 



