292 A nalysis of the 



tainous character of the Highlands, and of the softer 

 features of the Lowlands. It is briefly this : that, in 

 very ancient geological times, before the deposition of 

 the Upper Silurian series and Old Red Sandstone, the 

 Lower Silurian rocks, which form almost entirely the 

 northern half of Scotland, had already been raised high 

 into the air, metamorphosed, and greatly disturbed. 

 Such metamorphic rocks, though, as a whole, difficult of 

 destruction, yet consist of intermingled masses of 

 different degrees of hardness, whence the great variety 

 of their outlines is the result of the softer rocks having 

 been most easily worn away. In the south of Scotland, 

 from Galloway to the coast of Berwickshire, the same 

 strata, forming the upland of the Carrick, Moorfoot, 

 and Lammermuir hills, have been equally disturbed, 

 though perhaps not originally raised to the same height, 

 but being comparatively unmetamorphosed, they are 

 generally somewhat less hard, and have therefore been 

 more wasted by denudation, whence their average lower 

 elevation. Though the mountains of these southern 

 Highlands cannot compare in height with those of the 

 north, they are sometimes both striking and picturesque 

 in outline, especially where associated as gneiss and other 

 metamorphic rocks with great bosses of granite and 

 quartz-porphyries, in Wigtonshire, Kirkcudbrightshire, 

 and Selkirkshire, in the south of Scotland. These 

 gneissose lines run in the general strike of the strata, 

 all the way from Lauderdale, to the cliffs of the Rhinns 

 of Gralloway that bound St. Patrick's Channel. 



Nothing can be more impressive, in its way, than 

 the noble amphitheatre of hills that surround the sombre 

 moorland basins of Loch Doon, Loch Finlas, and the 

 smaller lakes and tarns that lie further south and west 

 of the Rhinns of Ketts, the highest granitic peak of 



