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CHAPTER XXV. 



OLD BKITISH GLACIERS CONTINUED. 



I SHALL now briefly describe some of the broader features 

 of the glacial phenomena of the western coasts of 

 England, with here and there necessary allusions to and 

 descriptions of the interior of the country. 



It is a self-evident proposition, that when cold began 

 to increase sufficiently to produce glaciers in Britain, 

 these in their infancy must have been first formed in 

 the high regions of the north, where precipitation of 

 snow was greatest among the mountains of the High- 

 lands. As the climate got more severe, such glaciers 

 would spread from the upland glens in all directions, 

 and by-and-by, as cold and precipation became more and 

 more intense, and at last the whole mountain land, like 

 the interior of Greenland, got smothered in ice, a pro- 

 digious onflow of glacier ice spread from the Highlands 

 west into the Atlantic across the Outer Hebrides, and 

 south into the North or Irish Channel along the ice- 

 buried valleys of the Sound of Jura, Loch Fyne, and the 

 whole of the Firth of Clyde, in the midst of which the 

 island of Arran then formed, what it may seem presump- 

 tuous to call, only a great roche moutonnee ; or if any 

 of its peaks then stood above the surface of this mer de 

 glace, they yielded but a feeble contribution of ice to 

 swell the general mass of the glacier. Escaped from 

 the Highlands, the glacier split upon the island of 



