408 Ihe late David Milne-Home. 



officers of the Geological Survey. In the same volume occur 

 other two papers by Mr Milne, viz. a "Notice respecting the 

 depletion or drying up of the rivers Teviot, Nith, and Clyde," 

 on 27th November 1838, and a "Notice of two Storms which 

 swept over the British Islands during the last week of November 

 1838." 



In the next (or loth) volume of the same Society's Transactions 

 appears Mr Milne- Home's "Geological Account of Roxburgh- 

 shire," besides a paper on a remarkable oscillation of the sea. 

 From 1842 onwards, he contributed to the Edinburgh Philosophical 

 Journal a series of papers on Scottish and other Earthquakes, 

 being one of the first attempts to systematize our knowledge of 

 seismic phenomena. Mallet afterwards made use of Milne- 

 Home's labours in his 4th Report on Earthquakes to the British 

 Association, published in 1859. 



Perhaps owing to his forensic training, Mr Milne-Home could 

 be a formidable critic of other men's theories, whilst tenaciously 

 holding to his own. In the course of his geological encounters 

 he unhorsed several celebrated opponents, the illustrious Darwin 

 even falling before him in a battle over the Parallel Roads of 

 Glen Roy, as Darwin himself mournfully confesses in a letter to 

 Sir Joseph Hooker *' Milne-Home's revised Theory of the 

 Roads will be found in the 27th volume of the Transactions 

 R.S.E. He also made a slashing attack on a paper read by Sir 

 Archibald Geikie before the Geological Society of London, in 

 1862, on the Post-Roman elevation of the Scottish coast, as will 

 be seen in the 27th volume of the Transactions R.S.E. ; and 

 Sir Charles Lyell in the 4th Edition of his "Antiquity of Man" 

 adopted Milne-Home's views. 



We now come to a paper by Mr Milne-Home of peculiar 

 interest to Berwickshire students of Physiography. In 1875 he 

 conti'ibuted to the 27th volume of the Transactions R.S.E. an 

 elaborate "Notice of High-Water Marks on the banks of the 

 river Tweed and some of its tributaries ; and also of Drift 

 Deposits in the Valley of the Tweed." No one can peruse this 

 Memoir without being struck by the immense labour bestowed 

 by Milne-Home in collecting his facts. We need not accept his 

 theories, but we may confidently accept his descriptions of 

 phenomena. As an opponent of the Glacial system of Agassiz 

 and Geikie, his theories are antagonistic to those of most of the 

 * Darwin's Life, vol. i. (1887). 



