BY HUGH MILLEE. 335 



force claimed for it elsewhere is the natural deduction. It is 

 characteristic of rocks moulded by glaciation, (roches moutonnees, ) 

 to present a long, smooth, sorely abraded slope towards the 

 advance of the ice, while declivities sheltered from it are left 

 comparatively short and steep. If the reader will compare the 

 outline of a typical roche moutonnee, or mutton, as the vulgar 

 geologist begins to say, (Woodcut JSTo. 9,) with the profile of an 

 escarpment, he will remark a resemblance, in that the dipslope 

 of the latter would not inaptly stand for the stress side {stoss 

 seite) of the ice-worn rock. But as long as the stress side of 

 the escarpment stands at an angle of forty or forty-five degrees 

 the cases seem hopelessly antagonistic, and the natural inference 

 is that the glacier has somehow failed, in such instances, to 

 mould the escarpments so completely as, given time and active 

 erosion, it must have done. 



Woodcut No. 9. — Roches moutonnees; Lochiuvcr, Sutherlandshire. The arrow indi- 

 cates the direction of ice-movement. 



The effects of disintegration upon the scarps have made it un- 

 usual to find escarpments retaining a glaciated curve from brow 

 to base, although there must be many in that condition under 

 cover of drift. Exceptions may be met with, however. In an 

 escarpment near Low Shield Green, JN'.N.E. of Birtlcy, which 

 glacial markings near at hand prove to have also confronted the 

 ice flow, the rounded profile is clearly enough visible, especially 

 from a little distance. I could restore its broken smoothnesses 

 to a curve bent upon an angle of about 35°. Curvature of the 

 brow, however, is generally the only visible guide to the original 

 steepness of the ice-worn scarp. The brow of this same escarp- 

 ment, further towards Buteland Fell, can be seen descending at 

 an angle. of 38° before its slope is cut off by the vertical plane 

 caused by postglacial action. 



This escarpment forms the upper boundary of one of those 

 crescent-shaped recesses commonly known in England as coombes, 



