18G8.] ARGYLL ARGYLLSHIRE. 257 



feet over the sinking floor of the old Sikirian Ocean, have been crum- 

 pled up into endless folds and puckerings, of which, as may be seen on 

 the map, the long axis, or ' strike,' runs generally in a north-easterly 

 and south-westerly direction. When the wind blows from the N.W. 

 the sea is roughened with long broken lines of wave stretching from 

 S.W. to N.E. and rolling in towards the S.E. ; so, over the Scottish 

 Highlands, the gneissose and schistose rocks have been tossed, as it 

 were, by a long swell from the N.W. into numerous wave-like 

 plications that follow each other, fold after fold, and curve after 

 curve, from Cape Wrath to the Lowland border." 



Let us now consider for a moment what is involved in this fact. 

 Those "waves," those "foldings," those "puckerings," those crum- 

 plings of the strata are due of course to subterranean force. When 

 those forces were in operation, when the movements due to them 

 took place, these movements must have been transmitted to the 

 then surface of the ground. It matters not what that surface may 

 have been, nor whether it was dry land or a sea-bottom. If the beds 

 when suffering dislocation were themselves at or near the surface, 

 then of course that surface would directly represent and reproduce 

 the subterranean movement. If they were not near the surface, but 

 covered at the time by other rocks, still those rocks must have par- 

 taken more or less of the dislocations which were going on below. 

 It is impossible that superincumbent strata should have maintained 

 an undisturbed position when the lower rocks on which thej^ rested 

 were being " crumpled " and " puckered," and tossed into waves 

 which can only be likened to waves of the sea. In either case, 

 therefore, the then existing surface of the earth over the whole 

 area under which these movements prevailed must have had its 

 shape and contour powerfully affected by them. 



Now let us advance a step further. Two suppositions are possible 

 as regards the position of the surface which must have been so 

 affected. It may have been a surface already raised into dry land, 

 ca' it may have been a surface wholly lying beneath the waters of 

 the ocean. In the case of its having been dry land, the old lines of 

 drainage would necessarily be changed by the changed inclinations 

 of the ground. 



These would determine anew the course of streams and all the 

 other atmospheric agencies of erosion. It matters not whether the 

 contortions of the underlying strata were slow or comparatively 

 sudden. The overlying surface must follow the movements of its 

 support ; and however modified by materials bearing different degrees 

 of tension, there must have been established from time to time a 

 general conformability between the " crumples," the " waves" below 

 and the hollows and the heights above. Again, let us take the 

 other case. Let us suppose that the whole surface affected was 

 beneath the ocean when its underlying support began to be tossed and 

 crumpled. It is in the highest degree improbable that subterranean 

 movements so extensive should not have been accompanied by some 

 changes in the distribution of land and sea. Supposing the dis- 

 turbed strata to have been wholly under water when the movement 



