| 
| 

| 
| 
| 
| 
PROFESSOR HEDDLE ON THE MINERALOGY OF SCOTLAND. 547 
in upon, surely the rock which has withstood the operation of the agent of 
decay must be of adamant itself. 
But when, with a dull thud, the hammer almost sinks into its substance, 
when the knife cuts into it with ease, when the nail shows the hardness of the 
mass to be little superior to its own, curiosity gives place to wonder. 
The ridge is serpentine—one of the softest of rocks; and yet, in lofty 
eminences, it overtops the worn and troughed-out gneiss. 
Truly here is a riddle difficult to be read. Of what strange temper was the 
graving tool which, while it gouged out the gneiss, was deflected by the 
serpentine. 
Or did it escape the operations of the tool? Did it, aiguille-like, tower 
above the zone of its action ?—for no one who has learnt ice-sign can fail to 
recognise it here ; in all scalped Scotland there is no such illustration of its 
power. True that there is no direct evidence that the low-lying flat resulted 
from its work alone ; but the top-dressing certainly did ;—the rounding of the 
outlines, the cutting out of the tarns, the smoothing of the surface, were the 
work of ice alone. 
And the serpentine did not escape,—was not above the scope of its opera- 
tions. Terrific gougings 30 and 40 feet in length, and large enough to 
hold a limb, if not a body; trenches, along the weaknesses of the jointing, 
in which a herring boat might lie concealed; and rounded haunches, after 
the similitude of the hind-quarters of an elephant,—these showed that the 
ice had not spared the serpentine. 
Truly the riddle of the Scair Ruidh, the Red Scur, is hard to read; but, 
thinking of another Scottish Scoor, I resolved to master it. The riddle of 
that other Scottish Scoor was read by a talented member of our body; and 
though he may in the future place many feathers in his cap, that which 
he placed there by the reading of that riddle may, perchance, remain the 
loftiest. 
But when GEeIxKiE read the riddle of the Scur of Eig, he had something more 
to do than what is before us here; he was in the position of Daniel before 
Nebuchadnezzar—he had not.only to expound the dream, but he had to 
declare it. Geologists of great repute had speculated on Eig before; 
they expounded capitally; only, unfortunately, they expounded the wrong 
dream. 
But here no such difficulty is before us; the dream is declared ; it is the 
| exposition only that is called for. 
Given, a high ridge of about the softest known rock, dominating over an 
expanse of one of the hardest, both exhibit unmistakable evidences of ice 
graving, but the soft rock to much the greater extent. How comes it that the 
soft rock has been left protruding ? 
