IDS HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF ARGYLL, K.G., K.T., ON 



west, which is extremely steep — much of it almost precipitous — is, however, free, or 

 almost free, from similar appearances — as if the agency, whatever it may have been, 

 had been deflected to the eastern side, and had scoured out the faces opposite. 



Here, then, we have a whole series of contrasted conditions in two closely contiguous 

 glens, which suggest some curious questions. How can we account for the almost 

 complete exemption of the one glen from glacial work, when that work is so evident and 

 so predominant in the other ? What is there in the physical configuration, or in the 

 geographical position of the one as compared with the other, which can be rationally 

 connected with this great difference ? The moment we ask this question, if we are fully 

 awake to its significance, there is at least one negative answer which is certain. No 

 cause operating over the whole area of the country can possibly be the agency which 

 has thus discriminated so immensely between these two glens. This conclusion seems 

 absolutely to exclude the agency of some universal " ice-sheet " higher than all the 

 mountains, and " flowing " from some gigantic confluent glacier-mass which moved from 

 the German Ocean over the whole Western Highlands. Yet this has been the dream of 

 man)' writers of the extreme glacial school. Any such agency must, in this particular 

 case, be put out of count — quite apart from the many physical objections which lie 

 against it as applicable anywhere or at any time. 



But there is another agency much less theoretical, and much more probable, as 

 applicable to similar phenomena elsewhere — and that is the action of comparatively 

 small local glaciers formed upon the containing hills of all our deeper glens, and taking 

 the usual and natural course of such bodies down the slopes, and passing down the 

 valleys into which they fall. If there has ever been any glacial age at all in Scotland, 

 and if the mountains which we now see were ever at any time during that age above the 

 surface of the sea, and exposed to the usual atmospheric conditions of an arctic climate, 

 the snow must have gathered and consolidated on all the higher elevations into true 

 glacier ice, and small local glaciers must have been formed upon them — just as they are 

 now formed on the higher hills in Norway and elsewhere in Northern Europe and 

 America. That such glaciers must have existed in the Highlands, during the glacial age, 

 is practically certain, and there are abundant evidences of their action in many of our 

 glens. But the curious thing in respect to the cases of Glenaray and Glenshira is that it is 

 impossible to account for the difference between them by supposing that a local glacier had 

 existed in Glenaray and none in Glenshira. This impossibility lies in the fact that, of the 

 two glens, the mountain ranges which fall into the unglaciated Glenshira are far higher, 

 and far more certain to have gathered glacial snows, than those which fall into the highly- 

 glaciated Glenaray. It is true that the more immediate containing walls of both glens 

 arc very nearly of the same altitude. But in the case of Glenaray, these nearer ridges 

 and summits lead to no contiguous mountains beyond which are still more elevated, but, 

 on the contrary, fall off at once on every side — towards Loch Fyne, in one direction, and 

 to Loch Awe upon the other. On the other hand, the containing walls of Glenshira, at 

 i;- head, do lead up to contiguous mountain surfaces of much higher elevation, and 



