122 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



works of their great ancestors, remained unnoticed by science and 

 the world at large, until that indefatigable disturber of hidden 

 mysteries, animals, and antiquities, the tourist Pennant, published in 

 1769 a short account of Glen Roy, in his ' Tour through England, 

 'Wales, and Scotland.' 



A second description appeared in the ' Statistical Survey of Scot- 

 land,' in 1793. 



The subject was next taken up by Macculloch, who published an 

 admirable paper, illustrated with views, maps, and sections, in the 

 Transactions of the Geological Society for 1817. " So rarely," he 

 remarks, " does nature present us in her larger features with artifi- 

 cial forms or with the semblance of mathematical exactness, that no 

 conviction of the contrary can divest the spectator of the feeling 

 that he is contemplating a work of art, — a work, of which the gigantic 

 dimensions and bold features appear to surpass the efforts of mortal 

 powers. We cannot wonder therefore that the solitary and poetical 

 Highlanders, educated under mountain storms, and hourly conversant 

 witli the sublime appearances of nature, should attribute to the ideal 

 and gigantic beings of former days, a work which, scorning the mimic 

 efforts of the present race, marches over the mountain and the valley, 

 holding its undeviating course over the impassable crag and the de- 

 stroying torrent." But however convinced the Highlander may be 

 that these " parallel roads," as they are called, were the works of 

 Fingal and the heroes of his age, philosophers hold different opinions 

 respecting them, and different opinions indeed they are that they them- 

 selves do hold. One attributes them to water, another to ice, and 

 another to a eataclysmal wave surging and resurging over the Scotch 

 mountains from the Atlantic. The matter was a disputed one amongst 

 philosophers when Maeculloch wrote, six-and-fortv vears ago ; and just 

 as he reviewed what others had thought before him, and added far 

 better information of his own, so Mr. Jameson (the newly appointed 

 lecturer on Agriculture in the University of Aberdeen) has recently 

 investigated these natural curiosities afresh, and added much and 

 most valuable information of his own. 



Macculloch's description of the Glen Roy district and the " parallel 

 roads " is very intelligible, and his suggestion that the latter were 

 water-formed by standing water, was undoubtedly right, although the 

 science of geology was not then sufficiently advanced for him to work 

 out the whole subject to its issue. What he saw however he faith- 

 fully described. He begins with the source of the river, "or rather 



