122 
THE UEOLOaiST. 
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 Eoy, in his ' Tour through England, 
AV'ales, 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," lie 
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. AYe cannot wonder therefore that the solitary and poetical 
Highlanders, educated under mountain storms, and hourly conversant 
with 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 cataclysmal wave surging and resurging over the Scotch 
mountains from the Atlantic. The matter was a disputed one amongst 
philosophers when Macculloch wrote, six-and-forty years 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 Eoy 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 
