F resident's Address. 
11 
was determined, as far as possible, to avoid, and very early 
in my diary I find written, I now give up every theory, 
and vow only to look at facts." This sentence was written, 
however, in presoDce of Bjarnarey, one of the Westmanna 
Islands, where the contortions of the tuffa were so puzzling 
that I was unable to form a theory, so I take little credit 
for this seeming impartiality. On approaching the Faroe 
Islands one is struck by the grandeur and stateliness with 
which they rise perpendicularly from the sea, and also with 
their similarity to many of our own Hebrides. The amyg- 
daloidal traps alternate with the softer tuffa, precisely as we 
see them at the Storr and Quirang in Skye. On arriving at 
Thorshavn, the port and capital of the islands, my first ob- 
ject was to obtain evidence of the supposed glacial action 
which had ground and polished many surfaces of rock near 
to the town. I had little difiiculty in finding indications there 
attributed to northern drift and glacial action, but unfortu- 
nately they proved to be another instance of the difiiculty of 
ridding ourselves of long-cherished views. These striated 
surfaces lie at a very small angle to the horizon ; they are 
smooth, parallel, and regular, and altogether unlike any 
dressed surfaces I had yet seen. On picking away the moss 
and earth from the base of a cyclopean stone which lay im- 
mediately above the ground surfaces, and which was evi- 
dently in situ, I found that the grooves extended below the 
moss, and further, that its perpendicular and exposed surface 
was untouched ; the conclusion was therefore forced upon 
us that they were merely slickensides grooves caused by the 
near contact of two rock surfaces, and therefore yielding 
no proof of drift or glacial action. And while on this sub- 
ject, permit me to state, that from the fact of no drift having 
been found either in Iceland or the Faroes, and no dressed 
or grooved surfaces other than those due to modern glaciers, 
I have taken up the idea, which I hope either to prove or 
abandon on a subsequent visit, that instead of these islands 
bearing evidence of the drift, that their sudden upheaval was 
the cause of this hitherto unexplained phenomena. 
Another point of considerable interest presented itself in 
the great abundance of calcedony and zeolites in the cavities 
