of Edinburgh, Session 1880 - 81 . 
289 
apparently parts of the same range. That “ Kockall ” is granite 
was attested by the late Captain Basil Hall,* and subsequently 
by the surveying officer of H.M.S. “ Porcupine”; the latter 
stating in his memoir to the Admiralty, that he had sent specimens 
of the rock to several museums in Ireland. The soundings 
show, that the 100 fathom line extends N.N.E, about 20 miles, 
and S.S.W. 32 miles, whilst in a transverse direction, the shorter 
axis is only 12 miles, so that this granitic range is approximately 
parallel to the axis of the Hebrides. 
Of course these rocks would not, at their 'present level , have 
supplied the boulders now in the Hebrides and coasts of Argyle. 
But there is a very general belief among those who have studied 
the subject, that at or about the period when these boulders came, 
land did exist in the North Atlantic, which is now submerged. 
The late Edward Eorbes, in a remarkable memoir published in 
the year 1844,f was the first to express this opinion, founded on a 
consideration of the flora and fauna of Scotland and Ireland. He 
says, “ There could not always have been such a separating abyss 
between Northern Europe and Boreal America as now divides 
them. The sea through a great part, must have been a shallow sea; 
and somewhere, probably to the far north, there must have been 
either a connection or such a proximity of land, as would account 
for the transmission of a non-migratory terrestrial and a litoral 
marine fauna.” In another part of his memoir, he says, “Although 
I have made ice-bergs and ice-floes the chief agents in the importa- 
tion of flora southward, I cannot but think, that so complete a 
transmission of that flora as we find on the Scottish mountains, was 
aided, perhaps mainly, by land to the north, now submerged.” 
(2.) This opinion, since it was expressed, has received support 
from other considerations. Thus in 1853, the late Sir Charles Lyell 
expressed his belief, founded on observations by a Danish captain, 
that the west coast of Greenland was subsiding. More extended 
observations have since been made by two American men of science, 
Dr Kane J in 1855, and Dr Hayes in 1860, which show clearly that 
whilst the north part of Greenland had long been rising, the south part 
* Fragments of Voyages. 
t “ Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain for 1844,” vol. i. 
p. 383. 
X Kane’s “Arctic Explorations,” London, 1875. Dr Hayes’s “ Open Polar 
Sea,” London, 1867. 
