of Edinburgh , Session 1881-82. 
365 
hearty congratulations on his receiving to-night one of the highest 
marks of scientific distinction which it is in the power of our Society 
to bestow. 
1. On the Application of the Rocks of Ben Nevis to Orna= 
mental Art. By Sir R. Christison, Bart., Ron. V.P. 
Many hundred tourists annually climb Ben Nevis, and shudder 
when they cast their eyes down its profound precipices ; but no one 
seems to bethink him that, to view a great precipice aright, he should 
behold it from below, rather than from above, and consequently 
that the great North-Eastern Precipice should be seen from the 
valley opposite its base. No one, tourist or guide, visits the narrow 
rugged glen into which it descends ; few of the neighbouring 
gentry — of my acquaintance at least — have made the excursion ; 
and the only visitors I have heard of have been a few solitary 
geologists at long intervals of time. Nevertheless, in the year 
1810, in the first volume of the Edinburgh Wernerian Society 
Transactions , the late Reverend Dr. Macknight, one of the ministers 
of this city, — a gentleman of many accomplishments, and, among 
these, skilled in geology,— has interspersed his geological account of 
the rocks of the mountain with a description, in the most glowing 
language, of many magnificent scenes in its great North-Eastern 
Precipice. But he appears to have thus encouraged only his 
geological successors to follow his example, 
Encouraged by his narrative and by my persuasion, one party of 
four from my autumnal residence at Ballachulish, and afterwards 
another of three from the house adjoining, made out the excursion 
last September; and all returned with the impression that they had 
beheld one of the most sublime scenes of the kind, which they had 
enjoyed in the Highlands of Scotland. My own belief is that the 
views of the precipice of Ben Nevis from below are the grandest in 
the whole island. 
Of the rocks composing the mountain, and especially of those of 
the precipice, Dr. Macknight has given a clear and satisfactory 
account, according to what was known in his time of the com- 
position and nomenclature of rocks. He says the mountain rests 
