764 
Proceedings of the Royal Society 
These lie in a mass, associated with smaller boulders of mica 
schists, and stretching from this heap are two rows of boulders 
lying nearly direct W. The first block is grey granite, 7x4x6 
feet, angle of site to horizon 40° ; the others are grey granites, 
porphyries, and mica schists, their larger axis being 1ST.N.W. and 
S.S.E. 
The most noticeable feature is the “lie” of these blocks to the 
hills; they appear in long lines sometimes far apart, but there is no 
mistaking their place in the lines, which are W.1ST.W. and E.S.E. 
The larger axis varies so much, that from it no inference can 
be drawn.” 
Towards the conclusion of his paper, Professor Duns remarks that 
the gravels of the district consist mainly of rolled and water-worn 
fragments of granite, porphyry, quartz, mica schist, bits of 
arenaceous rock, and at one part of a mineral (malacolite) nowhere 
found massive in the locality. In the rare instances in which large 
boulders are met with in these gravel heaps, they are sub-angular 
blocks of the rocks of the immediate neighbourhood. The erratics 
occur on the heaps. 
“ On nearly all the mountain slopes, and even at the tops of some, 
blocks abound; many of enormous size and weight, for whose 
positions no explanation can be found in any of the forces at 
present existing in the locality. 
The position of boulders in the plain may have as great 
significance as the position of those high up on the mountain. 
Thus, if a granite erratic be found at a height of 1000 feet, and one 
of the same rock in the low ground, at a height of 50 feet above 
the sea-level, in a place to which it could not have rolled, assuming 
the face of the country to have been the same as now, when the 
boulder on the high level was laid down, it will follow, either that 
one and the same force put them contemporaneously in their 
respective positions, or that the valleys, river courses, and little 
hills which now intervene between the high and the low blocks 
were formed since both were deposited. There is only one other 
alternative. Each may have been dropped by an agent, on which 
inequalities of surface could have no bearing. 
A careful examination of the deposits within the area 
described, so far as they bear on Arctic conditions of climate 
