794 
Proceedings of the Royal Society 
different members of Committee 3 and it was resolved to classify the 
information according to counties. The first report of the Committee 
was laid before a meeting of the Royal Society in April 1872. It 
gives in a condensed form, for counties (alphabetically arranged) 
and for parishes in each county, a list of boulders with particulars 
regarding the nature of the rock composing them, and other features 
of geological interest. 
The first report also contains information of archaeological of 
traditional interest regarding some of the boulders. But in the 
reports of subsequent years, the information given is almost exclu- 
sively geological. 
They include also occasional references to beds of gravel and sand, 
existing whether as mounds or in elongated embankments ; — and 
with the view of considering whether they might be considered to be 
ancient moraines, and therefore indicative of local glaciers, or to be 
submarine banks, and in this last case, indicative of a submergence 
of the land. 
The chief object of the Committee has been to collect facts, and 
not to announce conclusions. But it was also important to obtain 
data, bearing on the different theories of boulder transport. Thus in 
many cases the positions of boulders have been specially noted when 
these indicated the direction from which they probably came. In 
some cases their heights along the sea were specially noted when 
above the level of any possible glacier 3 or their positions on islands, 
where the existence of glaciers was most unlikely. So also, the 
smooth and rough sides of rocks, were studied and explained when 
they showed from what quarter the smoothing agent seemed to have 
passed over the rocks. 
The Committee have now completed seven reports. These were 
laid before meetings of the Royal Society, and have been published 
in the Society’s Proceedings. An eighth report is now in progress. 
But a wish has been frequently expressed to have an index or an 
abstract of the information contained in all the reports. His Grace 
the Duke of Argyle, in his paper “ On the Geology of the Highlands,” 
read at the last Glasgow meeting of the British Association, whilst 
referring to the valuable information contained in the reports then 
published, expressed a hope that an abstract should be drawn out by 
