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Proceedings of the Royal Society 
Professor Nicol, in his paper on the “ Pocks of the North-West of 
Scotland,”* with reference to the hills about Loch Maree and Gair- 
loch, adverts to their being “ still strewed with innumerable frag- 
ments of red sandstone, perched, like sentinels, in the most exposed 
and perilous positions, on the very edge of some lofty cliff, or on 
the polished summit of the domes of gneiss.” In a footnote he 
remarks it as “a curious fact that, on these gneiss hills, by far 
the majority, probably nine-tenths or more, of these 4 perched blocks/ 
are red sandstone.” 
The fact would be “.curious,” if these sandstone boulders had 
been, as Professor Nicol supposed, “floated on icebergs from the 
mountains from the east” (page 39), because, to the east of Gairloch 
and Loch Maree there are no mountains of red sandstone. Professor 
Nicol, in this paper particularly adverts to “ the red sandstone as 
forming a narrow band along the western shore, never reaching to 
the watershed of the country.” Again (page 37), he repeats, that 
“ the red sandstone on the west forms a narrow band along the shore, 
and never extended far into the interior.” 
That being the case, it would indeed be “ curious ” if the red 
sandstone boulders which cover the hills about Gairloch and Loch 
Maree had all been “floated on icebergs from the east.” But 
assume that they had been floated from the N.W., and an explana- 
tion is at once obtained. 
A curious belt of sandstone rocks occurs to the south of Loch 
Maree Hotel. Through and across this belt the high road passes for 
about two miles, so that an excellent view is obtained of the remark- 
able dislocations and denudations of these rocks which have occurred. 
These rocks differ in many respects from the rock of the sandstone 
boulders to which reference has just been made. 
Professor Nicol explains that the sandstone of the west coast is 
“ a coarse grit , graduating into a fine conglomerate , with fragments 
rarely an inch or more in diameter” (page 19). That is the 
character of the rock, forming the boulders; but the sandstone 
rocks which occur near the south end of Loch Maree are correctly 
described by Professor Nicol as “a very remarkable breccia of 
quartz and gneiss in sharp, angular fragments,” the largest of which 
fragments noticed by him he measured, and found it to be “16 
* Proceedings of the London Geological Society, for 1856, p. 29. 
