628 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
He was surprised to find no boulders either on the coast or 
on the hills adjoining the coast, except on the small islet of Stain- 
chol , at the mouth of Loch Staffin. On the shore of this loch there 
were blocks of Cambrian sandstone, a rock of which he had found 
pebbles on the shore of the Shiant Islands. On Stainchol, he also 
found a boulder of dolorite, containing much labradorite ; — a rock 
of the same nature, was in situ about 50 yards to the N.N.W. 
Professor Heddle further attests, that the rocks on the hills 
examined by him, which he ascended to above 1500 feet, “nowhere 
bore groovings or even scratchings and he states that “ the cols 
between the numerous heights were narrowly examined by him.” 
Now these facts seem to have an important bearing on the 
question of boulder transport. Mr James Geikie, in his “Great 
Ice Age,” p. 77, says, that “most of the islands which lie off 
the coasts of Scotland plainly indicate, by striations and other 
glacial markings, that ice has swept over them.” He adds that “ The 
most striking example of this is furnished by Lewis, the northern 
portion of the Long Island, which (says he) I found to be glaciated 
across its whole breadth from S.E. to N.W. The land-ice that 
swept over this tract, must have come from the mountains of Ross- 
sliire — a distance of not less than 30 miles. Leaving the mainland, 
it must have filled up the whole of the North Minch (60 fathoms 
in depth), and overflowed Lewis to a height of 1300 feet at least.” 
This statement, made in 1877, was repeated in two elaborate 
papers read before the London Geological Society in 1878, in which 
it was maintained, “ that the whole of the Long Island, from the Butt 
of Lewis to Barra Head, has been overflowed from the Minch by ice 
that moved outwards from the inner islands and the mainland.” 
Now this theory seems entirely at variance with the facts ascer- 
tained by Professor Heddle last year, and by myself in the previous 
year. If a mass of ice came from the Ross-shire hills, so great as 
to fill the Minch, overflow the Long Island to the height of 1300 
feet, and to stretch from the Butt of Lewis to Barra Head, a distance 
of about 80 miles, it must have impinged on the island of Skye , and 
especially on the north-east part of it. But there, according to 
Professor Heddle, no boulders are to be seen, and even no groovings 
or striations of the rocks. 
On the other hand, boulders and striated rocks, which in the 
