BRITISH ANALOGIES TO SCANDINAVIAN PHENOMENA. 
549 
If for a moment we turn our attention to the British Isles, analogous phseno- 
mena are found all around their shores : sea-beaches and bottoms fringe the rocks 
at various altitudes : coarse and thick heaps of detritus encumber the slopes of the 
hills ; and in numerous situations, whether on inland mountains or low rocks upon 
the level of the sea, as well as far removed from any great elevations, striated, 
worn and polished surfaces are frequent. 
To begin with one example out of many of the latter class — one to which no 
geologist has yet adverted, — we are acquainted with no finer case of striation and 
polish of the solid rocks than at the bay of Derrynane in the south of Ireland, 
lliere, the mass of detritus has naturally found its exit to the western sea, by an 
east and west depression, the low, undulating hummocks of hard and highly- 
contorted, slaty rocks (Devonian) having been worn down, highly polished and 
scratched in the direction of the major- axis of the valley. The sides of this valley, 
opening to a fine marine bay, are formed of picturesque rocks, which by their 
outline necessarily confined the drift in a direction from east to west. Again, on 
the south side of Macgillicuddy’s Reeks, the chief central mountain in the south 
of Ireland, great piles of drift are lodged at intervals in a deep gorge which leads 
eastwards from the gap of Dunlooe to the upper lakes of Killarney : and alongside, 
as it were, of such masses of detritus, the rocky cliffs are polished, grooved and 
striated, both on their upper surfaces and on their steep sides. In this way we 
may also infer, how the loose materials have been shed off excentrically from ele- 
vated centres, and spread out in the “ escars” of the lower Irish tracts. 
In the south ol Scotland, as in the Highlands, great terraces or linear ridges of 
coarse gravel and rounded blocks have been deposited on the slopes of the hills 
and in ancient bays or estuaries. Sir James Hall 1 was the first geologist who 
applied the diluvial views of De Saussure and Fallas to explain the striation of the 
Scottish rocks, and looking to the direction of such marks on the sides of the hills 
near Edinburgh, and connecting them with the form of the rock ridges, the “ crag 
and tail” of Scottish observers, that philosopher naturally concluded, that the same 
great aqueous debacle which had poured off the detritus into the low grounds 
had scored and grooved the rocks over which it had passed. One of the most 
1 See Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. vii., in which, pp. 169 et seq., the reader 
will find how, in the year 1812, Sir James Hall applied and modified the action of the great supposed 
diluvian wave. We specially commend to the attention of the reader the excellent observations of Mr. 
Charles Maclaren in his work, ‘ Geology of Fife and the Lothians,’ on the groovings and dressings on the 
surface of rocks, p. 214. Edinburgh, 1839. 
4 B 
