The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
During the formation of the upper terrace, the waters escaped through
the westernmost tributary of the River Spey, in the direction of the
northeast corner of the wood-cut, and during that of the lowest terrace,
at the eastern end of Loch Laggan, also through the valley of the Spey.
The state of preservation of the parallel roads is such as to prove that
no disturbance of any importance can have taken place in the country
since they were formed. Far from believing, therefore, that these
remarkable shelves are ancient sea-beaches, I am prepared to maintain,
that, had the area occupied by them been submerged only for a few days,
under an ocean rising and falling for several feet with every tide, no
vestige would have been left of their former existence.
[C] The wood-cut on p. 730 is a reproduction of the little map
accompanying a paper of mine upon "The Glacial Theory and its Recent
Progress," printed in the "Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal" for
October, 1842. I might have greatly improved the topography, and
represented more accurately the details of the phenomenon, by availing
myself of the much larger and very minute map recently published by
Professor Thomas F. Jamieson, of Aberdeen; but I thought it advisable to
leave my first sketch as I presented it twenty-two years ago, in order
to show that Sir Charles Lyell is mistaken in ascribing (see "Antiquity
of Man," pp. 260, 261) the discovery of the glacier of Loch Treig to
Professor Jamieson. A comparison of his statements with mine will show
that the solution of the problem offered by him is identical with that
proposed by me, as he himself candidly admits ("Quarterly Journal of the
Geological Society" for August, 1863, p. 239). I have only one fault to
find with his observations, and, as I have never revisited the locality
since, this remark may satisfy him that my examination of its features
was not so hurried as he supposes. Professor Jamieson confounds the
effects of two distinct glaciers moving in different valleys as the
action of one and the same glacier. In my paper, it is true, I made no
allusion to the great glacier of Glen Spean, the existence of which I
had recognized along the river from Loch Laggan nearly to the Caledonian
Canal. I publish my observations upon this great central glacier for the
first time in the present article, having omitted them in my
contributions upon this subject to the scientific periodicals of the day
simply because I thought best not to complicate my exposition of the
facts concerning the parallel roads by considerations foreign to their
origin, convinced as I was, from the manner in which the glacial theory
was then received, that they would not be understood, and still less
admitted. But now that all the geologists of Great Britain seem to have
given their adhesion to it, I may be permitted to state that I already
knew then, what Professor Jamieson has overlooked in his latest paper,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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