of the whole region must have been very different from that of the present time. From the character and composition of the pebbles in the old river-bed, amongst which are Cambrian sandstone, quartzite, clay-slate, and white Jurassic limestone, Sir A. Geikie concludes that when the river was flowing, the island must have been connected with the mainland to the east where the parent masses of these pebbles are found. [Illustration: Fig. 34.--View of the Scuir of Eigg from the east. The lower portion of the mountain is formed of bedded basalt, or dolerite with numerous dykes and veins of basalt, felstone, and pitchstone; the upper cliff, or Scuir, is composed of pitchstone of newer age, the remnant of a lava flow which once filled a river channel in the basaltic sheets. A dyke, or sheet, of porphyry is seen to be interposed between the Scuir and the basaltic sheets.--(After Geikie.)] _Effects of Denudation._--The position of the Scuir of Eigg and its relations to the basaltic sheets show the enormous amount of denudation which these latter have undergone since the stream of pitchstone-lava filled the old river channel. The walls, or banks, of the channel have been denuded away, thus converting the pitchstone casting into a projecting wall of rock. That it originally extended outwards into the ocean to a far greater distance than at present is evident from the abruptly truncated face of the cliff; and yet this remarkable volcanic mass seems to have been, perhaps, the most recent exhibition of volcanic action to be found in the British Isles. It is perhaps, on this account, the most striking of the numerous examples exhibited throughout the West of Scotland and the North-east of Ireland of the enormous amount of denudation to which these districts have been subjected since the extinction of the volcanic fires; and this at a period to which we cannot assign a date more ancient than that of the Pliocene. Yet, let us consider for a moment to what physical vicissitudes these districts have been subjected since that epoch. Assuming, as we may with confidence, that the volcanic eruptions were subaërial, and that the tracts covered by the plateau-basalts were in the condition of dry land when the eruptions commenced, in this condition they continued in the main throughout the period of volcanic activity. But the eruptions had scarcely ceased, and the lava floods and dykes become consolidated, before the succeeding glacial epoch set in; when the snows and glaciers of the Scottish Highlands gradually descending from their original mountain heights, and spreading outwards in all directions, ultimately enveloped the whole of the region we are now considering until it was entirely concealed beneath a mantle of ice moving slowly, but irresistibly, outwards towards the Atlantic, crossing the deep channels, such as the Sound of Mull and the Minch, climbing up the sides of opposing rocks and islands until even the Outer Hebrides and the