ubject, on
which I have often thought, but cannot see my way clearly. If you have
not read W. Graham's "Creed of Science," (516/3. "The Creed of Science:
Religious, Moral, and Social," London, 1881.), it would, I think,
interest you, and he supports the view which you are inclined to uphold.

2.IX.III. THE PARALLEL ROADS OF GLEN ROY, 1841-1880.

(517/1. In the bare hilly country of Lochaber, in the Scotch Highlands,
the slopes of the mountains overlooking the vale of Glen Roy are marked
by narrow terraces or parallel roads, which sweep round the shoulders of
the hills with "undeviating horizontality." These roads are described
by Sir Archibald Geikie as having long been "a subject of wonderment and
legendary story among the Highlanders, and for so many years a source
of sore perplexity among men of science." (517/2. "The Scenery of
Scotland," 1887, page 266.) In Glen Roy itself there are three distinct
shelves or terraces, and the mountain sides of the valley of the Spean
and other glens bear traces of these horizontal "roads."

The first important papers dealing with the origin of this striking
physical feature were those of MacCulloch (517/3. "Trans. Geol. Soc."
Volume IV., page 314, 1817.) and Sir Thomas Lauder Dick (517/4. "Trans.
R. Soc. Edinb." Volume IX., page 1, 1823.), in which the writers
concluded that the roads were the shore-lines of lakes which once filled
the Lochaber valleys. Towards the end of June 1838 Mr. Darwin devoted
"eight good days" (517/5. "Life and Letters," I., page 290.) to the
examination of the Lochaber district, and in the following year he
communicated a paper to the Royal Society of London, in which he
attributed their origin to the action of the sea, and regarded them
as old sea beaches which had been raised to their present level by a
gradual elevation of the Lochaber district.

In 1840 Louis Agassiz and Buckland (517/6. "Edinb. New Phil. Journal,"
Volume XXXIII., page 236, 1842.) proposed the glacier-ice theory; they
described the valleys as having been filled with lakes dammed back by
glaciers which formed bars across the valleys of Glen Roy, Glen
Spean, and the other glens in which the hill-sides bear traces of old
lake-margins. Agassiz wrote in 1842: "When I visited the parallel roads
of Glen Roy with Dr. Buckland we were convinced that the glacial theory
alone satisfied all the exigencies of the phenomenon." (517/7. Ibid.,
page 236.)

Mr. David Milne (afterwards Milne-Home)