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2. Fifth Report of the Boulder Committee
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 September 2014
Extract
The Committee had submitted to them Notes by the Convener of two visits to the West Highlands (including the Outer Hebrides) which he had made during the summer and autumn of 1878. These Notes, accompanied by diagrams of boulders and striated rocks, afford a large amount of information bearing on the subject of boulder transport, the direction of transport, and the agent of transport.
There has also been laid before the Committee a report by William Jolly, of Inverness, one of its members, “On the Transportation of Rocks found on the Shores of the Moray Firth;” as also Notes by Messrs Somervail and Henderson (Edinburgh), “On Boulders and Striated Rocks in the Pentland Hills.”
- Type
- Proceedings 1878–79
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1880
References
page 122 note * See note on page 67.
page 123 note * The submarine character of the bank does not depend solely on the presence in it of sea-shells, for they might have been blown up from the existing sea-shore by storms. But the materials forming the bank being found, by digging under the boulder, to consist of sand and gravel, they afford the strongest evidence of a submarine origin.
page 130 note * These two beautiful examples of rocks, smoothed and striated, at Jocar and at the Ferry, were pointed out by Alexander Carmichael, Esq., Creagorry. who resides near the Ferry. Both he and Mrs Carmichael took much interest in the Convener's researches, the latter kindly giving to him sketches which she had made of several interesting boulders.
page 170 note * Proceedings of the London Geological Society, for 1856, p. 29.
page 177 note The Convener, seeing the importance of ascertaining beyond all doubt the true character of the materials forming the site of the “Big Boulder,” in Barra(p. 122), wrote lately to Dr MacGillivray of Eoligarry, the tenant of the farm on which the boulder is situated, to request that he would dig under the boulder as far as could be done with safety, and send a written report of what was found. Since these sheets were printed, the Convener has received a letter, from which the following are extracts:—
“Having at length got milder weather, we proceeded to the ‘Big Boulder of the Glen,’ and made the cuts or drains under it, as you directed, to the depth of three feet on both sides, and also at the west end of the boulder.
“The first substance found for about a foot deep, was black soil or earth and cockle-shells, mixed up with a few stones. Below that, as deep as we could conveniently go, very hard gravel and lumps of stone, extremely firm and difficult to pick out,— should say, because being so much compressed by the enormous weight of the boulder.
“The rock of the hill did not appear at all on any side, or under the boulder for three feet at least. It seemed resting entirely on soil and gravel; site very high, almost on the surface, so that a spade can be pushed nearly to the centre in one or two places.
“The stone, to even an ordinary observer, would appear to have been brought to its present situation by some agency or other, as the place looks quite unnatural to it.”