Eddies in Mountain Structure

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Abstract
In regions of compression it is common to find some stratigraphical group or groups broken up into a multitude of minor thrust-slices, which are packed in characteristic imbricate fashion. The slices, so arranged, are called schuppen , a German word meaning scales. Individual schuppen incline steeply towards the direction from which overthrust has occurred. Their relative movement is trivial, as concerns adjacent members, but may in the aggregate lead to impressive telescoping of the affected zone. Schuppen structure is generally attributable to the passage overhead of some major thrust-mass. It is abundantly represented in the North-West Highlands of Scotland (Fig. 1). I well remember how B. N. Peach in conversation would compare the advance of a thrust-mass, riding upon schuppen, to the launching of a ship, carried upon rollers (the idea is expressed in print [Home 1907, p. 472]). It is the purpose of the present paper to show that Peach's simile finds much closer illustration in some of the deformations characteristic of the metamorphic sediments which constitute the interior of the Scottish Highlands. The word “thrust” is to be found in the earliest British writings on tectonics: for instance, in those of James Hall of Edinburgh. This probably influenced Peach and Home in their application of the term to the great fold-faults of the North-West Highlands. Study of Peach and Horne's writings makes it clear that their more important thrusts are covered by the following definition, which with verbal modifications, I have repeatedly given:— A thrust is a fold-fault which

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