On the Glacial Phenomena of the Long Island or Outer Hebrides

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Abstract
I. Introduction The detailed observations of the Geological Survey having led my colleagues and myself to conclude that the great mer de glace which enveloped the south of Scotland during the intensest cold of the Glacial Epoch was so extensive as entirely to fill up the basin of the Clyde, and all the sea between Ailsa Craig and the mainland, I became curious to ascertain what the islands of the Outer Hebrides had to tell us in regard to the extension of the old ice-sheet in that direction. My brother had in 1865 shown that the island of Bute was glaciated from end to end by the ice that streamed outwards from the mountain-glens of Argyllshire; and subsequent observations by myself in Ayrshire had proved that the rocky coasts between Lendalfoot and Glen App were striated in a direction parallel to the shore-line by glacier masses which flowed southwest upon what is now the bed of the sea. My colleague, Mr. D. R. Irvine, had also found that ice from the southern uplands had swept across the Rinns of Galloway from the interior of the country —the whole coast between Portpatrick and Corsill Point exhibiting numerous rock-striations and glaciated surfaces, whose prevailing direction is towards south-west. Thus it would appear that an immense mass of glacier ice, derived partly from the Highlands and partly from the Southern Uplands, set towards the north coast of Ireland. Moreover the position of the striæ and the whole character of the glaciation of that

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