Abstract
LAST spring Prof. Geikie informed me of a correspondence which was going on in the columns of NATURE as to the question whether the Orkney Islands bore evidence of having been glaciated. It was with much surprise that I heard that there could be any question on this point at all, but I refrained from submitting my opinion to the public—unhesitating though that opinion was—on account of my being then just about starting for my native county, and thus having an opportunity of very specially directing my attention anew to the matter. As the observations I then made without exception tended to confirm me in what really required no confirmation, I think I may now come forward as one who has for long known those islands, and who has made a very special geognostic survey of them, during many years. And I would first say, as regards the question, “whether Orkney does or does not give proof of having been covered by a great ice-sheet?” that I believe that no one who has educated his eye—not by looking at pictures in books, but among the rocks themselves—to the apprehension and recognition of the hill-contours of an ice-scalped country, would hesitate to declare Orkney to be such. Let such a one take his stand, at a sufficient altitude, anywhere along the north coast of Sutherland, with a scratched and polished boss under his feet, rolling up into rounded hillocks on every side, and sweep his eye from the two Ben Griams over to Hoy, and he could not but exclaim, “There is a country which has suffered sore.”
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HEDDLE, M. Glaciation of Orkney. Nature 17, 182 (1878). https://doi.org/10.1038/017182a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/017182a0
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