Fragments of Earth Lore

Fragments of Earth Lore is a collection billed as Sketches & Addresses Geological and Geographical, by James Geikie. A preface says the articles in the volume deal chiefly with the history of Glacial times and the origin of surface-features. The preface adds that the articles were not written with any view to their subsequent appearance in a collected form, so each is so far independent and complete in itself.

The text says of the Highland mountains that they are not formed by plications and folds, and do not even trend in linear directions. The text reports Mr. Mackintosh as thinking that the boundary-line reached by the erratics could only have resulted from close proximity to a persistent current of water (or air?) sufficiently warm to melt the boulder-laden ice. The text says that in Palæozoic times relatively small areas of the continental plateau appeared above the level of the sea, and that insular conditions everywhere prevailed.