Ben Nevis and Glen Coe ¹

Abstract

SHEET 53 of the map of Scotland comprises the especially interesting area around Ben Nevis, Glen Coe, and Loch Linnhe. This district includes the highest summit in the British Isles; it presents geological problems, both tectonic and petrologic, of unusual variety, and it has a most instructive and diversified physiography. It is described in a memoir which is a most valuable contribution to Scottish geology. This work has been mainly written by Mr. E. B. Bailey, and is characterised by its high literary quality, its originality of view, its happy expressions and apt comparisons, and its sympathetic summary of previous work on the district, beginning with Macknight and Macculloch at the beginning of the 1as century. The oroblems in the Ben Nevis district of most general interest are those connected with the physiography of the Scottish Highlands. The Highland glens have been often attributed to glacial erosion, and some of their most conspicuous features to the glacial deepening of the valleys. Mr. Bailey, however, submits ample evidence that the valleys were pre-glacial, that Glen Nevis, for example, has not been glacially deepened, that some of the gorges have escaped any serious glacial modification, and that the much-quoted hanging valleys of the district, being pre-glacial, cannot be due to the glacial enlargement of the main valleys.