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Lively as a lark at morning, Lord Ronald seated himself. He was tolerably accustomed to such "tirades," so after a preliminary "ahem," he began to tantalise his mother regarding her" whims " as he called them.

'Well, mother! you see I have been having a chat with our Rector, and you know the Rev. Withiel well enough, and .how he talks."

Her ladyship, however, was scarcely convinced that so many hours had been passed solely in the good clergyman's company, so remarked pointedly :

"You are fond of flowers, Ronald, are you not?"

"Certainly, mother!" his lordship replied unsuspiciously. Especially daisies?" she queried further.

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In order that this question may be understood in all its "horrid intensity," it must be known that the Rector's daughter, one of the damsels so much dreaded by her ladyship, was christened “Daisy."

Even Ronald's almost impenetrable sense move," for he fidgetted considerably.

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"I see to what you allude, mother!" he said; “but all is 'fair in love and war,' you know."

"Love is not always fair, nor war either," his mother replied sententiously. "Flowers are fair, I know, or are supposed to be."

"Oh! you need not fear for me in that quarter, mother; very nice girl, innocent as a daisy, and all that, but too-too —too theological altogether."

This burst of eloquence over, Ronald stepped to the window, and from thence continued:

"Besides, I am going into Cornwall to spend a few days." "Going into Cornwall, Ronald! Dear, dear, this is going from bad to worse; they're all savages that way!" and up went her ladyship's be-ringed fingers in horror, accompanied by ominous shakes of the head.

"Well, I shall have the chance of being eaten, if that's the case; but I don't think Tregon well is a savage, after all. Here is the 'invite,'" saying which he handed his mother an open letter, bearing upon its face the Tregon well crest.

Ronald himself proceeded to the balcony, leaving the mistress of Crayburne Court to manipulate matters as best

she could. The contents of the missive fully digested, her ladyship pondered aloud :

"Tregon well! Tregonwell! Yes, I remember him. A very blasé man in his young days; loved someone beneath him, quite the talk at the time, then went abroad."

So far had her memory retrograded, when an interruption occurred by the servant announcing " Lunch, my lady."

"Lord Crayburne is on the balcony, James," she said, and retired.

Fully impressed that Tregonwell of Tregonwell Park, even in his old days, could be no fit companion for her son, she as fully determined to prohibit such a visit; to prevent, as she mentally decided, such a " deplorable catastrophe!"

But woman, be she ever so determined, is not always victorious. Her ladyship was not on this particular occasion, Lord Crayburne was firm for once, and ere three days had intervened was being whirled towards Tregonwell as fast as wheels could carry him. How anxious she had been had she known the reality d'affaires-all about the encumbered Tregonwell estates and dowerless daughter, we leave, perforce, to the imagination of our readers.

(To be continued.)

THE PARALLEL ROADS OF GLENROY.

THI

BY KENNETH MATHIESON.

HIS natural phenomenon, unique on the surface of the globe, is one which has arrested the attention of intelligent man from the earliest times, and during the later generations has supplied a puzzle to their wits, for the most of them insoluble. Looking up Glenroy from a commanding point of view, we may suppose, for general illustration, we are looking into the interior of a dry-dock some ten miles in length, while an appearance of four super-imposed terraces becomes traceable round the interior. The idea of an old road, or rather series of roads, is the first suggestion of the

mind, but as the lines all terminate and disappear abruptly at the lower end of the glen, the road engineers are at once nonplussed.

From the year 1769 to 1880 as many as thirty-five various writers of more or less literary and scientific eminence have treated of this mysterious problem, and essayed to solve it with gradations of failure. This extensive bibliography has been classified under four distinct theories-the human, the etritval, the marine, and the lacustrine, this latter again being sub-divided under three different suppositions in explanation. There then is a study of mental effort and ingenuity of no mean character.

The old inhabitants gave Fingal the credit of constructing these roads, their faith in the omnipotence of that sublime hero did not lead them to inquire his purpose in so doing. Perhaps this was a vast amphitheatre, where the assembled tribes might assemble in high festival, and see their champion putting the stone, and exhibiting other gymnastic feats on a large scale! That they had been the hunting roads of kings was a tradition equally dubious. In 1816, Playfair learnedly announced to the Royal Society of Edinburgh that they had been aqueducts for irrigation, a playful enough dream for a dilettante, who could amuse himself with dancing glass-balls on fountains at St. Andrews; but, in fairplay to the savans of the Royal Society, let us assume that they mournfully smiled at this glaring case of water on the brain. Superficial Bible.

readers, viz., Sir George S. Mackenzie and Professor Rogers respectively in 1848 tried to convince the readers of the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, and in 1861 the members of the Royal Institution of London, that the Glenroy roads were the product of a flood or The Flood.

Between the year 1839 and 1882 we find Darwen, Lyell, Chambers, Rev. R. Boog Watson, Professor Nicoll Campbell, of Islay, and Macfadzean industriously, but without success, seeking a rational explanation of the configuration in the action of the sea.

Under the general lacustrine, theory from 1817 to 1880, are three groups of investigators-Maculloch, Bryce, Lubbock and Babbage led off with the supposition of a dam as a necessity, without dogmatising as to its nature. Then

came Jakyns, Dick Lauder, and Milne Holme pleading plaintively for a detritval dam as a satisfactory cause, but failing to show any debris whatever.

And last, in 1842, comes to the rescue Agassiz, whose theory of a dam of ice has been endorsed by thirteen succeeding inquirers, among them Buckland, Jamieson, Archibald, and James Geikie, Tyndall, and Prestwick, the effect of a glacial dam being to our own mind totally satisfactory.

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Seeing that the shore marks of the highest of the four successive lochs stands at 155 feet above the present sea level, the indispensible question arises, Whence came the ice? Immediately considered the mountain of Ben Nevis in its present form was in remote antiquity the place where the glaciers were formed, aided, of course, by the glaciers descending from the ranges of mountains lying to the north and west. Taking up Geikie's book, "The Great Ice Age," we see as a frontispiece a picture of Greenland in its present aspect covered with a sheet of snow and ice perhaps 2000 feet in depth, and showing sheer cliffs of ice at the seaboard. There is abundant evidence in travelled boulders, moraines, roche mouteonnés, etc., that Scotland was at one period under a similar covering, and the glacial loch of Glenroy must be attributed to a subsequent thermal condition, when the rigorous climate, having become partially warmed, water became present in some degree while yet the solid masses of ice had not melted.

Conceive then Ben Nevis discharging down its corries and through the passage of the Treig continuous masses of ice into Glen Spean. The ice in that glen is blocked at the west by a greater mass slowly descending the Great Caledonian Glen, because it again is blocked by the obstruction of Loch Eil, and the natural compression of its outlet from Loch Leven.

There is proof that in the extremely cold period ice was forced out over the top of Glenroy, and at the east end of Loch Laggan, down the Spey, so that when the thaw fairly set in a series of ice dams, each one lower than its predecessor, become a self-evident proposition.

The Transactions of the Geological Society of Glasgow, 14th May, 1885, contain a masterly, thoroughly scientfiic, graphic, and at times even picturesque synopsis of all the bearings of the question, ty James Jolly, F.R.S.E., F.G.S.,

V.P., who, whilst engaged as H.M. Inspector of Schools in those parts, had ample opportunity of examining the ground, and who indeed during twenty years voluntarily had the fascinating subject under consideration.

One other question remains to be faced in this connection. How could Scotland possibly be in the icy state in which Greenland now is? This is an astronomical and mathematical problem of vast magnitude, elaborately dealt with in “The Great Ice Age" already cited, and it has a similarity to the foregoing local discussion in that several distinctive theories have been broached before an adequate one has been attained. The orbit of the earth round the sun is not exactly circular, but eccentric and elliptical, so that when comparatively far distant the earth would receive less heat; and, again, the earth has wobbled in respect of the relation of the angle of its axis to the sun, as astronomers have demonstrated mathematically and as the formation of coal in Greenland materially proves, so that it becomes at once reasonable and credible that Scotland did for a long period exist under a thick covering of ice, such as now occupies Greenland.

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"Why, Mary, it's a person who writes about themselves-where they was born, and what they did-and

so on."

Jones was the lady's-maid, and had some learning, and as I heard those words of hers, they buzzed about in my wooden head, and I says to myself, I don't see why a chest should

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