erstand what that means, you will say, as I said, "I am
perfectly certain that this great basin between me and Lochnagar, which
is now 3000 feet deep of empty air was once filled up with ice to the
height of the hills on which I stand--about 1700 feet high--and that that
ice ran over into Glen Muick, between these pretty knolls, and covered
the ground where Birk Hall now stands."

And more:--When you see growing on those knolls of serpentine a few
pretty little Alpine plants, which have no business down there so low,
you will have a fair right to say, as I said, "The seeds of these plants
were brought by the ice ages and ages since from off the mountain range
of Lochnagar, and left here, nestling among the rocks, to found a fresh
colony, far from their old mountain home."

If I could take you with me up to Scotland,--take you, for instance,
along the Tay, up the pass of Dunkeld, or up Strathmore towards Aberdeen,
or up the Dee towards Braemar,--I could show you signs, which cannot be
mistaken, of the time when Scotland was, just like Spitzbergen or like
Greenland now, covered in one vast sheet of snow and ice from year's end
to year's end; when glaciers were ploughing out its valleys, icebergs
were breaking off the icy cliffs and floating out to sea; when not a
bird, perhaps, was to be seen save sea-fowl, not a plant upon the rocks
but a few lichens, and Alpine saxifrages, and such like--desolation and
cold and lifeless everywhere. That ice-time went on for ages and for
ages; and yet it did not go on in vain. Through it Madam How was
ploughing down the mountains of Scotland to make all those rich farms
which stretch from the north side of the Frith of Forth into
Sutherlandshire. I could show you everywhere the green banks and knolls
of earth, which Scotch people call "kames" and "tomans"--perhaps brought
down by ancient glaciers, or dropped by ancient icebergs--now so smooth
and green through summer and through winter, among the wild heath and the
rough peat-moss, that the old Scots fancied, and I dare say Scotch
children fancy still, fairies dwelt inside. If you laid your ear against
the mounds, you might hear the fairy music, sweet and faint, beneath the
ground. If you watched the mound at night, you might see the fairies
dancing the turf short and smooth, or riding out on fairy horses, with
green silk clothes and jingling bells. But if you fell asleep upon the
mounds, the fairy queen came out and carried you fo