In the year 1822, Dr Wollaston published a remarkable paper “on the finite extent of the atmosphere.” Its object is to establish, by observations on the motions of certain of the heavenly bodies, that our atmosphere does not extend into free space, and to deduce from this limitation in its extent, the conclusion, that the air necessarily consists of particles “no longer divisible by repulsion of their parts;” i. e. of true atoms. From this there is the further inference, that, “since the law of definite proportions discovered by chemists, is the same for all kinds of matter, whether solid or fluid, or elastic, if it can be ascertained that any one body consists of particles no longer divisible, we then can scarcely doubt that all other bodies are similarly constituted.” In other words, the existence of a limit to the earth's atmosphere is declared to supply a demonstration of the finite divisibility of matter.

There are few questions in geology which have given rise to so many theories, and so much speculation, as the origin of the parallel roads in the valleys of Lochaber.

In the year 1817, the late Dr MacCulloch gave an elaborate description of them, in a paper read before the Geological Society of London. In the year 1818, Sir Thomas Dick Lauder read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh a paper, full of equally interesting details. Both of these observers suggested, in explanation of the shelves which mark the mountain sides of these valleys, that they had been occupied by lakes, which, by earthquakes or other violent convulsions, had been drained. This theory was generally received, until, in the year 1839, Mr Darwin, so justly celebrated as a geologist, and an accurate observer, published his views, and pronounced the shelves to have been formed by the sea; an opinion which, besides being rested on proofs derived from the locality, he enforced, also by his observation of similar appearances in South America.