13 JULY 1901, Page 24

THE MAKING OF SCOTLAND.

The Scenery of Scotland. By Sir Archibald Geikie. Third Edition. (Macmillan and Co 10s. net )—Sir Archibald Geikie's book on the evolution of Scottish scenery, of which a third and revised edition is now published thirty-five years after its first appearance, has long taken its place among the classics of English geology. It was, as the author claims in the new pre- face, " the first attempt to elucidate in some detail the history of the topography of a country. The principles applicable in the British Isles have been found to be of universal significance, and thus the illustrations of them gathered in this country have a value both to the student who investigates this branch of geology and to the general reader who may be more specially interested in the historical development of the science." Since Sir Archi- bald Geikie began to write, we have mostly grasped the idea which he so luminously expounded in these and oi her pages, that the shape of a land is what the air and rain, frost and rivers and glaciers, have made it. A perusal of this fascinating and lucid book is still the best possible introduction to the study of earth. sculpture on a scale far grander than was conceived even by him who daringly offered to carve Mount Athos into a statue of the Great King. with a city in one hand and a lake in the other. The intelligent tourist in the Highlands could carry no more enter- taining and suggestive companion in his portmanteau or knapsack.