3

I have, instead, added an Appendix of rather a novel character. In addition to the "Cruise of the Betsey," and "Ten Thousand Miles over the Fossiliferous Deposits of Scotland," there was left a volume of papers unpublished as a whole, entitled "A Tour through the Northern Counties of Scotland." They had, however, been largely drawn upon in various other works; but, scattered throughout were passages of more or less value, which I had not met with elsewhere; and some such, of the descriptive kind, I have culled and arranged at the end of the Lectures: first, because I was loth that any original observation from that mind which should never think again for the instruction of others, should be lost, and also because many of those passages were of a kind which might prove suggestive to the student, and assist him in reasoning upon those phenomena of ordinary occurrence, without close observation of which no one can ever arrive at a successful interpretation of nature. If the reader should descry aught of repetition which has escaped my notice, I must crave his indulgence, in consideration of the very difficult and arduous task which God, in His mysterious providence, has allotted me. To endeavor to do by these writings as my husband himself would if he were yet with us to preserve the integrity of the text, and, in dealing with what is new, to bring to bear upon it the same unswerv

ing rectitude of purpose in valuing and accepting every iota of truth, whether it can be explained or not, rejecting all that is

crude, and abhorring all that is false, this has been my aim, although, alas! too conscious throughout of the comparative feebleness of the powers brought to bear upon it. If, however, the reader is led to inquire for himself, I trust he will find that these powers, such as they are, have been used in no light or frivolous spirit, but with a deep, and somewhat of an adequate, sense of the vast importance of the subject.

L. M.

LECTURES ON GEOLOGY.

LECTURE FIRST.

Junction of Geologic and Human History-Scottish History of Modern Date The Two Periods previous to the Roman Invasion; the Stone Age and the Bronze Age-Geological Deposits of these Pre-historic Periods-The Aboriginal Woods of Scotland - Scotch Mosses consequences of the Roman Invasion- How formed - Deposits, Natural and Artificial, found under them -The Sand Dunes of Scotland Human Remains and Works of Art found in them-An Old Church Disinterred in 1835 on the Coast of CornwallControversy regarding it-Ancient Scotch Barony underlying the Sand - The Old and New Coast Lines in Scotland - Where chiefly to be observed - Geology the Science of Landscape-Scenery of the Old and New Coast LinesDate of the Change of Level from the Old to the New Coast Line uncertainBeyond the Historic, but within the Human Period - Evidences of the fact in remains of Primitive Weapons and Ancient Boats - Changes of Level not rare events to the Geologist - Some of these enumerated - The Boulder-ClayIts prevalence in the Lowlands of Scotland-Indicated in the Scenery of the Country - The Scratchings on the Boulders accounted for-Produced by the grating of Icebergs when Scotland was submerged -Direction in which Icebergs floated, from West to East-"Crag and Tail" the Effect of it- Probable Cause of the Westerly Direction of the Current.

In most of the countries of Western Europe, Scotland among the rest, geological history may be regarded as ending where human history begins. The most ancient portions of the one piece on to the most modern portions of the other. But their line of junction is, if I may so express myself, not an abrupt, but a shaded line; so that, on the one hand, the human period passes so entirely into the geological, that we found our conclusions respecting

the first human inhabitants rather on what they geologic than on the ordinary historic data; and other hand, some of the latter and lesser geologic have taken place in periods comparatively so rece in even our own country, we are able to catch a of them in the first dawn of history proper, that history in which man records the deeds of his fello

In Scotland the ordinary historic materials are very ancient date. Tytler's History opens with the sion of Alexander III., in the middle of the thi century; the Annals of Lord Hailes commence near centuries earlier, with the accession of Malcolm Ca there still exist among the muniments of Durham dral charters of the "gracious Duncan," written the year 1035; and it is held by Runic scholars th Anglo-Saxon inscription on the Ruthwell Cross m about two centuries earlier still. But from beyon comparatively modern period in Scotland no written ment has descended, or no native inscription deciph by the antiquary. A few votive tablets and altar tered by the legionaries of Agricola or Lollius Ur when engaged in laying down their long lines of wa rearing their watch-towers, represent a still remoter pe and a few graphic passages in the classic pages of Ta throw a partial and fitful light on the forms and chara of the warlike people against which the ramparts cast up, and for a time defended. But beyond this ep to at least the historian of the merely literary type to the antiquary of the purely documentary one, a darkness. "At one stride comes the dark." The per is at once reached which we find so happily described Coleridge. "Antecedently to all history," says the p "and long glimmering through it as a hazy tradition, th

presents itself to our imagination an indefinite period, dateless as eternity,—a state rather than a time. For even the sense of succession is lost in the uniformity of the stream."

It is, however, more than probable that the age of Agricola holds but a midway place between the present time and the time in which Scotland first became a scene of human habitation. Two great periods had passed ere the period of the Roman invasion, that earliest period now known to the antiquary as the "stone age," in which the metals were unknown, and to which the flint arrow-head and the greenstone battle-axe belong; and that after period known to the antiquary as the "bronze age," in which weapons of war and the chase were formed of a mixture of copper and tin. Bronze had, in the era of Agricola, been supplanted among the old Caledonians by iron, as stone had at an earlier era been supplanted by bronze; and his legionaries were met in fight by men armed, much after the manner of their descendants at Sheriffmuir and Culloden, with broadsword and target. And it is known that nearly a century and a half earlier, when Cæsar first crossed the Channel, the Britons used a money made of iron. The two earlier periods of bronze and stone had come to a close in the island ere the commencement of the Christian era; and our evidence regarding them is, as I have said, properly of a geologic character. We read their history in what may be termed the fossils of the antiquary. Man is peculiarly a tool-andweapon-making animal; and his tools and weapons represent always the stage of civilization at which he has arrived. First, stone is the material out of which he fashions his implements. If we except that family of man which preserved the aboriginal civilization, there seems