f 
 
 *2 
 
 REESE LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Received *-/%&*+ ,,$sf~ 
 
 A-ccessions No. 
 
 S/ulj 
 
C*i 
 
ill 
 
 Plate 1. 
 
 3?irSt conditions of accumulation and fusion, 
 in, motionless snow 
 
DEUCALION. 
 
 COLLECTED STUDIES 
 
 OF THE 
 
 LAPSE OF WAVES, AND LIFE OF STONES. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN KUSKIN, D.C.L., LL.D., 
 
 HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRISTCHURCH, OXFORD; AND HONORARY FELLOW OP 
 CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD. 
 
 jadXa TtohXd 
 ovped re 6Hioevra y Bdkatitid re jfoj/ 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 JOHN WILEY & SONS, 
 15 ASTOR PLACE. 
 
 1886. 
 

 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 V- 
 
 , 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION 1 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE ALPS AND JUBA 7 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE THREE ^ERAS 23 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 OF ICE-CREAM . 35 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 LABITUR, ET LABETUR ........ 50 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE VALLEY OF CLUSE 64 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 OF BUTTER AND HONEY . . 73 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 THE IRIS OF THE EARTH 84 
 
 C CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE ALPHABET 122 
 
IV CONTENTS. 
 
 \ 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 FIRE AND WATER 133 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 THIRTY YEARS SINCE 150 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 OP SILICA IN LAVAS 167 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 YEWDALE AND ITS STREAMLETS 179 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 OP STELLAR SILICA 209 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 SCHISMA MONTIUM 217 
 
 APPENDIX 243 
 
 INDEX 247 
 
DEUCALION. 
 
 INTKODUCTIOK 
 
 BRANTWOOD, 13th July, 1875. 
 
 I HAVE been glancing lately at many biographies, and 
 have been much struck by the number of deaths which oc- 
 cur between the ages of fifty and sixty, (and, for the most 
 part, in the earlier half of the decade,) in cases where the 
 brain has been much used emotionally : or perhaps it would 
 be more accurate to say, where the heart, and the faculties 
 of perception connected with it, have stimulated the brain- 
 action. Supposing such excitement to be temperate, 
 equable, and joyful, I have no doubt the tendency of it 
 would be to prolong, rather than depress, the vital ener- 
 gies. Bat the emotions of indignation, grief, controversial 
 anxiety and vanity, or hopeless, and therefore uncontend- 
 ing, scorn, are all of them as deadly to the body as poison- 
 ous air or polluted water ; and when I reflect how much 
 of the active part of my past life has been spent in these 
 states, and that what may remain to me of life can never 
 more be in any other, I begin to ask myself, with some- 
 
2 INTKODUCTTON. 
 
 what pressing arithmetic, how much time is likely to be 
 left me, at the age of fifty-six, to complete the various de- 
 signs for which, until past fifty, I was merely collecting 
 materials. 
 
 Of these materials, I have now enough by me for a most 
 interesting (in my own opinion) history of fifteenth-cen- 
 tury Florentine art, in six octavo volumes; an analysis of 
 the Attic art of the fifth century B.C., in three volumes ; 
 an exhaustive history of northern thirteenth-century art, in 
 ten volumes ; a life of Turner, with analysis of modern 
 landscape art, in four volumes ; a life of Walter Scott, 
 with analysis of modern epic art, in seven volumes ; a life 
 of Xenophon, with analysis of the general principles of 
 Education, in ten volumes ; a commentary on Hesiod, with 
 final analysis of the principles of Political Economy, in 
 nine volumes; and a general description of the geology 
 and botany of the Alps, in twenty-four volumes. 
 
 Of these works, though all carefully projected, and some 
 alread} T in progress, yet, allowing for the duties of my 
 Professorship, possibly continuing at Oxford, and for the 
 increasing correspondence relating to Fors Clavigera, it 
 does not seem to me, even in my most sanguine moments, 
 now probable that I shall live to effect such conclusion as 
 would be satisfactory to me ; and I think it will therefore 
 be only prudent, however humiliating, to throw together 
 at once, out of the heap of loose stones collected for this 
 many- towered city which I am not able to finish, such 
 fragments of good marble as may perchance be useful to 
 
INTRODUCTION. 6 
 
 future builders ; and to clear away, out of sight, the lime 
 and other rubbish which I meant for mortar. 
 
 And because it is needful, for my health's sake, hence- 
 forward to do as far as possible what I find pleasure, or 
 at least tranquillity, in doing, I am minded to collect first 
 what I have done in geology and botany ; for indeed, had 
 it not been for grave mischance in earlier life, (partly con- 
 sisting in the unlucky gift, from an affectionate friend, of 
 Rogers' poems, as related in Fors Clavigera for August of 
 this year,) my natural disposition for these sciences would 
 certainly long ago have made me a leading member of the 
 British Association for the Advancement of Science ; or 
 who knows? even raised me to the position which it 
 was always the summit of my earthly ambition to attain, 
 that of President of the Geological Society. For, indeed, 
 I began when I was only twelve years old, a ' Mineralogi 
 cal Dictionary,' intended to supersede everything done by 
 Werner and Mohs, (and written in a shorthand composed 
 of crystallographic signs now entirely unintelligible to 
 me,) and year by year have endeavoured, until very lately, 
 to keep abreast with the rising tide of geological knowl- 
 edge ; sometimes even, I believe, pushing my way into 
 little creeks in advance of the general wave. I am not 
 careful to assert for myself the petty advantage of priority 
 in discovering what, some day or other, somebody must 
 certainly have discovered. But I think it due to my read- 
 ers, that they may receive what real good there may be in 
 these studies with franker confidence, to tell them that the 
 
4 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 first sun-portrait ever taken of the Matterhorn, (and as far 
 as I know of any Swiss mountain whatever,) was taken by 
 me in the year 1849 ; that the outlines, (drawn by meas- 
 urement of angle,) given in ' Modern Painters ' of the Cer- 
 vin, and aiguilles of Chamouni, are at this day demonstra- 
 ble by photography as the trustworthiest then in existence ; 
 that I was the first to point out, in my lecture given in the 
 Royal Institution,* the real relation of the vertical cleav- 
 ages to the stratification, in the limestone ranges belonging 
 to the chalk formation in Savoy ; and that my analysis of 
 the structure of agates, (' Geological Magazine,') remains, 
 even to the present day, the only one which has the slight- 
 est claim to accuracy of distinction, or completeness of 
 arrangement. I propose therefore, if time be spared me, 
 to collect, of these detached studies, or lectures, what seem 
 to me deserving of preservation ; together with the more 
 carefully written chapters on geology and botany in the 
 latter volumes of ' Modern Painters ; ' adding the memo- 
 randa I have still by me in manuscript, and such further 
 illustrations as may occur to me on revision. Which frag- 
 mentary work, trusting that among the flowers or stones 
 let fall by other hands it may yet find service and life, 
 I have ventured to dedicate to Proserpina and Deucalion. 
 Why not rather to Eve, or at least to one of the wives 
 of Lamech, and to Noah ? asks, perhaps, the pious modern 
 reader. 
 
 * Reported in the ' Journal de Geneve,' date ascertainable, but of no 
 consequence. 
 
INTRODUCTION. ^ 
 
 Because I think it well that the young student should 
 first learn the myths of the betrayal and redemption, as 
 the Spirit which moved on the face of the wide first 
 waters, taught them to the heathen world. And because, 
 in this power, Proserpine and Deucalion are at least as 
 true as Eve or Noah ; and all four together incomparably 
 truer than the Darwinian Theory. And, in general, the 
 reader may take it for a first principle, both in science and 
 literature, that the feeblest myth is better than the strong- 
 est theory: the one recording a natural impression on the 
 imaginations of great men, and of unpretending multi- 
 tudes ; the other, an unnatural exertion of the wits of lit- 
 tle men, and half-wits of impertinent multitudes. 
 
 It chanced, this morning, as I sat down to finish my 
 preface, that I had, for my introductory reading the fifth 
 chapter of the second book of Esdras ; in which, though 
 often read carefully before, I had never enough noticed 
 the curious verse, " Blood shall drop out of wood, and the 
 stone shall give his voice, and the people shall be troub- 
 led." Of which verse, so far as I can gather the mean- 
 ing from the context, and from the rest of the chapter, 
 the intent is, that in the time spoken of by the prophet, 
 which, if not our own, is one exactly corresponding to it, 
 the deadness of men to all noble things shall be so great, 
 that the sap of trees shall be more truly blood, in God's 
 sight, than their hearts' blood ; and the silence of men, in 
 praise of all noble things, so great, that the stones shall cry 
 out, in God's hearing, instead of their tongues ; and the 
 
6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 rattling of the shingle on the beach, and the roar of the 
 rocks driven by the torrent, be truer Te Deum than the 
 thunder of all their ch<airs. The writings of modern 
 scientific prophets teach us to anticipate a day when even 
 these lower voices shall be also silent ; and leaf cease to 
 wave, and stream to murmur, in the grasp of an eternal 
 cold. But it may be, that rather out of the mouths of 
 babes and sucklings a better peace may be promised to the 
 redeemed Jerusalem ; and the strewn branches, and low- 
 laid stones, remain at rest at the gates of -the city, built in 
 unity with herself, and saying with her human voice, " My 
 King cometh." 
 
CHAPTEK I. 
 
 THE ALPS AND JUEA. 
 
 (Part of a Lecture given in the Museum of Oxford, in 
 October, 1874.) 
 
 1. IT is often now a question with me whether the 
 persons who appointed me to this Professorship have 
 been disappointed, or pleased, by the little pains I have 
 hitherto taken to advance the study of landscape. That it 
 is my own favourite branch of painting seemed to me a 
 reason for caution in pressing it on your attention ; and 
 the range of art-practice which I have hitherto indicated 
 for you, seems to me more properly connected with the 
 higher branches of philosophical inquiry native to the 
 University. But, as the second term of my Professorship 
 will expire next year, and as I intend what remains of it to 
 be chiefly employed in giving some account of the art of 
 Florence and Umbria, it seemed to me proper, before en- 
 tering on that higher subject, to set before you some of 
 the facts respecting the great elements of landscape, which 
 I first stated thirty years ago ; arranging them now in such 
 form as my farther study enables me to give them. I shall 
 not, indeed, be able to do this in a course of spoken lee- 
 
8 DEUCALION". 
 
 tures ; nor do I wish to do so. Much of what I desire that 
 you should notice is already stated, as well as I can do it, 
 in ' Modern Painters ; ' and it would be waste of time to 
 recast it in the form of address. But I should not feel 
 justified in merely reading passages of my former writings 
 to you from this chair ; and will only ask your audience, 
 here, of some additional matters, as, for instance, to-day, 
 of some observations I have been making recently, in 
 order to complete the account given in i Modern Painters,' 
 of the structure and aspect of the higher Alps. 
 
 2. Not that their structure (let me repeat, once more, 
 what I am well assured you will, in spite of my frequent 
 assertion, find difficult to believe,) not that their struc- 
 ture is any business of yours or mine, as students of 
 practical art. All investigations of internal anatomy, 
 whether in plants, rocks, or animals, are hurtful to the 
 finest sensibilities and instincts of form. But very few 
 of us have any such sensibilities to be injured ; and that 
 we may distinguish the excellent art which they have pro- 
 duced, we must, by duller processes, become cognizant of 
 the facts. The Torso of the Vatican was not wrought by 
 help from dissection ; yet all its supreme qualities could 
 only be explained by an anatomical master. And these 
 drawings of the Alps by Turner are in landscape, what 
 the Elgin marbles or the Torso are in sculpture. There is 
 nothing else approaching them, or of their order. Turner 
 made them before geology existed ; but it is only by help 
 of geology that I can prove their power. 
 
I. THE ALPS AND JUKA. 
 
 i3. I chanced, the other day, to take up a number of the 
 ' Alpine Journal ' (May, 1871,) in which there was a review 
 by Mr. Leslie Stephen, of Mr. Whymper's ' Scrambles 
 among the Alps,' in which it is said that " if the Alpine 
 Club has done nothing else, it has taught us for the first 
 time really to see the mountains.^ I have not the least 
 idea whom Mr. Stephen means by ' us ; ' but I can assure 
 him that mountains had been seen by several people before 
 the nineteenth century^ that both Hesiod and Pindar oc- 
 casionally had eyes for Parnassus, Yirgil for the Apen- 
 nines, and Scott for the Grampians ; and without speaking 
 of Turner, or of any other accomplished artist, here is a 
 
 little bit of old-fashioned Swiss drawing of the two Mythens, 
 above the central town of Switzerland,* showing a degree 
 of affection, intelligence, and tender observation, compared 
 to which our modern enthusiasm is, at best, childish ; and 
 commonly also as shallow as it is vulgar. 
 
 tf^. Believe me, gentlemen, your power of seeing moun- 
 tains cannot be developed either by your vanity, your cu- 
 riosity, or your love of muscular exercise. It depends on 
 the cultivation of the instrument of sight itself, and of 
 the soul that uses it. As soon as you can see mountains 
 rightly, you will see hills also, and valleys, with consider- 
 able interest ; and a great many other things in Switzer- 
 land with which you are at present but poorly acquainted. 
 The bluntness of your present capacity of ocular sensa 
 
 * In the Educational Series of my Oxford Schools. 
 1* 
 
10 DEUCALION. 
 
 tion is too surely proved by your being unable to enjoy any 
 of the sweet lowland country, which is incomparably more 
 beautiful than the summit* of the central range, and which 
 is meant to detain you, also, by displaying if you have 
 patience to observe them the loveliest aspects of that 
 central range itself, in its real majesty of proportion, and 
 mystery of power. 
 
 5. For, gentlemen, little as you may think it, you can 
 no more see the Alps from the Col du Geant, or the top 
 of the Matterhorn, than the pastoral scenery of Switzer- 
 land from the railroad carriage. If you want to see the 
 skeletons of the Alps, you may go to Zermatt or Cha- 
 mouni ; but if you want to see the body and soul of the 
 Alps, you must stay awhile among the Jura, and in the Ber- 
 nese plain. And, in general, the way to see mountains, is 
 to take a knapsack and a walking-stick ; leave alpenstocks 
 to be flourished in each other's faces, and between one an- 
 other's legs, by Cook's tourists ; and try to find some com- 
 panionship in yourself with yourself ; and not to be de- 
 pendent for your good cheer either on the gossip of the 
 table-d'hote, or the hail-fellow and well met, hearty 
 though it be, of even the pleasantest of celebrated guides./' 
 
 6. Whether, however, you think it necessary or not, for 
 true sight of the Alps, to stay awhile among the Jura or 
 in the Bernese fields, very certainly, for understanding, or 
 questioning, of the Alps, it is wholly necessary to do so. 
 If you look back to the lecture, which I gave as the fourth 
 of my inaugural series, on the Relation of Art to Use, you 
 
I. THE ALPS AND JUEA. 11 
 
 will see it stated, as a grave matter of reproach to the mod- 
 ern traveller, that, crossing the great plain of Switzerland 
 nearly every summer, he never thinks of inquiring why 
 it is a plain, and why the mountains to the south of it are 
 mountains. 
 
 7. For solution of which, as it appears to me, not un- 
 natural inquiry, all of you, who have taken any interest 
 in geology whatever, must recognize the importance of 
 studying the calcareous ranges which form the outlying 
 steps of the Alps on the north ; and which, in the lecture 
 just referred to, I requested you to examine for their crag 
 scenery, markedly developed in the Stockhorn, Pilate, and 
 Sentis of Appenzell. The arrangements of strata in that 
 great calcareous belt give the main clue to the mode of el- 
 evation of the central chain, the relations of the rocks over 
 the entire breadth of North Switzerland being, roughly, as 
 in this first section : 
 
 FIG. 1. 
 
 A. Jura limestones, moderately undulating in the suc- 
 
 cessive chains of Jura. 
 
 B. Sandstones of the great Swiss plain. 
 
 C. Pebble breccias of the first ranges of Alpine hills. 
 
 D. Chalk formations violently contorted, forming the 
 
 rock scenery of which I have j ust spoken. 
 
12 DEUCALION. 
 
 E. Metamorphic rocks lifted by the central Alps. 
 
 F. Central gneissic or granitic mass, narrow in Mont 
 
 Blanc, but of enormous extent southward from St. 
 Gothard. 
 
 8. Now you may, for first grasp of our subject, imagine 
 these several formations all fluted longitudinally, like a 
 Gothic moulding, thus forming a series of ridges and val- 
 leys parallel to the Alps ; such as the valley of Chamou- 
 ni, the Simmenthal, and the great vale containing the 
 lakes of Thun and Brienz ; to which longitudinal valleys 
 we now obtain access through gorges or defiles, for the 
 most part cut across the formations, and giving geological 
 sections all the way from the centres of the Alps to the 
 plain. 
 
 9. Get this first notion very simply and massively set in 
 your thoughts. Longitudinal valleys, parallel with the 
 beds ; more or less extended and soft in contour, and often 
 occupied by lakes. Cross defiles like that of Lauter- 
 brunnen, the Yia Mala, and the defile of Gondo ; cut down 
 across the beds, and traversed by torrents, but rarely occu- 
 pied by lakes. The bay of Uri is the only perfect instance 
 in Switzerland of a portion of lake in a diametrically cross 
 valley ; the crossing arms of the lake Lucerne mark the 
 exactly rectangular schism of the forces ; the main direc- 
 tion being that of the lakes of Kussnacht and Alpnacht, 
 3arried on through those of Sarnen and Lungern, and 
 across the low intervening ridge of the Brunig, joining the 
 depressions of Brienz and Thun ; of which last lake the 
 
I. THE ALPS AND JtJBA. , 
 
 lower reach, however, is obliquely transverse. Forty miles 
 of the Lago Maggiore, or, including the portion of lake now 
 filled by delta, fifty, from Baveno to Bellinzona, are in the 
 longitudinal valley which continues to the St. Bernardino : 
 and the entire length of the lake of Como is the continua- 
 tion of the great lateral Yaltelline. 
 
 10. Now such structure of parallel valley and cross 
 defile would be intelligible enough, if it were confined to 
 the lateral stratified ranges. But, as you are well aware, 
 the two most notable longitudinal valleys in the Alps are 
 cut right along the heart of their central gneissic chain ; 
 how much by dividing forces in the rocks themselves, and 
 how much by the sources of the two great rivers of France 
 and Germany, there will yet be debate among geologists 
 for many a day to come. For us, let the facts at 
 least be clear ; the questions definite ; but all debate de- 
 clined. 
 
 11. All lakes among the Alps, except the little green 
 pool of Lungern, and a few small tarns on the cols, are 
 quite at the bottom of the hills. We are so accustomed 
 to this condition, that we never think of it as singular. 
 But in its unexceptional character, it is extremely singular. 
 How comes it to pass, think you, that through all that 
 wilderness of mountain raised, in the main mass of it, 
 some six thousand feet above the sea, so that there is no 
 col lower, there is not a single hollow shut in so as to 
 stay the streams of it ; that no valley is ever barred across 
 by a ridge which can keep so much as ten feet of watei 
 
14 DEUCALION. 
 
 calm above it, that every such ridge that once existed 
 has been cut through, so as to let the stream escape ? 
 
 I put this question in.passing ; we will return to it : let 
 me first ask you to examine the broad relations of the 
 beds that are cut through. My typical section, Fig. 1, is 
 stringently simple ; it must be much enriched and mod- 
 ified to fit any locality ; but in the main conditions it is 
 applicable to the entire north side of the Alps, from An- 
 necy to St. Gall. 
 
 12. You have first (I read from left to right, or north 
 to south, being obliged to do so because all Studer's sec- 
 tions are thus taken) this mass of yellow limestone, 
 called of the Jura, from its development in that chain ; 
 but forming an immense tract of the surface of France 
 also; and, as you well know, this our city of Oxford 
 stands on one of its softer beds, and is chiefly built of it. 
 We may, I think, without entering any forbidden region 
 of theory, assume that this Jura limestone extends under 
 the plain of Switzerland, to reappear where we again find 
 it on the flanks of the great range ; where on the top of 
 it the beds drawn with fine lines in my section correspond 
 generally to the date of our English chalk, though they 
 are far from white in the Alps. Curiously adjusted to 
 the chalk beds, rather than superimposed, we have these 
 notable masses of pebble breccia, which bound the sand- 
 stones of the great Swiss plain. 
 
 13. I have drawn that portion of the section a little 
 more boldly in projection, to remind you of the great 
 
I. THE ALPS AND JURA. 15 
 
 Rigi promontory ; and of the main direction of the slope 
 of these beds, with their backs to the Alps, and their es- 
 carpments to the plain. Both these points are of curious 
 importance. Have you ever considered the reason of 
 the fall of the Rossberg, the most impressive physical 
 catastrophe that has chanced in Europe in modern times ? 
 Few mountains in Switzerland looked safer. It was of 
 inconsiderable height, of very moderate steepness ; but its 
 beds lay perfectly straight, and that over so large a space, 
 that when the clay between two of them got softened by 
 rain, one slipped off the other. Now this mathematical 
 straightness is characteristic of these pebble beds, not 
 universal in them, but characteristic of them, and of 
 them only. The limestones underneath are usually, as you 
 see in this section, violently contorted ; if not contorted, 
 they are at least so irregular in the bedding that you can't 
 in general find a surface of a furlong square which will 
 not either by its depression, or projection, catch and notch 
 into the one above it, so as to prevent its sliding. Also 
 the limestones are continually torn, or split, across the 
 beds. But the breccias, though in many places they 
 suffer decomposition, are curiously free from fissures and 
 rents. The hillside remains unshattered unless it comes 
 down in a mass. But their straight bedding, as com- 
 pared with the twisted limestone, is the iiotablest point 
 in them ; and see how very many difficulties are gathered 
 in the difference. The crushed masses of limestone are 
 supposed to have been wrinkled together by the lateral 
 
16 DEUCALION. 
 
 thrust of the emerging protogines; and these pebble beds 
 to have been raised into a gable, or broken into a series 
 of colossal fragments set over each other like tiles, all 
 along the south shore of the Swiss plain, by the same lat- 
 eral thrust ; nay, " though we may leave in doubt," says 
 Studer, " by what cause the folded forms of the Jura may 
 have been pushed back, there yet remains to us, for the 
 explanation of this gabled form of the Nagelfluh, hardly 
 any other choice than to adopt the opinion of a lateral 
 pressure communicated by the Alps to the tertiary bot- 
 tom. "We have often found in the outer limestone chains 
 themselves clear evidence of a pressure going out from 
 the inner Alps ; and the pushing of the older over the 
 younger formations along the flank of the limestone hills, 
 leaves hardly any other opinion possible." 
 
 14. But if these pebble beds have been heaved up by 
 the same lateral thrust, how is it that a force which can 
 
 FIG. 2. 
 
 bend limestone like leather, cannot crush anywhere, these 
 pebble beds into the least confusion? Consider the scale 
 on which operations are carried on, and the forces of which 
 this sentence of Studer's so serenely assumes the action. 
 Here, A. Fig. 2, is his section of the High Sentis of Appen- 
 
I. THE ALPS AND JTJKA. 
 
 zell, of which the height is at least, in the parts thus bent, 
 6,000 feet. And here, B, Fig. 2, are some sheets of paper 
 crushed together by my friend Mr. Henry Woodward, 
 from a length of four inches, into what you see ; the High 
 Sentis, exactly resembles these, and seems to consist of 
 four miles of limestone similarly crushed into one. Seems, 
 I say, remember : I never theorize, I give you the facts on- 
 ly. The beds do go up and down like this : that they have 
 been crushed together, it is Mr. Studer who says or sup- 
 poses ; I can't go so far ; nevertheless, I admit that he 
 appears to be right, and I believe he is right ; only don't 
 be positive about it, and don't debate ; but think of it, and 
 examine. 
 
 15. Suppose, then, you have a bed of rocks, four miles 
 long by a mile thick, to be crushed laterally into the space 
 of a mile. It may be done, supposing the mass not to be 
 reducible in bulk, in two ways : you may either crush it up 
 into folds, as I crush these pieces of cloth ; or you may 
 break it into bits, and shuffle them over one another like 
 cards. Now, Mr. Studer, and our geologists in general, 
 believe the first of these operations to have taken place 
 with the limestones, and the second with the breccias. 
 They are, as I say, very probably right : only just consider 
 what is involved in the notion of shuffling up your brec- 
 cias like a pack of cards, and folding up your limestones 
 like a length of silk which a dexterous draper's shopman 
 is persuading a young lady to put ten times as much of 
 into her gown as is wanted for it ! Think, 1 say, what ig 
 
18 DEUCALION. 
 
 involved in the notion. That you may shuffle your pebble 
 beds, you must have them strong and well knit. Then 
 what sort of force musfr you have to break arid to heave 
 them ? Do but try the force required to break so much as 
 a captain's biscuit by a slow push, it is the illustration I 
 gave long ago in l Modern Painters,' and then fancy the 
 results of such- fracturing power on a bed of conglomerate 
 two thousand feet thick ! And here is indeed a very charm- 
 ing bookbinder's pattern, produced by my friend in crush- 
 ed paper, and the length of silk produces lovely results in 
 these arrangements a la Paul Veronese. But when you 
 have the cliffs of the Diablerets, or the Dent du Midi of 
 Bex, to deal with ; and have to fold them up similarly, do 
 you mean to fold your two-thousand-feet-thick Jura lime- 
 stone in a brittle state, or a ductile one \ If brittle, won't 
 it smash ? If ductile, w r on't it squeeze \ Yet your whole 
 mountain theory proceeds on the assumption that it has 
 neither broken nor been compressed, more than the folds 
 of silk or coils of paper. 
 
 16. You most of you have been upon the lake of Thun. 
 You have been at least carried up and down it in a steam 
 er ; you smoked over it meanwhile, and countenanced the 
 Frenchmen and Germans who were spitting into it. The 
 steamer carried you all the length of it in half an hour ; 
 you looked at the Jungfrau and Blumlis Alp, probably, 
 for five minutes, if it was a fine day ; then took to 
 your papers, and read the last news of the Tichborne case ; 
 then you lounged about, thought it a nuisance that the 
 
I. THE ALPS AND JURA. 
 
 steamer couldn't take you up in twenty minutes, instead 
 of half an hour ; then you got into a row about your 
 luggage at Neuhaus; and all that you recollect after- 
 wards is that lunch where you met the so-and-sos at 
 Interlaken. 
 
 17. Well, we used to do it differently in old times. Look 
 here ; this * is the quay at Neuhaus, with its then travel- 
 ling arrangements. A flat-bottomed boat, little better than 
 a punt ; a fat Swiss girl with her schatz, or her father, 
 to row it ; oars made of a board tied to a pole : and so one 
 paddled along over the clear water, in and out among the 
 bays and villages, for half a day of pleasant life. And 
 one knew something about the lake, ever after, if one had 
 a head with eyes in it. 
 
 It is just possible, however, that some of you also who 
 have been learning to see the Alps in your new fashion, 
 may remember that the north side of the lake of Thun 
 consists, first, next Thun, of a series of low green hills, 
 with brown cliffs here and there among the pines ; and 
 that above them, just after passing Oberhofen, rears up 
 suddenly a great precipice, with its flank to the lake, and 
 the winding wall of it prolonged upwards, far to the north) 
 losing itself, if the day is fine, in faint tawny crests of rock 
 among the distant blue ; and if stormy, in wreaths of more 
 than commonly torn and fantastic cloud. 
 
 18. To form the top of that peak on the north side of 
 
 * Turner's first study of the Lake of Thun, 1803. 
 
20 DEUCALION. 
 
 the lake of Thun, you have to imagine forces which have 
 taken say, the whole of the North Foreland, with Dover 
 castle on it, and have folded it upside-down on the top of 
 the parade at Margate, then swept up Whitstable oyster- 
 beds, and put them on the bottom of Dover cliffs turned 
 topsy-turvy, and then wrung the whole round like a wet 
 towel, till it is as close and hard as it will knit ; such is 
 the beginning of the operations which have produced the 
 lateral masses of the higher Alps. 
 
 19. Next to these, you have the great sculptural force, 
 which gave them, approximately, their present forms, 
 which let out all the lake waters above a certain level, 
 which cut the gorge of the Devil's Bridge of the Via 
 Mala of Gondo of the valley of Cluse ; which let out 
 the Rhone at St. Maurice, the Ticino at Faido, and shaped 
 all the vast ravines which make the flanks of the great 
 mountains awful. 
 
 20. Then, finally, you have the rain, torrent, and glacier 
 of human days. 
 
 Of whose action, briefly, this is the sum. 
 
 Over all the high surfaces, disintegration melting away 
 diffusion loss of height and terror. 
 
 In the ravines, whether occupied by torrent or gla- 
 cier, gradual incumbrance by materials falling from 
 above ; choking up of their beds by silt by moraine 
 by continual advances of washed slopes on their flanks : 
 here and there, only, exceptional conditions occur in 
 which a river is still continuing feebly the ancient cleav* 
 
I. THE ALPS AND JUBA. 21 
 
 ing action, and cutting its ravine deeper, or cutting it 
 back. 
 
 Fix this idea thoroughly in your minds. Since the val- 
 ley of Lauterbrunnen existed for human eyes, or its pas- 
 tures for the food of flocks, it has not been cut deeper, 
 but partially filled up by its torrents. The town of In- 
 terlachen stands where there was once lake, and the 
 long slopes of grassy sward on the north of it, stand where 
 once was precipice. Slowly, almost with infinite slow- 
 ness, the declining and encumbering action takes place ; 
 but incessantly, and, as far as our experience reaches, 
 irredeemably. 
 
 21. Now 1 have touched in this lecture briefly on the 
 theories respecting the elevation of the Alps, because I 
 want to show you how uncertain and unsatisfactory they 
 still remain. For our own work, we must waste no time 
 on them ; we must begin where all theory ceases ; and 
 where observation becomes possible, that is to say, with 
 the forms which the Alps have actually retained while 
 men have dwelt among them, and on which we can trace 
 the progress, or the power, of existing conditions of minor 
 change. Such change has lately affected, and with grievous 
 deterioration, the outline of the highest mountain of Eu- 
 rope, with that of its beautiful supporting buttresses, the 
 aiguille de Bionassay. I do not care, and 1 want you not 
 to care, how crest or aiguille was lifted, or where its 
 materials came from, or how much bigger it was once. I 
 do care that you should know, and I will endeavour in 
 
DEUCALION. 
 
 these following pages securely to show you, in what 
 strength and beauty of form it has actually stood since 
 man was man, and whafr subtle modifications of aspect, or 
 majesties of contour, it still suffers from the rains that 
 beat upon it, or owes to the snows that rest. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE THREE 
 
 (Part of a Lecture given at the London Institution in 
 March, 1875, with added pieces from Lectures in 
 Oxford.) 
 
 1. WE are now, so many of us, some restlessly and some 
 wisely, in the habit of spending our evenings abroad, that 
 I do not know if any book exists to occupy the place of 
 one classical in my early days, called *' Evenings at Home.' 
 It contained, among many well-written lessons, one, under 
 the title of t Eyes and No Eyes,' which some of my older 
 hearers may remember, and which I should myself be 
 sorry to forget. For if such a book were to be written in 
 these days, I suppose the title and the moral of the story 
 would both be changed ; and, instead of ' Eyes and No 
 Eyes,' the tale would be called ' Microscopes and No 
 Microscopes.' For I observe that the prevailing habit of 
 learned men is now to take interest only in objects which 
 cannot be seen without the aid of instruments ; and I be- 
 lieve many of my learned friends, if they were permitted 
 to make themselves, to their own liking, instead of suffer- 
 ing the slow process of selective development, would give 
 
24 DEUCALION. 
 
 themselves heads like wasps', with three microscopic eyes 
 in the middle of their foreheads, and two ears at the ends 
 of their antennae. 
 
 2. It is the fashion, in modern days, to say that Pope 
 was no poet. Probably our schoolboys also, think Horace 
 none. They have each, nevertheless, built for themselves 
 a monument of enduring wisdom ; and all the temptations 
 and errors of our own day, in the narrow sphere of lentic- 
 ular curiosity, were anticipated by Pope, and rebuked, in 
 one couplet : 
 
 " Why has not man a microscopic eye ? 
 For this plain reason, Man is not a fly." 
 
 While the nobler following lines, 
 
 " Say, what avail, were finer optics given 
 To inspect a mite, not comprehend the heaven ? " 
 
 only fall short of the truth of our present dulness, in that 
 we inspect heaven itself, without understanding it. 
 
 3. In old times, then, it was not thought necessary for 
 human creatures to know either the infinitely little, or the 
 infinitely distant ; nor either to see, or feel, by artificial 
 help. Old English people used to say they perceived 
 things with their five or it may be, in a hurry, they 
 would say, their seven, senses / and that word ' sense * be- 
 came, and for ever must remain, classical English, derived 
 from classical Latin, in both -languages signifying, not 
 only the bodily sense, but the moral cue. If a man heard, 
 
II. THE THREE MRAS. 25" 
 
 saw, and tasted rightly, 'we used to say he had his bodily 
 senses perfect. If he judged, wished, and felt rightly, we 
 used to say he had his moral senses perfect, or was a man 
 * in his senses.' And we were then able to speak precise 
 truth respecting both matter and morality ; and if we 
 heard any one saying clearly absurd things, as, for 
 instance, that human creatures were automata, we used 
 to say they were out of their ' senses,' and we^e talking 
 non-< sense.' 
 
 Whereas, in modern days, by substituting analysis for 
 sense in morals, and chemistry for sense in matter, we 
 have literally blinded ourselves to the essential qualities 
 of both matter and morals ; and are entirely incapable of 
 understanding what is meant by the description given 
 us, in a book we once honoured, of men who " by reason 
 of use, have their senses exercised to discern both good 
 and evil." 
 
 4. And still, with increasingly evil results to all of us, 
 the separation is every day widening between the man of 
 science and the artist in that, whether painter, sculptor, 
 or musician, the latter is pre-eminently a person who sees 
 with his Eyes, hears with his Ears, and labours with his 
 Body, as God constructed them ; and who, in using instru- 
 ments, limits himself to thoe which convey or communi- 
 cate his human power, while he rejects all that increase it. 
 Titian would refuse to quicken his touch by electricity ; 
 and Michael Angelo to substitute a steam hammer for his 
 
 mallet. Such men not only do not desire, they impera 
 2 
 
26 DEfJCALION. 
 
 tively and scornfully refuse, either the force, or the in- 
 formation, which are beyond the scope of the flesh and 
 the senses of humanity. And it is at once the wisdom, 
 the honour, and the peace, of the Masters both of painting 
 and literature, that they rejoice in the strength, and rest 
 in the knowledge, which are granted to active and disci- 
 plined life ; and are more and more sure, every day, of the 
 wisdom of the Maker in setting such measure to their be- 
 ing ; and more and more satisfied, in their sight and their 
 audit of Nature, that " the hearing ear, and the seeing 
 eye, the Lord hath made even both of them." 
 
 5. This evening, therefore, I venture to address you 
 speaking limitedly as an artist; but, therefore, I think, 
 with a definite advantage in having been trained to the 
 use of my eyes and senses, as my chief means of observa- 
 tion : and I shall try to show you things which with your 
 own eyes you may any day see, and with your own com- 
 mon sense, if it please you to trust it, account for. 
 
 Things which you may see, I repeat ; not which you 
 might perhaps have seen, if you had been born when you 
 were not born ; nor which you might perhaps in future 
 see, if you were alive when you will be dead. But 
 what, in the span of earth, and space of time, allotted to 
 you, may be seen with your .human eyes, if you learn to 
 use them. 
 
 And this limitation has, with respect to our present 
 subject, a particular significance, which I must explain to 
 you before entering on the main matter of it. 
 
H. THE THEEE MRA.8. 27 >' 
 
 6. No one more honours the past lahour no one more 
 regrets the present rest of the late Sir Charles Lyell, 
 than his scholar, who speaks to you. But his great the- 
 orem of the constancy and power of existing phenomena 
 was only in measure proved, in a larger measure disput- 
 able ; and in the broadest bearings of it, entirely false. 
 Pardon me if I spend no time in qualifications, refer- 
 ences, or apologies, but state clearly to you what Sir 
 Charles Ly ell's w r ork itself enables us now to perceive of 
 the truth. There are, broadly, three great demonstrable 
 periods of the Earth's history. That in which it was 
 crystallized ; that in which it was sculptured ; and that 
 in which it is now being unsculptured, or deformed. 
 These three periods interlace with each other, and gra- 
 date into each other as the periods of human life do. 
 Something dies in the child on the day that it is born, 
 something is born in the man on the day that he dies : 
 nevertheless, his life is broadly divided into youth, 
 strength, and decrepitude. In such clear sense, the Earth 
 has its three ages : of their length we know as yet noth- 
 ing, except that it has been greater than any man had 
 imagined. 
 
 7. (THE FIRST PERIOD.) But there was a period, 
 or a succession of periods, during which the rocks which 
 are now hard were soft; and in which, out of entirely 
 different positions, and under entirely different conditions 
 from any now existing or describable, the masses, of 
 which the mountains vou now see are made, were lifted, 
 
28 DEUCALION. 
 
 and hardened, in the positions they now occupy, though 
 in what forms we can now no more guess than we can 
 the original outline ofthe block from the existing statue. 
 
 8. (THE SECOND PERIOD.) Then, out of those 
 raised masses, more or less in lines compliant with their 
 crystalline structure, the mountains we now see were 
 hewn, or worn, during the second period, by forces for 
 the most part differing both in mode and violence from 
 any now in operation, but the result of which was to 
 bring the surface of the earth into a form approximately 
 that which it has possessed as far as the records of human 
 history extend. The Ararat of Moses's time, the Olympus 
 and Ida of Homer's, are practically the same mountains 
 now, that they were then. 
 
 9. (THE THIRD PERIOD.) Not, however, without 
 some calculable, though superficial, change, and that 
 change, one of steady degradation. For in the third, or 
 historical period, the valleys excavated in the second 
 period are being filled up, and the mountains, hewn in 
 the second period, worn or ruined down. In the second 
 sera the valley of the Rhone was being cut deeper ever} 
 day ; now it is every day being filled up with gravel. In 
 the second sera, the scars of Derbyshire and Yorkshire 
 were cut white and steep ; now they are being darkened 
 by vegetation, and crumbled by frost. You cannot, I 
 repeat, separate the periods with precision ; but, in their 
 characters, they are as distinct as youth from age. 
 
 10. The features of mountain form, to which during my 
 
II. THE THREE JEBAS. 
 
 29' 
 
 own life I have exclusively directed my study, and which 
 I endeavour to bring before the notice of my pupils in 
 Oxford, are exclusively those produced by existing forces, 
 on mountains whose form and substance have not been 
 materially changed during the historical period. 
 
 For familiar example, take the rocks of Edinburgh Cas- 
 tle, and Salisbury Craig. Of course we know that they 
 are both basaltic, and must once have been hot. But I do 
 not myself care in the least what happened to them till 
 they were cold.* They have both been cold at least long- 
 
 * More carious persons, who are interested in their earlier condition, 
 will find a valuable paper by Mr. J. W. Judd, in the quarterly ' Journal 
 of the Geological Society,' May, 1875 ; very successfully, it seems to me, 
 demolishing all former theories on the subject, which the author thus 
 sums, at p. 135. 
 
 ' ' The series of events which we are thus required to believe took 
 place in this district is therefore as follows : 
 
 A. At the point where the Arthur's Seat group of hills now rises, a 
 series of volcanic eruptions occurred during the Lower Calciferous 
 Sandstone period, commencing with the emission of basaltic lavas, and 
 ending with that of porphyrites. 
 
 B. An interval of such enormous duration supervened as to admit 
 of 
 
 a. The deposition of at least 3,000 feet of Carboniferous strata. 
 
 b. The bending of all the rocks of the district into a series of 
 
 great anticlinal and synclinal folds. 
 
 c. The removal of every vestige of the 3, 000 feet of strata by de- 
 
 nudation. 
 
 C. The outburst, after this vast interval, of a second series of volcanic 
 eruptions upon the identical site of the former ones, presenting in its 
 
30 DEUCALION. 
 
 er than young Harry Percy's spur ; and, since they were 
 last brought out of the oven, in the shape which, approxi- 
 mately, they still retafci, with a hollow beneath one of 
 them, which, for aught I know, or care, may have been cut 
 by a glacier out of white-hot lava, but assuredly at last got 
 itself filled with pure, sweet, cold water, and called, in Low- 
 land Scotch, the ' Nor ' Loch ;' since the time, I say, when 
 the basalt, above, became hard, and the lake beneath, drink- 
 able, I am desirous to examine with you what effect the 
 winter's frost and summer's rain have had on the crags and 
 their hollows ; how far the ( Kittle nine steps ' under the 
 castle-walls, or the firm slope and cresting precipice above 
 the dark ghost of Holyrood, are enduring or departing 
 forms; and how long, unless the young engineers of New 
 Edinburgh blast the incumbrance away, the departing 
 mists of dawn may each day reveal the form, unchanged, 
 of the Rock which was the strength of their Fathers. 
 
 11. Unchanged, or so softly modified that eye can scarce- 
 ly trace, or memory measure, the work of time. Have 
 you ever practically endeavoured to estimate the alterations 
 of form in any hard rocks known to you, during the 
 
 succession, of events 'precisely the same sequence, and resulting in the 
 production of rocks of totally undistinguishable character. 
 
 Are we not entitled to regard the demand for the admission of such a 
 series of extraordinary accidents as evidence of the antecedent improb- 
 ability of the theory ? And when we find that all attempts to suggest a 
 period for the supposed second series of outbursts have successively fail- 
 ed, do not the difficulties of the hypothesis appear to be overwhelming ? " 
 
II. THE THREE 
 
 31- 
 
 course of jour own lives ? You have all heard, a thousand 
 times over, the common statements of the school of Sir 
 Charles Lyell. You know all about alluviums and gravels ; 
 and what torrents do, and what rivers do, and what ocean 
 currents do ; and when you see a muddy stream coming 
 down in a flood, or even the yellow gutter more than usual- 
 ly rampant by the roadside in a thunder shower, you think, 
 of course, that all the forms of the Alps are to be account- 
 ed for by aqueous erosion, and that it's a wonder any 
 Alps are still left. Well any of you who have fished 
 the pools of Scottish or a Welsh stream, have you ever 
 thought of asking an old keeper how much deeper they 
 had got to be, while his hairs were silvering ? Do you 
 suppose he wouldn't laugh in your face ? 
 
 There are some sitting here, I think, who must have 
 
 O / / 
 
 themselves fished, for more than one summer, years ago, 
 in Dove or Derwent, in Tweed or Teviot. Can any of 
 you tell me a single pool, even in the limestone or sand- 
 stone, where you could spear a salmon then, and can't 
 reach one now (providing always the wretches of manu- 
 facturers have left you one to be speared, or water that you 
 can see through) ? Do you know so much as a single riv- 
 ulet of clear water which has cut away a visible half-inch 
 of Highland rock, to your own knowledge, in your own 
 day ? You have seen w r hole banks, whole fields washed 
 away ; and the rocks exposed beneath \ Yes, of course 
 you have ; and so have I. The rains wash the loose earth 
 about everywhere, in any masses that they chance to catch 
 
32 DEUCALION. 
 
 loose earth, or loose rock. But yonder little rifted well 
 in the native whinstone by the sheepfold, did the gray 
 shepherd not put his Iij5fe to the same ledge of it, to drink 
 when he and you were boys together ? 
 
 12. ' But Niagara, and the Delta of the Ganges and 
 all the rest of it ? ' Well, of course a monstrous mass of 
 continental drainage, like Niagara, will wash down a piece 
 of crag once in fifty years, (but only that, if it's rotten 
 below ; ) and tropical rains will eat the end off a bank of 
 slime and alligators, and spread it out lower down. But 
 does any Scotchman know a change in the Fall of Fyers ? 
 any Yorkshireman in the Force of Tees ? 
 
 Except of choking up, it may be not of cutting down. 
 It is true, at the side of every stream you see the places in 
 the rocks hollowed by the eddies. I suppose the eddies 
 go on at their own rate. But I simply ask, Has any human 
 being ever known a stream, in hard rock, cut its bed an 
 inch deeper down at a given spot ? 
 
 13. I can look back, myself, now pretty nearly, I air 
 sorry to say, half a century, and recognize no change what- 
 ever in any of my old dabbling-places ; but that some 
 stones are mossier, and the streams usually dirtier, the 
 Derwent above Keswick, for example. 
 
 t But denudation does go on, somehow : one sees the 
 whole glen is shaped by it 2 ' Yes, but not by the stream. 
 The stream only sweeps down the loose stones ; frost and 
 chemical change are the powers that loosen them. I have 
 indeed not known one of my dabbling-places changed in 
 
II. THE THREE JERAS. 33, 
 
 fifty years. But I have known the eboulement under the 
 Rochers des Fyz, which filled the Lao de Chede ; I passed 
 through the valley of Cluse a night after some two or three 
 thousand tons of limestone came off the cliffs of Maglans 
 burying the road and field beside it. I have seen half a 
 village buried by a landslip, and its people killed, under 
 Monte St. Angelo, above Amalfi. I have seen the lower 
 lake of Llanberis destroyed, merely by artificial slate quar- 
 ries ; and the Waterhead of Coniston seriously diminished 
 in purity and healthy flow of current by the debris of its 
 copper mines. These are all cases, you will observe, of 
 degradation; diminishing majesty in the mountain, and 
 diminishing depth in the valley, or pools of its waters. I 
 cannot name a single spot in which, during my lifetime 
 spent among the mountains, I have seen a peak made 
 grander, a watercourse cut deeper, or a mountain pool 
 made larger and purer. 
 
 14. I am almost surprised, myself, as I write these 
 words, at the strength which, on reflection, I am able to 
 give to my assertion. For, even till I began to write these 
 very pages, and was forced to collect my thoughts, I re- 
 mained under the easily adopted impression, that, at least 
 among soft earthy eminences, the rivers were still cutting 
 out their beds. And it is not so at all. There are indeed 
 banks here and there which they visibly remove ; but 
 whatever they sweep down from one side, they sweep up 
 on the other, and extend a promontory of land for every 
 
 shelf they undermine : and as for those radiating fibrous 
 
 2* 
 
34 DEUCALION. 
 
 valleys in the Apennines, and such other hills, which look 
 symmetrically shaped by streams, they are not lines of 
 trench from below, but4ines of wash or slip from above : 
 they are the natural wear and tear of the surface, directed 
 indeed in easiest descent by the bias of the stream, but 
 not dragged down by its grasp. In every one of those 
 ravines the water is being choked up to a higher level ; 
 it is riot gnawing down to a lower. So that, I repeat, ear- 
 nestly, their chasms being choked below, and their preci- 
 pices shattered above, all mountain forms are suffering a 
 deliquescent and corroding change, not a sculpturesque 
 or anatomizing change. All character is being gradually 
 effaced ; all crooked places made straight, all rough 
 places, plain ; and among these various agencies, not of 
 erosion, but corrosion, none are so distinct as that of the 
 glacier, in filling up, not cutting deeper, the channel it 
 fills ; and in rounding and smoothing, but never sculptur- 
 ing, the rocks over which it passes. 
 
 In this fragmentary collection of former work, now 
 patched and darned into serviceableness, I cannot finish 
 my chapters with the ornamental fringes I used to twine 
 for them ; nor even say, by any means, all I have in my 
 mind on the matters they treat of : in the present case, 
 however, the reader will find an elucidatory postscript 
 added at the close of the fourth chapter, which he had 
 perhaps better glance over before beginning the third. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 OF ICE-CKEAM. 
 
 (Continuation of Lecture delivered at London Institution, 
 with added Illustrations from Lectures at Oxford.) 
 
 1. THE statement at the close of the last chapter, 
 doubtless surprising and incredible to many of my readers 
 must, before I reinforce it, be explained as referring only 
 to glaciers visible, at this day, in temperate regions. For 
 of formerly deep and continuous tropical ice, or of exist- 
 ing Arctic ice, and their movements, or powers, I know, 
 and therefore say, nothing.* But of the visible glaciers 
 
 * The following passage, quoted in the ' Geological Magazine' for June 
 of this year, by Mr. Clifton Ward, of Keswick, from a letter of Profes- 
 sor Sedgwick's, dated May 24th, 1842, is of extreme value ; and Mr. 
 Ward's following comments are most reasonable and just : 
 
 " No one will, I trust, be so bold as to affirm that an uninterrupted 
 glacier could ever have extended from Shap Fells to the coast of Holder- 
 ness, and borne along the blocks of granite through the whole distance, 
 without any help from the floating power of water. The supposition 
 involves difficulties tenfold greater than are implied in the phenomenon 
 it pretends to account for. The -glaciers descending through the val- 
 leys of the higher Alps have an enormous transporting power : but there 
 is no such power in a great sheet of ice expanded over a country with- 
 out mountains, and at a nearly dead level." 
 
36 DEUCALION. 
 
 couched upon the visible Alps, two great facts are very 
 clearly ascertainable, which, in my lecture at the London 
 Institution, I asserted intheir simplicity, as follows : 
 
 2. The first great fact to be recognized concerning them 
 is that they are Fluid bodies. Sluggishly fluid, indeed, 
 but definitely and completely so ; and therefore^ they *do 
 not scramble down, nor tumble down, nor crawl down, 
 nor slip down ; but flow down. They do not move like 
 leeches, nor like caterpillars, nor like stones, but like, 
 what they are made of, water. 
 
 The difficulties involved in the theories of Messrs. Croll, Belt, Good- 
 child, and others of the same extreme school, certainly press upon me 
 and I think I may say also upon others of my colleagues increasing- 
 ly, as the country becomes more and more familiar in its features. It 
 is indeed a most startling thought, as one stands upon the eastern bor- 
 ders of the Lake-mountains, to fancy the ice from the Scotch hills 
 stalking boldly across the Solway, marching steadily up the Eden Val- 
 ley, and persuading some of the ice from Shap to join it on an excur- 
 sion over Stainmoor, and bring its boulders with it. 
 
 The outlying northern parts of the Lake-district, and the flat country 
 beyond, have indeed been ravished in many a raid by our Scotch neigh - 
 bours, but it is a question whether, in glacial times, the Cumbrian 
 mountains and Pennine chain had not strength in their protruding icy 
 arms to keep at a distance the ice proceeding from the district of the 
 southern uplands, the mountains of which are not superior in elevation. 
 Let us hope that the careful geological observations which will doubt- 
 less be made in the forthcoming scientific Arctic Expedition will throw 
 much new light on our past glacial period. 
 
 J. CLIFTON WAED. 
 
 KESWICK, April 2Gth, 1875. 
 
HI. OF ICE-CREAM. 
 
 37' 
 
 That is the main fact in their state, and progress, on 
 which all their great phenomena depend. 
 
 Fact first discovered and proved by Professor James 
 Forbes, of Edinburgh, in the year 1842, to the astonish- 
 ment of all the glacier theorists of his time ; fact stren- 
 uously denied, disguised, or confusedly and partially ap- 
 prehended, by all of the glacier theorists of subsequent 
 times, down to our own day ; else there had been* no need 
 for me to tell it you again to-night. 
 
 3. The second fact of which I have to assure you is 
 partly, I believe, new to geologists, and therefore may be 
 of some farther interest to you because of its novelty, 
 though I do not myself care a grain of moraine-dust for 
 the newness of things ; but rather for their oldness ; and 
 wonder more willingly at what my father and grandfather 
 thought wonderful, (as, for instance, that the sun should 
 rise, or a seed grow,) than at any newly- discovered marvel. 
 Nor do I know, any more than I care, whether this that I 
 have to tell you be new or not ; but I did not absolutely 
 know it myself, until lately ; for though I had ventured 
 with some boldness to assert it as a consequence of other 
 facts, I had never been under the bottom of a glacier to 
 look. But, last summer, I was able to cross the dry bed 
 of a glacier, which I had seen flowing, two hundred feet 
 deep, over the same spot, forty years ago. And there I 
 saw, what before I had suspected, that modern glaciers, 
 like modern rivers, were not cutting their beds deeper, 
 but filling them up. These, then, are the two facts I 
 
38 DETTOALION. 
 
 wish to lay distinctly before you this evening, first that 
 glaciers are fluent ; and, secondly, that they are filling up 
 their beds, not cutting *them deeper. 
 
 4. (I.) Glaciers are fluent; slowly, like lava, but dis- 
 tinctly. 
 
 And now I must ask you not to disturb yourselves, as I 
 speak, with bye-thoughts about c the theory of regelation.' 
 It is very interesting to know that if you put two pieces 
 of ice together, they will stick together ; let good Professor 
 Faraday have all the credit of showing us that ; and the 
 human race in general, the discredit of not having known 
 BO much as that, about the substance they have skated upon, 
 dropped through, and eat any quantity of tons of these 
 two or three thousand years. 
 
 It was left, nevertheless, for Mr. Faraday to show them 
 that two pieces of ice will stick together when they touch 
 as two pieces of hot glass will. But the capacity of ice 
 for sticking together no more accounts for the making of 
 a glacier, than the capacity of glass for sticking together 
 accounts for the making of a bottle. The mysteries of 
 crystalline vitrification, indeed, present endless entertain- 
 ment to the scientific inquirer ; but by no theory of vitrifi- 
 cation can he explain to us how the bottle was made narrow 
 at the neck, or dishonestly vacant at the bottom. Those 
 conditions of it are to be explained only by the study of 
 the centrifugal and moral powers to which it has been 
 submitted. 
 
 5, In like manner, I do not doubt but that wonderful 
 
in. OF ICE-CREAM. 39' 
 
 phenomena of congelation, regelation, degelation, and ge- 
 lation pure without preposition, take place whenever a 
 schoolboy makes a snowball ; and that miraculously rapid 
 changes in the structure and temperature of the particles 
 accompany the experiment of producing a star with it on 
 an old gentleman's back. But the principal conditions of 
 either operation are still entirely dynamic. To make your 
 snowball hard, you must squeeze it hard ; and its expan- 
 sion on the recipient surface is owing to a lateral diversion 
 of the impelling forces, and not to its regelatic proper- 
 ties. 
 
 6. Our first business, then, in studying a glacier, is to 
 consider the mode of its original deposition, and the large 
 forces of pressure and fusion brought to bear on it, with 
 their necessary consequences on such a substance as we 
 practically know snow to be, a powder, ductile by wind, 
 compressible by weight ; diminishing by thaw, and hard- 
 ening by time and frost ; a thing which sticks to rough 
 ground, and slips on smooth ; which clings to the branch 
 of a tree, and slides on a slated roof. 
 
 7. Let us suppose, then, to begin with, a volcanic cone 
 in which the crater has been filled, and the temperature 
 cooled, and which is now exposed to its first season of 
 glacial agencies. Then let Plate 1, Fig. 1, represent this 
 mountain, with part of the plans at its foot under an 
 equally distributed depth of a first winter's snow, and 
 place the level of perpetual snow at any point you like 
 for simplicity's sake, I put it halfway up the cone, 
 
4:0 DEUCALION. 
 
 Below this snow-line, all snow disappears in summer; 
 but above it, the higher we ascend, the more of course 
 we find remaining. It is quite wonderful how few feet 
 in elevation make observable difference in the quantity of 
 snow that will lie. This last winter, in crossing the 
 moors of the peak of Derbyshire, I found, on the higher 
 masses of them, that ascents certainly not greater than 
 that at Harrow from the bottom of the hill to the school- 
 house, made all the difference between easy and difficult 
 travelling, by the change in depth of snow. 
 
 8. At the close of the summer, we have then the rem- 
 nant represented in Fig. 2, on which the snows of the 
 ensuing winter take the form in Fig. 3 ; and from this 
 greater heap we shall have remaining a greater remnant, 
 which, supposing 110 wind or other disturbing force modi- 
 fied its form, would appear as at Fig. 4 ; and, under such 
 necessary modification, together with its own deliques- 
 cence, would actually take some such figure as that shown 
 at Fig. 5. 
 
 Now, what is there to hinder the continuance of accu- 
 mulation ? If we cover this heap with another layer of 
 winter's snow (Fig. 6), we see at once that the ultimate 
 condition would be, unless somehow prevented, one of 
 enormous mass, superincumbent on the peak like a co- 
 lossal haystack, and extending far down its sides below the 
 level of the snow-line. 
 
 You are, however, doubtless well aware that no such ac- 
 cumulation as this ever does take place on a mountain-top. 
 
III. OF ICE-CREAM. 
 
 41- 
 
 9. So far from it, the eternal snows do not so much 
 as fill the basins between mountain-tops; but, even in 
 these hollows, form depressed sheets at the bottom of 
 them. The difference between the actual aspect of the 
 Alps, and that which they would present if no arrest of 
 the increasing accumulation on them took place, may be 
 shown before you with the greatest ease ; and in doing so 
 I have, in all humility, to correct a grave error of my 
 own, which strangely enough, has remained undetected, 
 or at least unaccused, in spite of all the animosity pro- 
 voked by my earlier writings. i 
 
 10. When I wrote the first volume of { Modern Paint- 
 ers,' scarcely any single fact was rightly known by any- 
 body, about either the snow or ice of the Alps. Chiefly 
 the snows had been neglected : very few eyes had ever seen 
 the higher snows near ; no foot had trodden the greater 
 number of Alpine summits ; and I had to glean what I 
 needed for my pictorial purposes as best I could, and my 
 best in this case was a blunder. The thing that struck me 
 most, when I saw the Alps myself, was the enormous ac- 
 cumulation of snow on them ; and the way it clung to 
 their steep sides. Well, I said to myself, ( of course it 
 must be as thick as it can stand ; because, as there is an 
 excess which doesn't melt, it would go on building itself 
 up like the Tower of Babel, unless it tumbled off. There 
 must be always, at the end of winter, as much snow on 
 every high summit as it can carry.' 
 
 There must, I said. That is the mathematical method 
 
4:2 DEUCALION. 
 
 of science as opposed to the artistic. Thinking of a thing, 
 and demonstrating, instead of looking at it. Yery fine, 
 and very sure, if you happen to have before you all the 
 elements of thought ; but always very dangerously inferior 
 to the unpretending method of sight for people who have 
 eyes, and can use them. If I had only looked at the snow 
 carefully, I should have seen that it wasn't anywhere as 
 thick as it could stand or lie or, at least, as a hard sub- 
 stance, though deposited in powder, could stand. And 
 then I should have asked myself, with legitimate rational- 
 ism, why it didn't ; and if I had but asked Well, it's 
 
 no matter what perhaps might have happened if I had. I 
 never did. 
 
 11. Let me now show you, practically, how great the 
 error was. Here is a little model of the upper summits of 
 the Bernese range. I shake over them as much flour as 
 they will carry; now I brush it out of the valleys, to repre- 
 sent the melting. Then you see what is left stands in 
 these domes and ridges, representing a mass of snow 
 about six miles deep. That is what the range would 
 be like, however, if the snow stood up as the flour does ; 
 and snow is at least, you will admit, as adhesive as- 
 flour. 
 
 12. But, you will say, the scale is so different, you can't 
 reason from the thing on that scale. A most true objec 
 tion. You cannot ; and therefore I beg you, in like man- 
 ner, not to suppose that Professor Tyndall's experiments 
 on ; a straight prism of ice, four inches long, an inch wide, 
 
III. OF ICE-CREAM. 43 " 
 
 and a little more than an inch in depth," * are conclusive 
 as to the modes of glacier motion. 
 
 In what respect then, we have to ask, would the differ- 
 ence in scale modify the result of the experiment made 
 here on the table, supposing this model was the Jungfrau 
 itself, and the flour supplied by a Cyclopean miller and 
 his men \ 
 
 13. In the first place, the lower beds of a mass six miles 
 deep would be much consolidated by pressure. But would 
 they be only consolidated? Would they be in nowise 
 squeezed out at the sides ? 
 
 The answer depends of course on the nature of flour, 
 and on its conditions of dryness. And you must feel in a 
 moment that, to know what an Alpine range would look 
 like, heaped with any substance whatever, as high as the 
 substance would stand you must lirst ascertain how high 
 the given substance will stand on level ground. You 
 might perhaps heap your Alp high with wheat, not so 
 high with sand, nothing like so high with dough ; and a 
 very thin coating indeed would be the utmost possible re- 
 sult of any quantity whatever of showers of manna, if it 
 had the consistence, as well as the taste, of wafers made 
 with honey. 
 
 14:. It is evident, then, that our first of inquiries bear- 
 ing on the matter before us, must be, How high will snow 
 stand on level ground, in a block or column ? Suppose 
 
 * ' Glaciers of the Alps,' p. 348. 
 
44 DEUCALION. 
 
 you were to plank in a square space, securely twenty 
 feet high thirty fifty; and to fill it with dry snow. 
 How high could you g^t your pillar to stand, when you 
 took away the wooden walls ? and when you reached your 
 limit, or approached it, what would happen ? 
 
 Three more questions instantly propose themselves; 
 namely, What happens to snow under given pressure ? 
 will it under some degrees of pressure change into any- 
 thing else than snow ? and what length of time will it 
 take to effect the change ? 
 
 Hitherto, we have spoken of snow as dry only, and 
 therefore as solid substance, permanent in quantity and 
 quality. You know that it very often is not dry ; and 
 that, on the Alps, in vast masses, it is throughout great 
 part of the year thawing, and therefore diminishing in 
 quantity. 
 
 It matters not the least, to our general inquiry, how 
 much of it is wet, or thawing, or at what times. I merely 
 at present have to introduce these two conditions as ele- 
 ments in the business. It is not dry snow always, but 
 often soppy snow snow and water, that you have to 
 squeeze. And it is not freezing snow always, but very 
 often thawing snow, diminishing therefore in bulk every 
 instant, that you have to squeeze. 
 
 It does not matter, I repeat, to our immediate purpose, 
 when, or how far, these other conditions enter our ground ; 
 but it is best, I think, to put the dots on the i's as we go 
 along. You have heard it stated, hinted, suggested, im- 
 
^1 
 
 HI. OF ICE-CREAM. 45 
 
 plied, or whatever else you like to call it, again and again, 
 by the modern school of glacialists, that the discoveries of 
 James Forbes were anticipated by Rendu. 
 
 15. I have myself more respect for Rendu than any 
 modern glacialist has. lie was a man of de Saussure's . 
 temper, and of more than de Saussure's intelligence ; and 
 if he hadn't had the misfortune to be a bishop, would very 
 certainly have left James Forbes's work a great deal more 
 than cut out for him ; stitched and pretty tightly in 
 most of the seams. But he was a bishop ; and could only 
 examine the glaciers to an episcopic extent ; and guess, the 
 best he could, after that. His guesses are nearly always 
 splendid ; but he must needs sometimes reason as well as 
 guess ; and he reasons himself with beautiful plausibility, 
 ingenuity, and learning, up to the conclusion which he 
 announces as positive that it always freezes on the Alps, 
 even in summer. James Forbes was the first who ascer- 
 tained the fallacy of this episcopal position ; and who an- 
 nounced to our no small astonishment that it always 
 thawed on the Alps, even in winter. 
 
 16. Not superficially of course, nor in all places. But 
 internally, and in a great many places. And you will find 
 it is an ascertained fact the first great one of which we 
 owe the discovery to him that all the year round, you 
 must reason on the masses of aqueous deposit on the Alps 
 as, practically, in a state of squash. Not freezing ice or 
 snow, nor dry ice or snow, but in many places saturated 
 with, everywhere affected by, moisture ; and alwayp 
 
4:6 DEUCALION. 
 
 subject, in enormous masses, to the conditions of change 
 which affect ice or snow at the freezing-point, and not be- 
 low it. Even James Forbes himself scarcely, I think, felt 
 enough the importance of this element of his own discov- 
 eries, in all calculations of glacier motion. He sometimes 
 speaks of his glacier a little too simply as if it were a 
 stream of undiminishing substance, as of treacle or tar, 
 moving under the action of gravity only ; and scarcely 
 enough recognizes the influence of the subsiding languor 
 of its fainting mass, as a constant source of motion ; though 
 nothing can be more accurate than his actual account of 
 its results on the surface of the Mer de Glace, in his fourth 
 letter to Professor Jameson. 
 
 IT. Let me drive the notion well home in your own 
 minds, therefore, before going farther. You may perma- 
 nently secure it, by an experiment easily made by each one 
 of you for yourselves this evening, and that also on the 
 minute and easily tenable scale which is so approved at the 
 Royal Institution ; for in this particular case the material 
 conditions may indeed all be represented in very small 
 compass. Pour a little hot water on a lump of sugar in 
 your teaspoon. You will immediately see the mass thaw, 
 and subside by a series of, in miniature, magnificent and 
 appalling catastrophes, into a miniature glacier, which you 
 can pour over the edge of your teaspoon into your saucer ; 
 and if you will then add a little of the brown sugar of our 
 modern commerce of a slightly sandy character, you 
 may watch t'be rate of the flinty erosion upon the soft silver 
 
III. OF ICE-CKEAM. 47 
 
 of the teaspoon at your ease, and with Professor Ramsay's 
 help, calculate the period of time necessary to wear a hole 
 through the bottom of it. 
 
 I think it would he only tiresome to you if I carried the 
 inquiry farther by progressive analysis. You will, I be- 
 lieve, permit, or even wish me, rather to state summarily 
 what the facts are : their proof, and the process of their 
 discovery, you w T ill find incontrovertibly and finally given 
 in this volume, classical, and immortal in scientific literature 
 which, twenty-fiv-e years ago, my good master Dr. Buck- 
 land ordered me, in his lecture-room at the Ashmolean, to 
 get, as closing all question respecting the nature and cause 
 of glacier movement, James Forbes's ' Travels in the Alps.' 
 
 18. The entire mass of snow and glacier, (the one pass- 
 ing gradually and by infinite modes of transition into the 
 other, over the whole surface of the Alps,) is one great ac- 
 cumulation of ice-cream, poured upon the tops, and flow- 
 ing to the bottoms, of the mountains, under precisely the 
 same special condition of gravity and coherence as the 
 melted sugar poured on the top of a bride-cake; but on a 
 scale which induces forms and accidents of course pecu- 
 liar to frozen water, as distinguished from frozen syrup, 
 and to the scale of Mont Blanc and the Jungfrau, as com- 
 pared to that of a bride-cake. Instead of an inch thick, 
 the ice-cream of the Alps will stand two hundred feet 
 thick, no thicker, anywhere, if it can run off ; but will 
 lie in the hollows like lakes, and clot and cling about the 
 less abrupt slopes in festooned wreaths of rich mass and 
 
4-8 DEUCALION. 
 
 sweeping flow, breaking away, where the steepness becomes 
 intolerable, into crisp precipices and glittering cliffs. 
 
 19. Yet never for an instant motionless never for an in- 
 stant without internal change, through all the gigantic mass, 
 of the relations to each other of every crystal grain. That 
 one which you break now from its wave- edge, and which 
 melts in your hand, has had no rest, day nor night, since 
 it faltered down from heaven when you were a babe at 
 the breast ; and the white cloud that scarcely veils yon- 
 der summit seven-colored in the morning sunshine has 
 strewed it with pearly hoar-frost, which will be on this 
 spot, trodden by the feet of others, in the day when you 
 also will be trodden under feet of men, in your grave. 
 
 20. Of the infinite subtlety, the exquisite constancy of 
 this fluid motion, it is nearly impossible to form an idea 
 in the least distinct. We hear that the ice advances two 
 feet in the day ; and wonder how such a thing can be 
 possible, unless the mass crushed and ground down every- 
 thing before it. But think a little. Two feet in the day 
 is a foot in twelve hours, only an inch in an hour, (or 
 say a little more in the daytime, as less in the night,) 
 and that is maximum motion in mid-glacier. If your 
 Geneva watch is an inch across, it is three inches round, 
 and the minute-hand of it moves three times faster than 
 the fastest ice. Fancy the motion of that hand so slow that 
 it must take three hours to get round the little dial. 
 Between the shores of this vast gulf of hills, the long 
 wave of hastening ice only keeps pace with that lingering 
 
in. OF ICE-CREAM. : 
 
 arrow, in its centfal crest; and that invisible motion 
 fades away upwards through forty years of slackening 
 stream, to the pure light of dawn on yonder stainless sum- 
 mit, on which this morning's snow lies motionless. 
 
 21. And yet, slow as it is, this infinitesimal rate of cur- 
 rent is enough to drain the vastest gorges of the Alps 
 of their snow, as clearly as the sluice of a canal-gate 
 empties a lock. The mountain basin included between the 
 Aiguille Yerte, the Grandes Jorasses, and the Mont 
 Blanc, has an area of about thirty square miles, and only 
 one outlet, little more than a quarter of a mile wide : yet, 
 through this the contents of the entire basin are drained 
 into the valley of Chamounix with perfect steadiness, and 
 cannot possibly fill the basin beyond a certain constant 
 height above the point of overflow. 
 
 Overflow, I say, deliberately; distinguishing always the 
 motion of this true fluid from that of the sand in an hour- 
 glass, or of stones slipping in a heap of shale. But that 
 the nature of this distinction may be entirely conceived 
 by you, 1 must ask you to pause with some attention at 
 this word, to 'flow,' which attention may perhaps be 
 more prudently asked in a separate chapter. 
 3 
 
CHAPTER IT. 
 
 LABITUR, ET LABETUR. 
 
 (Lecture given cut London Institution, continued, with 
 added Illustrations.} 
 
 1. OF course we all know what flowing means. Well, 
 it is to be hoped so ; but I'm not sure. Let us see. The 
 sand of the hour-glass, do you call the motion of that 
 flowing ? 
 
 No. It is only a consistent and measured fall of many 
 unattached particles. 
 
 Or do you call the entrance of a gas through an aper- 
 ture, out of a full vessel into an empty one, flowing ? 
 
 No. That is expansion not flux. 
 
 Or the draught through the keyhole ? No is your 
 answer, still. Let us take instance in water itself. The 
 spring of a fountain, or of a sea breaker into spray. You 
 don't call that flowing ? 
 
 No. 
 
 Nor i\\Qfall of a fountain, or of rain ? 
 
 No. 
 
 Well, the rising of a breaker, the current of water in 
 the hollow shell of it, is that flowing ? No. After it has 
 
IV. LABITUR, ET LABETUK. 51 ^ 
 
 broken rushing up over the shingle, or impatiently ad- 
 vancing on the sand 2 You begin to pause in your 
 
 negative. 
 
 
 
 Drooping back from the shingle then, or ebbing from 
 the sand ? Yes ; flowing, in some places, certainly, now. 
 
 You see how strict and distinct the idea is in our minds. 
 "Will you accept I think yon may, this definition of it ? 
 Flowing is " the motion of liquid or viscous matter over 
 solid matter, under the action of gravity, without any 
 other impelling force." 
 
 2. "Will you accuse me, in pressing this definition on 
 you, of wasting time in mere philological nicety ? Permit 
 me, in the capacity which even the newspapers allow to 
 me, that of a teacher of expression, to answer you, as 
 often before now, that philological nicety is philosophical 
 nicety. See the importance of it here. I said a glacier 
 flowed. But it remains a question whether it does not also 
 spring, whether it can rise as a fountain, no less than 
 descend as a stream. 
 
 For, broadly, there are two methods in which either a 
 stream or glacier moves. 
 
 The first, by withdrawing a part of its mass in front, 
 the vacancy left by which, another part supplies from 
 behind. 
 
 That is the method of a continuous stream, perpetual 
 deduction,* by what precedes, of what follows. 
 
 * "Ex quo ilia adinirabilis a majoribus aquas facta deductio est." 
 Cic. de Div., 1, 44. 
 
52 DEUCALION. 
 
 The second method of motion is when the mass that is 
 behind, presses, or is poured in upon, the masses before. 
 That is the way in which a cataract falls into a pool, or a 
 fountain into a basin. 
 
 Now, in the first case, you have catenary curves, or else 
 curves of traction, going down the stream. In the second 
 case, you have irregularly concentric curves, and ripples 
 of impulse and compression, succeeding each other round 
 the pool. 
 
 3. Now the Mer de Glace is deduced down its narrow 
 channel, like a river ; and the Glacier des Bossons is de- 
 duced down its steep ravine ; and both were once inject- 
 ed into a pool of ice in the valley below, as the Glacier of 
 the Rhone is still. Whereupon, observe, if a stream falls 
 into a basin level-lipped all round you know when it 
 runs over it must be pushed over lifted over. But if ice 
 is thrown into a heap in a plain, you can't tell, without the 
 closest observation, how violently it is pushed from behind, 
 or how softly it is diffusing itself in front ; and I had 
 never set my eyes or wits to ascertain where compression 
 in the mass ceased, and diffusion began, because I thought 
 Forbes had done everything that had to be done in the 
 matter. But in going over his work again I find he has 
 left just one thing to be still explained; and that one 
 chances to be left to me to show you this evening, because, 
 by a singular and splendid Nemesis, in the obstinate rejec- 
 tion of Forbes's former conclusively simple experiments, 
 and in the endeavour to substitute others of his own, Pro- 
 
IV. LABITUR, ET LABETUB. 5# 
 
 fessor Tyndall has confused himself to the extreme point 
 of not distinguishing these two conditions of deductive 
 and impulsive flux. His incapacity of drawing, and ig- 
 norance of perspective, prevented him from constructing 
 his diagrams either clearly enough to show him his own 
 mistakes, or prettily enough to direct the attention of his 
 friends to them ; and they luckily remain to us, in their 
 absurd immortality. 
 
 4. Forbes poured viscous substance in layers down a 
 trough ; let the stream harden ; cut it into as many sections 
 as were required ; and showed, in permanence, the actual 
 conditions of such viscous motion. Eager to efface the 
 memory of these conclusive experiments, Professor Tyn- 
 dall ('Glaciers of the Alps,' page 383) substituted this 
 literally c superficial ' one of his own. He stamped circles 
 on the top of a viscous current ; found, as it flowed, that 
 they were drawn into ovals ; but had not wit to con- 
 sider, or sense to see, whether the area of the circle was 
 enlarged or diminished or neither during its change 
 in shape. He jumped, like the rawest schoolboy, to 
 the conclusion that a circle, becoming an oval, must 
 necessarily be compressed ! You don't compress a 
 globe of glass when you blow it into a soda-water bottle* 
 do you ? 
 
 5. But to reduce Professor TyndalPs problem into 
 terms. Let A F, Fig. 3 (page 54), be the side of a 
 stream of any substance whatever, and a f the middle of 
 it ; and let the particles at the middle move twice as fast as 
 
54: 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 FIG. 3. 
 
 the particles at the sides. Now we 
 cannot study all the phenomena 
 of fluid motion in one diagram, 
 nor any one phenomenon of fluid 
 motion but by progressive dia- 
 grams ; and this first one only 
 shows the changes of form 
 which would take place in a sub- 
 stance which moved with uni- 
 form increase of rapidity from 
 side to centre. No fluid sub- 
 stance would so move ; but you 
 can only trace the geometrical 
 facts step by step, from uniform 
 increase to accelerated increase. 
 Let the increase of rapidity, 
 therefore, first be supposed uni- 
 form. Then, while the point A 
 moves to B, the point a moves to 
 6', and any points once interme- 
 diate in a right line between A and 
 <z, will now be intermediate in a 
 right line between JB and c, and 
 their places determinable by 
 verticals from each to each. 
 
 I need not be tedious in farther 
 describing the figure. Suppose 
 A I a square mile of the sub- 
 
IV. LABITUR, ET LABETUK. 55 
 
 stance, and the origin of motion on the line A a. Then 
 when the point A lias arrived at B, the point B has arrived 
 at C, the point a at c, and the point b at d, and the mile 
 square, A , has become the mile rhombic, B d, of the 
 same area ; and if there were a circle drawn in the square 
 A &, it will become the fat ellipse in B d, and thin ellipse 
 in C yj successively. 
 
 6. Compressed, thinks Professor Tyndall, one way, and 
 stretched the other ! 
 
 But the Professor has never so much as understood 
 what ' stretching' means. He thinks that ice won't 
 stretch ! Does he suppose treacle, or oil, will f The 
 brilliant natural philosopher has actually, all through his 
 two books on glaciers, confused viscosity with elasticity ! 
 You can stretch a piece of Indian-rubber, but you can 
 only diffuse treacle, or oil, or water. 
 
 " But you can draw these out into a narrow stream, 
 whereas you cannot pull the ice ? " 
 
 No ; neither can you pull water, can you ? In com- 
 pressing any substance, you can apply any force you like ; 
 but in extending it, you can only apply force less than 
 that with which its particles cohere. You can pull honey 
 into a thin string, when it comes out of the comb ; let it 
 be candied, and you can't pull it into a thin string. Does 
 that make it less a viscous substance ? You can't stretch 
 mortar either. It cracks even in the hod, as it is heaped. 
 Is it, therefore, less fluent or manageable in the mass ? 
 
 7. Whereas the curious fact of the matter is, that, in 
 
56 DEUCALION. 
 
 precise contrariety to Mr. Tyndall's idea ? ice, (glacier ice, 
 that is to say,) will stretch ; and that treacle or water 
 won't! and that's just*the plague of dealing with the 
 whole glacier question that the incomprehensible, unten- 
 able, indescribable ice will both squeeze and open ; and 
 is slipping through your fingers all the time besides, by 
 melting away. You can't deal with it as a simple fluid ; 
 and still less as a simple solid. And instead of having 
 less power to accommodate itself to the irregularities of 
 its bed than water, it has much more; a great deal more 
 of it will subside into a deep place, and ever so much of 
 it melt in passing over a shallow one ; and the centre, at 
 whatever rate it moves, will supply itself by the exhaus- 
 tion of the sides, instead of raging round, like a stream in 
 back-water. 
 
 8. However, somehow, I must contrive to deal at least 
 with the sure fact that the velocity of it is progressively 
 greater from the sides to the centre, and from the bottom 
 to the surface. 
 
 Now it is the last of these progressive increments which 
 is of chief importance to my present purpose. 
 
 For my own conviction on the matter; mind, not 
 theory, for a man can always avoid constructing theories, 
 but cannot possibly help his convictions, and may some- 
 times feel it right to state them, my own conviction is 
 that the ice, when it is of any considerable depth, no 
 more moves over the bottom than the lower particles of a 
 running stream of honey or treacle move over a plate 
 
IV. LABITTJR, ET LABETUK. 
 
 but that, in entire rest at the bottom, except so far as it 
 is moved by dissolution, it increases in velocity to the sur- 
 face in a curve of the nature of a parabola, or a logarith- 
 mic curve, capable of being infinitely prolonged, on the 
 supposition of the depth of the ice increasing to in- 
 finity. 
 
 9. But it is now my fixed principle not to care what I 
 think, when a fact can be ascertained by looking, or meas- 
 uring. So, not having any observations of my own on 
 this matter, I seek what help may be had elsewhere ; and 
 find in the eleventh chapter of Professor Tyndall's' i Gla- 
 ciers of the Alps,' two most valuable observations, made 
 under circumstances of considerable danger, calmly en- 
 countered by the author, and grumblingly by his guide, 
 danger consisting in the exposure to a somewhat close and 
 well-supported fire of round and grape from the gla- 
 cier of the Geant, which objected to having its velocity 
 measured. But I find the relation of these adventures so 
 much distract me from the matter in hand, that I must 
 digress briefly into some notice of the general literary 
 structure of this remarkable book. 
 
 10. Professor Tyndall never fails to observe with com- 
 placency, and to describe to his approving readers, how 
 unclouded the luminous harmonies of his reason, imagina- 
 tion, and fancy remained, under conditions which, he 
 rightly concludes, would have been disagreeably exciting, 
 or even distinctly disturbing, to less courageous persons. 
 And indeed I confess, for my own part, that my success- 
 
58 DEUCALION. 
 
 fullest observations have always been made while lying 
 all ray length on the softest grass I could tind ; and after 
 assuring myself with extreme caution that if I chanced to 
 go to sleep, (which in the process of very profound obser- 
 vations I usually do, at least of an afternoon,) I am in no 
 conceivable peril beyond that of an ant-bite. Neverthe- 
 less, the heroic Professor does not, it seems to me, suffi- 
 ciently recognize the universality of the power of English, 
 French, German, and Italian gentlemen to retain their 
 mental faculties under circumstances even of more serious 
 danger than the crumbling of a glacier moraine ; and to 
 think with quickness and precision, when the chances of 
 death preponderate considerably, or even conclusively, 
 over those of life. Nor does Professor Tyndall seem to 
 have observed that the gentlemen possessing this very ad- 
 mirable power in any high degree, do not usually think 
 their own emotions, or absence of emotions, proper subjects 
 of printed history, and public demonstration. 
 
 11. Nevertheless, when a national philosopher, under 
 showers of granite grape, places a stake and auger against 
 his heart, buttons his coat upon them, and cuts himself an 
 oblique staircase up a wall of ice, nearly vertical, to a 
 height of forty feet from the bottom ; and there, unbut- 
 toning his coat, pierces the ice with his auger, drives in 
 his stake, and descends without injury, though during the 
 whole operation his guide " growls audibly," we are bound 
 to admit his claim to a scientific Victoria Cross or at 
 least crosslet, and even his right to walk about in our 
 
IV. LABITUR, ET LABETUR. 5 
 
 London drawing-rooms in a gracefully cruciferous cos- 
 tume ; while I have no doubt also that many of his friends 
 will be interested in such metaphysical particulars and 
 examples of serene mental analysis as he may choose to 
 give them in the course of his autobiography. But the 
 Professor ought more clearly to understand that scientific 
 writing is one thing, and pleasant autobiography another ; 
 and though an officer may not be able to give an account 
 of a battle without involving some statement of his per- 
 sonal share in it, a scientific observer might with entire 
 ease, and much convenience to the public, have published 
 4 The Glaciers of the Alps ' in 'two coincident, but not co- 
 alescing, branches like the glaciers of the Giant and Le- 
 chaud ; and that out of the present inch and a half thick- 
 ness of the volume, an inch and a quarter might at once 
 have been dedicated to the Giant glacier of the autobiog- 
 raphy, and the remaining quarter of an inch to the minor 
 current of scientific observation, which, like the Glacier 
 de Lechaud, appears to be characterized by " the compar- 
 ative shallowness of the upper portion," * and by its final 
 reduction to " a driblet measuring about one-tenth of its 
 former transverse dimensions." 
 
 12. It is true that the book is already divided into two 
 portions, the one described as " chiefly narrative," and 
 the other as " chiefly scientific." The chiefly narrative 
 portion is, indeed, full of very interesting matter fully jus- 
 
 * 'Glaciers of the Alps,' p. 288. 
 
60 DEUCALION. 
 
 tif ying its title ; as, for instance, " We tumbled so often 
 in the soft snow, and our clothes and boots were so full of 
 it, that we thought we iifight as well try the sitting posture 
 in sliding down. We did so, and descended with extra- 
 ordinary velocity" (p. 116). Or again: "We had some 
 tea, which had been made at the Montanvert, and carried 
 up to the Grand Mulets in a bottle. My memory of that 
 tea is not pleasant " (p. 73). Or in higher strains of 
 scientific wit and pathos : " As I looked at the objects 
 which had now become so familiar to me, I felt that, 
 though not viscous, the ice did not lack the quality of ad- 
 hesiveness, and I felt a little sad at the prospect of bidding 
 it so soon farewell." 
 
 13. But the merely romantic readers of this section, 
 rich though it be in sentiment and adventure, will find 
 themselves every now and then arrested by pools, as it 
 were, of almost impassable scientific depth such as the 
 description of a rock " evidently to be regarded as an as- 
 semblage of magnets, or as a single magnet full of conse- 
 quent points " (p. 140). While, on the other hand, when 
 in the course of my own work, finding myself pressed for 
 time, and eager to collect every scrap of ascertained data 
 accessible to me, I turn hopefully to the eleventh chapter 
 of the " chiefly scientific " section of the volume, I think 
 it hard upon me that I must read through three pages of 
 narrative describing the Professor's dangers and address, 
 before I can get at the two observations which are the sum 
 of the scientific contents of the chapter, yet to the first of 
 
i 
 
 IV. LABITTJR, ET LABETUR. 
 
 which " unfortunately some uncertainty attached itself," 
 and the second of which is wanting in precisely the two 
 points which would have made it serviceable. First, it 
 does not give the rate of velocity at the base, but five feet 
 above the base ; and, secondly, it gives only three meas- 
 urements of motion. Had it given four, we could have 
 drawn the curve : but we can draw any curve we like 
 through three points. 
 
 14. I will try the three points, however, with the most 
 probable curve; but this being a tedious business, will re- 
 serve it for a separate chapter, which readers may skip if 
 they choose : and insert, for the better satisfaction of any 
 who may have been left too doubtful by the abrupt close 
 of my second chapter, this postscript, written the other 
 day after watching the streamlets on the outlying fells of 
 Shap. 
 
 15. Think what would be the real result, if any stream 
 among our British hills at this moment were cutting its 
 bed deeper. 
 
 In order to do so, it must of course annually be able to 
 remove the entire zone of debris moved down to its bed 
 from the hills on each side of it and somewhat more. 
 
 Take any Yorkshire or Highland stream you happen to 
 know, for example ; and think what quantity of debris 
 must be annually moved, on the hill surfaces which feed 
 its waters. Remember that a lamb cannot skip on their 
 slopes, but it stirs with its hoofs some stone or grain of 
 dust which will more or less roll or move downwards. 
 
62 DEUCALION. 
 
 That no shower of rain can fall no wreath of snow melt, 
 without moving some quantity of dust downwards. And 
 that no frost can breaik up, without materially loosening 
 some vast ledges of crag, and innumerable minor ones ; 
 nor without causing the fall of others as vast, or as innu- 
 merable. Make now some effort to conceive the quantity 
 of rock and dust moved annually, lower, past any given 
 level traced on the flanks of any considerable mountain 
 stream, over the area it drains say, for example, in the 
 basin of the Ken above Kendal, or of the Wharfe above 
 Bolton Abbey. 
 
 16. Then, if either of those streams were cutting their 
 beds deeper, that quantity of rock, and something more, 
 must be annually carried down by their force, past Ken- 
 dal bridge, and Bolton stepping-stones. Which you will 
 find would occasion phenomena very astonishing indeed 
 to the good people of Kendal and Wharfedale. 
 
 17. " But it need not be carried down past the stepping- 
 stones," you say "it maybe deposited somewhere above." 
 Yes, that is precisely so ; and wherever it 'Is deposited, 
 the bed of the stream, or of some tributary streamlet, is 
 being raised. Nobody notices the raising of it ; another 
 stone or two among the wide shingle a tongue of sand 
 an inch or two broader at the burnside who can notice 
 that? Four or five years pass; a flood comes; and 
 Farmer So-and-So's field is covered with slimy ruin. And 
 Farmer So-and-So's field is an inch higher than it was, for 
 evermore but who notices that ? The shingly stream has 
 
IV. LABITUR, ET LABETTJK. 63 / 
 
 gone back into its bed : here and there a whiter stone or 
 two gleams among its pebbles, but next year the water 
 stain has darkened them like the rest, and the bed is just 
 as far below the level of the field as it was. And your 
 careless geologist says, ' what a powerful stream it is, and 
 how deeply it is cutting its bed through the glen ! ' 
 
 18. Now, carry out this principle for existing glaciers. 
 If the glaciers of Chamouni were cutting their beds deeper, 
 either the annual line of debris of the Mont Blanc range 
 on its north side must be annually carried down past the 
 Pont Pelissier ; or the valley of Chamouni must be in 
 process of filling up, while the ravines at its sides are 
 being cut down deeper. Will any geologist, supporting 
 the modern glacial theories, venture to send me, for the 
 next number of Deucalion, his idea, on this latter, by him 
 inevitable, hypothesis, of the profile of the bottom of the 
 Glacier des Bossons, a thousand years ago ; and a thou- 
 sand years hence ? 
 
CHAPTER Y. 
 
 THE VALLEY OF CLUSE. 
 
 1. WHAT strength of faith men have in each other ; and 
 how impossible it is for them to be independent in thought, 
 however hard they try ! Not that they ever ought to be ; 
 but they should know, better than they do, the incum- 
 brance that the false notions of others are to them. 
 
 Touching this matter of glacial grinding action ; you 
 will find every recent writer taking up, without so much as 
 a thought of questioning it, the notion adopted at first care- 
 less sight of a glacier stream by some dull predecessor of 
 all practical investigation that the milky colour of it is 
 all produced by dust ground off the rocks at the bottom. 
 And it never seems to occur to any one of the Alpine Club 
 men, who are boasting perpetually of their dangers from 
 falling stones ; nor even to professors impeded in their 
 most important observations by steady fire of granite 
 grape, that falling stones may probably knock their edges 
 off when they strike ; and that moving banks and fields of 
 moraine, leagues long, and leagues square, of which every 
 stone is shifted a foot forward every day on a surface 
 melting beneath them, must in such shifting be liable to 
 attrition enough to produce considerably more dust, and 
 
V. THE VALLEY OF CLUSE. 65' 
 
 that of the finest kind, than any glacier stream carries 
 down with it not to speak of processes of decomposition 
 accelerated, on all surfaces liable to them, by alternate 
 action of frost and fierce sunshine. 
 
 2. But I have not, as yet, seen any attempts to deter- 
 mine even the first data on which the question of attrition 
 must be dealt with. I put it, in simplicity, at the close of 
 last chapter. But, in its full extent, the inquiry ought not 
 to be made merely of the bed of the Glacier des Bossons ; 
 but of the bed of the Arve, from the Col de Balme to 
 Geneva ; in which the really important points for study 
 are the action of its waters at Pont Pelissier ; at the falls 
 below Servoz ; at the portal of Cluse ; and at the north- 
 ern end of the slope of the Saleve. 
 
 3. For these four points are the places where, if at all, 
 sculptural action is really going on upon its bed : at those 
 points, if at all, the power of the Second JEra, the sera of 
 sculpture, is still prolonged into this human day of ours. 
 As also it is at the rapids and falls of all swiftly descend- 
 ing rivers. The one vulgar and vast deception of Niagara 
 has blinded the entire race of modern geologists to the 
 primal truth of mountain form, namely, that the rapids 
 and cascades of their streams indicate, not points to which 
 the falls have receded, but places where the remains of 
 once colossal cataracts still exist, at the places eternally 
 (in human experience) appointed for the formation of such 
 cataracts, by the form and hardness of the local rocks. 
 The rapids of the Amazon, the Nile, and the Rhine, obey 
 
66 DEUCALION. 
 
 precisely the same law as the little Wharfe at its Strid, or 
 as the narrow i rivus aquas ' which, under a bank of straw- 
 berries in my own tiny garden, has given me perpetual 
 trouble to clear its channel of the stones brought down in 
 flood, while, just above, its place of picturesque cascade, 
 is determined for it by a harder bed of Coniston flags, and 
 the little pool, below that cascade, never encumbered with 
 stones at all. 
 
 4. Now the bed of the Arve, from the crest of the Col 
 de Balme to Geneva, has a fall of about 5,000 feet ; and 
 if any young Oxford member of the Alpine Club is mind- 
 ed to do a piece of work this vacation, which in his old 
 age, when he comes to take stock of himself, and edit the 
 fragments of himself, as I am now sorrowfully doing, he 
 will be glad to have done, (even though he risked neither 
 his own nor any one else's life to do it,) let him survey 
 that bed accurately, and give a profile of it, with the 
 places and natures of emergent rocks, and the ascertain- 
 able depths and dates of alluvium cut through, or in course 
 of deposition. 
 
 5. After doing this piece of work carefully, he will 
 probably find some valuable ideas in his head concerning 
 the proportion of the existing stream of the Arve to that 
 which once flowed from the glacier which deposited the 
 moraine of Les Tines ; and again, of that torrent to the 
 infinitely vaster one of the glacier that deposited the great 
 moraine of St. Gervais ; and finally of both, to the cliffs of 
 Cluse, which have despised and resisted them. And ideas 
 
V. THE VALLEY OF CLUSE. 07 
 
 which, after good practical work, he finds in his head, are 
 likely to be good for something : but he must not seek for 
 them ; all thoughts worth having come like sunshine, 
 whether we will or no : the thoughts not worth having, 
 are the little lucifer matches we strike ourselves. 
 
 6. And 1 hasten the publication of this number of 
 Deucalion, to advise any reader who cares for the dreary 
 counsel of an old-fashioned Alpine traveller, to see the 
 valley of Cluse this autumn, if he may, rather than any 
 other scene among the Alps ; for if not already destroyed, 
 it must be so, in a few months more, by the railway which 
 is to be constructed through it, for the transport of Euro- 
 pean human diluvium. The following note of my last 
 walk there, written for my autumn lectures, may be 
 worth preserving among the shingle of my scattered 
 work. 
 
 7. 1 had been, for six months in Italy, never for a sin- 
 gle moment quit of liability to interruption of thought. 
 By day or night, whenever I was awake, in the streets of 
 every city, there were entirely monstrous and inhuman 
 noises in perpetual recurrence. The violent rattle of car- 
 riages, driven habitually in brutal and senseless haste, or 
 creaking and thundering under loads too great for their 
 cattle, urged on by perpetual roars and shouts : wild bel- 
 lowing and howling of obscene wretches far into the 
 night : clashing of church bells, in the morning, dashed 
 into reckless discord, from twenty towers at once, as if: 
 rung by devils to defy and destroy the quiet of God's si 
 
63 DEUCALION. 
 
 and mock the laws of His harmony : filthy, stridulous 
 shrieks and squeaks, reaching for miles into the quiet air, 
 from the railroad stations at every gate : and the vocif- 
 eration, endless, and frantic, of a passing populace whose 
 every word was in mean passion, or in unclean jest. Liv- 
 ing in the midst of this, and of vulgar sights more horri- 
 ble than the sounds, for six months, I found myself sud- 
 denly, as in a dream walking again alone through the 
 valley of Cluse, unchanged since I knew it first, when 
 I was a boy of fifteen, quite forty years ago ; and in 
 perfect quiet, and with the priceless completion of quiet, 
 that I was without fear of any outcry or base disturbance 
 of it. 
 
 8. But presently, as I walked, the calm was deepened, 
 instead of interrupted, by a murmur first low, as of bees, 
 and then rising into distinct harmonious chime of deep 
 bells, ringing in true cadences but I could not tell where. 
 The cliffs on each side of the valley of Cluse vary from 
 1,500 to above 2,000 feet in height ; and, without abso- 
 lutely echoing the chime, they so accepted, prolonged, and 
 diffused it, that at first I thought it came from a village 
 high up and far away among the hills ; then presently it 
 came down to me as if from above the cliff under which I 
 was walking ; then I turned about and stood still, wonder- 
 ing ; for the whole valley was filled with the sweet sound, 
 entirely without local or conceivable origin : and only 
 after some twenty minutes' walk, the depth of tones, grad- 
 ually increasing, showed me that they came from the 
 
V. THE VALLEY OF CLUSE. 69 
 
 tower of Maglans in front of me ; but when I actually 
 got into the village, the cliffs on the other side so took up 
 the ringing, that I again thought for some moments I was 
 wrong. 
 
 Perfectly beautiful, all the while, the sound, and ex- 
 quisitely varied, from ancient bells of perfect tone and 
 series, rung with decent and joyful art. 
 
 " What are the bells ringing so to-day for, it is no 
 fete ? " I asked of a woman who stood watching at a gar- 
 den gate. 
 
 " For a baptism, sir." 
 
 And so I went on, and heard them fading back, and 
 lost among the same bewildering answers of the mountain 
 air. 
 
 9. Now that half-hour's walk was to me, and I think 
 would have been to every man of ordinarily well-trained 
 human and Christian feeling I do not say merely worth 
 the whole six months of my previous journey in Italy ; 
 it was a reward for the endurance and horror of the six 
 months' previous journey; but, as many here may not 
 know what the place itself is like, and may think I am 
 making too much of a little pleasant bell-ringing, I must 
 tell you what the valley of Cluse is in itself. 
 
 10. Of ' Cluse,' the closed valley, not a ravine, but 
 a winding plain, between very great mountains, rising for 
 the most part in cliffs but cliffs which retire one behind 
 the other above slopes of pasture and forest. ( Now as I 
 am writing this passage in a country parsonage of Cow- 
 
70 DEUCALION. 
 
 ley, near Uxbridge, I am first stopped by a railroad 
 whistle two minutes and a half long,* and then by the 
 rumble and grind of a slow train, which prevents me 
 from hearing my own words, or being able to think, so 
 that I must simply wait for ten minutes, till it is past.) 
 
 It being past, I can go on. Slopes of pasture and for- 
 est, I said, mingled with arable land, in a way which you 
 can only at present see in Savoy ; that is to say, you have 
 walnut and fruit trees of great age, mixed with oak, 
 beech, and pine, as they all choose to grow il seems as if 
 the fruit trees planted themselves as freely as the pines. 
 I imagine this to be the consequence of a cultivation of 
 very ancient date under entirely natural laws ; if a plum- 
 tree or a walnut planted itself, it was allowed to grow ; if 
 it came in the way of anything or anybody, it would be 
 cut down; but on the whole the trees grew as they liked; 
 and the fields were cultivated round them in such spaces 
 as the rocks left ; ploughed, where the level admitted, 
 with a ploughshare lightly constructed, but so huge that 
 it looks more like the beak of a trireme than a plough, 
 two oxen forcing it to heave aside at least two feet depth 
 of the light earth ; no fences anywhere ; winding field 
 walks, or rock paths, from cottage to cottage ; these last 
 not of the luxurious or trim Bernese type, nor yet com- 
 fortless chalets; but sufficient for orderly and virtuous 
 life : in outer aspect, beautiful exceedingly, just because 
 
 * Counted by watch, for I knew by its manner it would last, and 
 measured it. 
 
V. THE VALLEY OF CLTJSE. 71 
 
 their steep roofs, white walls, and wandering vines had 
 no pretence to perfectness, but were wild as their hills. 
 All this pastoral country lapped into inlets among the 
 cliffs, vast belts of larch and pine cresting or clouding the 
 higher ranges, whose green meadows change as they rise, 
 into mossy slopes, and fade away at last among the grey 
 ridges of rock that are soonest silvered with autumnal 
 snow. 
 
 11. The ten-miles length of this valley, between Cluse 
 and St. Martin's, include more scenes of pastoral beauty 
 and mountain power than all the poets of the world have 
 imagined ; and present more decisive and trenchant ques- 
 tions respecting mountain structure than all the philoso- 
 phers of the world could answer : yet the only object 
 which occupies the mind of the European travelling pub- 
 lic, respecting it, is to get through it, if possible, under 
 the hour. 
 
 12. I spoke with sorrow, deeper than my words at- 
 tempted to express, in my first lecture, of the blind rush- 
 ing of our best youth through the noblest scenery of the 
 Alps, without once glancing at it, that they might amuse, 
 or kill, themselves on their snow. That the claims of all 
 sweet pastoral beauty, of all pious domestic life, for a 
 moment's pause of admiration or sympathy, should be un- 
 felt, in the zest and sparkle of boy's vanity in summer 
 play, may be natural at all times ; and inevitable while 
 our youth remain ignorant of art, and defiant of religion ; 
 but that, in the present state of science, when every eye 
 
72 DEUCALION. 
 
 is busied with the fires in the Moon and the shadows in 
 the Sun, no eye should occupy itself with the ravines of 
 its own world, nor with the shadows which the sun casts 
 on the cliffs of them ; that the simplest, I do not say 
 problems, but bare facts, of structure, should still be un- 
 represented, and the outmost difficulties of rock history 
 untouched ; while dispute, and babble, idler than the 
 chafed pebbles of the wavering beach, clink, jar, and jan- 
 gle on from year to year in vain, surely this, in our 
 great University, I am bound to declare to be blameful ; 
 and to ask you, with more than an artist's wonder, why 
 this fair valley of Cluse is now closed indeed, and forsaken, 
 "clasped like a missal shut where Paynims pray;" and, 
 with all an honest inquirer's indignation, to challenge in 
 the presence of our Master of Geology, happily one of its 
 faithful and true teachers,* the Speakers concerning the 
 Earth, the geologists, not of England only, but of 
 Europe and America, either to explain to you the struc- 
 ture or sculpture of this f renownedest cliff in all the Alps, 
 under which Tell leaped ashore ; or to assign valid reason 
 for the veins in the pebbles which every Scotch lassie 
 wears for her common jewellery. 
 
 * Mr. Prestwich. I have to acknowledge, with too late and vain 
 gratitude, the kindness and constancy of the assistance given me, on all 
 occasions when I asked it, by his lamented predecessor in the Oxford 
 Professorship of Geology, Mr. Phillips. 
 
 f The cliff between Fluelen and Brunnen, on the lake of Uri, of 
 which Turner's drawing was exhibited at this lecture. 
 
CHAPTER VL 
 
 OF BUTTER AND HONEY. 
 
 1. THE last chapter, being properly only a continuation 
 of the postscript to the fourth, has delayed me so long 
 from my question as to ice-curves, that I cannot get room 
 for the needful diagrams and text in this number ; which 
 is perhaps fortunate, for I believe it will be better first to 
 explain to the reader more fully why the ascertainment of 
 this curve of vertical motion is so desirable. 
 
 To which explanation, very clear definition of some 
 carelessly used terms will be essential. 
 
 2. The extremely scientific Professor Tyndall always 
 uses the terms Plastic, and Viscous, as if they were 
 synonymous. But they express entirely different condi- 
 tions of matter The first is the term proper to be used 
 of the state of butter, on which you can stamp whatever 
 you choose ; and the stamp will stay ; the second ex- 
 presses that of honey, on which you can indeed stamp 
 what you choose ; but the stamp melts away forthwith. 
 
 And of viscosity itself there are two distinct varieties 
 one glutinous, or gelatinous, like that of treacle or tapioca 
 soup ; and the other simply adhesive, like that of mercury 
 
 or melted lead. 
 4 
 
74 DEUCALION. 
 
 And of both plasticity and viscosity there are infinitely 
 various degrees in different substances, from the perfect 
 and absolute plasticityof gold, to the fragile, and imper- 
 fect, but to man more precious than any quality of gold, 
 plasticity of clay, and, most precious of all, the blunt and 
 dull plasticity of dough ; and again, from the vigorous 
 and binding viscosity of stiff glue, to the softening vis- 
 cosity of oil, and tender viscosity of old wine. I am 
 obliged therefore to ask my readers to learn, and observe 
 very carefully in our future work, these following defini- 
 tions. 
 
 Plastic. Capable of change of form under external 
 force, without any loss of continuity of substance; and of 
 retaining afterwards the form imposed on it. 
 
 Gold is the most perfectly plastic substance we com- 
 monly know ; clay, butter, etc., being more coarsely and 
 ruggedly plastic, and only in certain consistencies or at 
 certain temperatures. 
 
 Viscous. Capable of change of form tinder external 
 force, but not of retaining the form imposed / being 
 languidly obedient to the force of gravity, and necessarily 
 declining to the lowest possible level, as lava, treacle, or 
 honey. 
 
 Ductile. Capable of being extended by traction with- 
 out loss of continuity of substance. Gold is both plastic 
 and ductile ; but clay, plastic only, not ductile ; while 
 most melted metals are ductile only, but not plastic. 
 
 Malleable. Plastic only under considerable force. 
 
VI. OF BUTTER AND HONEY. 75 
 
 3. We must never let any of these words entangle, as 
 necessary, the idea belonging to another. 
 
 A plastic substance is not necessarily ductile, though 
 gold is both; a viscous substance is not necessarily 
 ductile, though treacle is both ; and the quality of elas- 
 ticity, though practically inconsistent with the character 
 either of a plastic body, or a viscous one, may enter both 
 the one and the other as a gradually superadded or inter- 
 ferent condition, in certain states of congelation ; as in 
 indian-rubber, glass, sealing-wax, asphalt, or basalt. 
 
 I think the number of substances I have named in this 
 last sentence, and the number of entirely different states 
 which in an instant will suggest themselves to you, as 
 characteristic of each, at, and above, its freezing or solidi- 
 fying point, may show at once how careful we should be 
 in defining the notion attached to the words we use ; and 
 how inadequate, without specific limitation and qualifica- 
 tion, any word must be, to express all the qualities of any 
 given substance. 
 
 4. But, above all substances that can be proposed for 
 definition of quality, glacier ice is the most defeating. 
 For it is practically plastic ; but actually viscous ; and 
 that to the full extent. You can beat or hammer it, like 
 gold ; and it will stay in the form you have beaten it into, 
 for a time ; and so long a time, that, on all instant 
 occasions of plasticity, it is practically plastic. But only 
 have patience to wait long enough, and it will run down 
 out of the form you have stamped on it, as honey does 
 
76 DEUCALION. 
 
 so that, actually and inherently, it is viscous, and not 
 plastic. 
 
 5. Here then, at last,*! have got Forbes's discovery and 
 assertion put into accurately intelligible terms; very in- 
 credible terms, I doubt not, to most readers. 
 
 There is not the smallest hurry, however, needful in be- 
 lieving them : only let us understand clearly what it is we 
 either believe or deny ; and in the meantime, return to our 
 progressive conditions of snow on the simplest supposable 
 terms, as shown in my first plate. 
 
 6. On a conical mountain, such as that represented in 
 Fig. 6, w r e are embarrassed by having to calculate the sub- 
 traction by avalanche down the slopes. Let us therefore 
 take rather, for examination, a place where the snow can 
 lie quiet. 
 
 Let Fig. 7, Plate I., represent a hollow in rocks at the 
 summit of a mountain above the line of perpetual snow, 
 the lowest watershed being at the level indicated by the 
 dotted line. Then the snow, once fallen in this hollow, 
 can't get out again ; but a little of it is taken away every 
 year, partly by the heat of the ground below, partly by 
 surface sunshine and evaporation, partly by filtration of 
 water from above, while it is also saturated with water in 
 thaw-time, up to the level of watershed. Consequently it 
 must subside every year in the middle ; and, as the mass 
 remains unchanged, the same quantity must be added every 
 year at the top, the excess being always, of course, blown 
 away, or dropped off, or thawed above, in the year it falls. 
 
VI. OF BUTTER AND HONEY. 77^ 
 
 7. Hence the entire mass will be composed, at any 
 given time, of a series of beds somewhat in the arrange- 
 ment given in Fig. 8 ; more remaining of each year's 
 snow in proportion to its youth, and very little indeed of 
 the lowest and oldest bed. 
 
 It must subside, I say, every year ; but how much is 
 involved, of new condition, in saying this ! Take the ques- 
 tion in the simplest possible terms ; and let Fig. 9 repre- 
 sent a cup or crater full of snow, level in its surface at the 
 end of winter. During the summer, there will be large 
 superficial melting ; considerable lateral melting by rever- 
 beration from rock, and lateral drainage ; bottom melting 
 from ground heat, not more than a quarter of an inch, 
 (Forbes's Travels, page 364,) a quantity which we may 
 practically ignore. Thus the mass, supposing the sub- 
 stance of it immovable in position, would be reduced by 
 superficial melting during the year to the form approxi- 
 mately traced by the dotted line within it, in Fig. 9. 
 
 8. But how of the interior melting ? Every interstice 
 and fissure in the snow, during summer, is filled either 
 with warm air, or warm water in circulation through it, 
 and every separate surface of crystal is undergoing its own 
 degree of diminution. And a constant change in the con- 
 ditions of equilibrium results on every particle of the mass ; 
 and a constant subsidence takes place, involving an entirely 
 different relative position of every portion of it at the end 
 of the year. 
 
 9. But I cannot, under any simple geometrical figure, 
 
78 DEUCALION. 
 
 give an approximation to the resultant directions of change 
 in form ; because the density of the snow must be in some 
 degree proportioned to the depth, and the melting less, in 
 proportion to the density. 
 
 Only at all events, towards the close of the year, the 
 mass enclosed by the dotted line in Fig. 9 will have sunk 
 into some accommodation of itself to the hollow bottom of 
 the crater, as represented by the continuous line in Fig. 10. 
 And, over that, the next winter will again heap the snow 
 to the cup-brim, to be reduced in the following summer ; but 
 now through two different states of consistence, to the bulk 
 limited by the dotted line in Fig. 10. 
 
 10. In a sequence of six years, therefore, we shall have 
 a series of beds approximately such as in Fig. 11 ; ap 
 proximately observe, I say always, being myself wholly un- 
 able to deal with the complexities of the question, and only 
 giving the diagram for simplest basis of future investiga- 
 tion, by the first man of mathematical knowledge and prac- 
 tical common sense, who will leave off labouring for the con- 
 tradiction of his neighbours, and apply himself to the hither- 
 to despised toil of the ascertainment of facts. And when he 
 has determined what the positions of the strata will be in 
 a perfectly uniform cup, such as that of which the half is 
 represented in perspective in Fig. 12, let him next inquire 
 what would have happened to the mass, if, instead of being 
 deposited in a cup enclosed, on all sides, it had been de- 
 posited in an amphitheatre open on one, as in the section 
 shown in Fig. 12. For that is indeed the first radical 
 problem to be determined respecting glacier motion. 
 
1 s. 
 
VI. OF BUTTEB AND HONEY. 79 ' 
 
 Difficult enough, if approached even with a clear head, 
 and open heart ; acceptant of all help from former observ- 
 ers, and of all hints from nature and heaven ; but very to- 
 tally insoluble, when approached by men whose poor capac- 
 ities for original thought are unsteadied by conceit, and 
 paralyzed by envy. 
 
 11. In my second plate, I have given, side by side, a 
 reduction, to half-scale, of part of Forbes's exquisite chart 
 of the Mer de Glace, published in 1845, from his own 
 survey made in 1842 ; and a reproduction, approximately 
 in facsimile, of Professor Tyndall's woodcut, from his 
 own ( eye-sketch' of the same portion of the glacier "as 
 seen from the cleft station, Trelaporte," published in 
 I860.* 
 
 That Professor Tyndall is unable to draw anything as 
 seen from anywhere, I observe to be a matter of much self- 
 congratulation to him ; such inability serving farther to es- 
 tablish the sense of his proud position as a man of science, 
 above us poor artists, who labour under the disadvantage 
 of being able with some accuracy to see, and with some 
 fidelity to represent, what we wish to talk about. But 
 when he found himself so resplendently inartistic, in the 
 eye-sketch in question, that the expression of his scientific 
 vision became, for less scientific persons, only a very bad 
 
 * ' Glaciers of the Alps,' p. 869. Observe also that my engraving, in 
 consequence of the reduced scale, is grievously inferior to Forbes'a 
 work ; but quite effectually and satisfactorily reproduces Professor 
 Tyndall's, of the same size as the original. 
 
80 
 
 DECTCALION. 
 
 map, it was at least incumbent on his Royally-social Emi 
 nence to ascertain whether any better map of the same 
 places had been puBlished before. And it is indeed 
 clear, in other places of his book, that he was conscious 
 of the existence of Forbes's chart ; but did not care to 
 refer to it on this occasion, because it contained the cor- 
 rection of a mistake made by Forbes in 1842, which Pro- 
 fessor Tyndall wanted, himself, to have the credit of cor- 
 recting ; leaving the public at the same time to suppose 
 it had never been corrected by its author. 
 
 12. This manner, and temper, of reticence, with its 
 relative personal loquacity, is not one in which noble 
 science can be advanced ; or in which even petty science 
 can be increased. Had Professor Tyndall, instead of 
 seeking renown by the exposition of Forbes's few and 
 minute mistakes, availed himself modestly of Forbes's 
 many and great discoveries, ten years of arrest by futile 
 discussion and foolish speculation might have been 
 avoided in the annals of geology ; and assuredly it would 
 not have been left for a despised artist to point out to 
 you, this evening, the one circumstance of importance in 
 glacier structure which Forbes has not explained. 
 
 13. You may perhaps have heard I have been found- 
 ing my artistic instructions lately on the delineation of 
 a jam-pot. Delighted by the appearance of that in- 
 structive object, in the Hotel du Mont Blanc, at St. 
 Martin's, full of Chamouni honey, of last year, stiff and 
 white, I found it also gave me command of the best pos- 
 
VI. OF BUTTER AND HONEY. 
 
 sible material for examination of glacial action on a small 
 scale. 
 
 Pouring a little of its candied contents out upon my 
 plate, by various tilting of which I could obtain any rate 
 of motion I wished to observe in the viscous stream ; and 
 encumbering the sides and centre of the said stream with 
 magnificent moraines composed of crumbs of toast, I was 
 able, looking alternately to table and window, to compare 
 the visible motion of the mellifluous glacier, and its trans- 
 ported toast, with the less traceable, but equally constant, 
 motion of the glacier of Bionnassay, and its transported 
 granite. And I thus arrived at the perception of the 
 condition of glacial structure, which though, as I told you 
 just now, not, I believe, hitherto illustrated, it is entirely 
 in your power to illustrate for yourselves in the following 
 manner. 
 
 If you will open a fresh pot of honey to-morrow at 
 breakfast, and take out a good table-spoonful of it, you 
 will see, of course, the surface generally ebb in the pot. 
 Put the table-spoonful back in a lump at one side, and 
 you will see the surface generally flow in the pot. The 
 lump you have put on at the side does not diffuse itself 
 over the rest ; but it sinks into the rest, and the entire sur- 
 face rises round it, to its former level. 
 
 Precisely in like manner, every pound of snow you put 
 on the top of Mont Blanc, eventually makes the surface 
 of the glaciers rise at the bottom.* 
 
 * Practically hyperbolic expression, but mathematically true. 
 4* 
 
82 DEUCALION. 
 
 15. That is not impulsive action, mind you. That is 
 mere and pure viscous action the communication of 
 force equally in every "direction among slowly moving 
 particles. I once thought that this force might also be 
 partially elastic, so that whereas, however vast a mass of 
 honey you had to deal with, a Niagara of honey, you 
 never could get it to leap like a sea-wave at rocks, ice 
 might yet, in its fluency, retain this power of leaping; 
 only slowly, taking a long time to rise, yet obeying the 
 same mathematic law of impulse as a sea-breaker; but 
 ascending through seras of surge, and communicating, 
 through seras, its recoil. The little ripple of the stream 
 breaks on the shore, quick, quick, quick. The Atlantic 
 wave slowly uplifts itself to its plunge, and slowly appeases 
 its thunder. The ice wave if there be one would be 
 to the Atlantic wave as the ocean is to the brook. 
 
 If there be one ! The question is of immense of vital 
 importance, to that of glacier action on crag: but, 
 before attacking it, we need to know what the lines of 
 motion are, first, in a subsiding table-spoonful of honey ; 
 secondly, in an uprearing Atlantic wave ; and, thirdly, in 
 the pulsatory festoons of a descending cataract, obtained 
 by the relaxation of its mass, while the same pulsatory 
 action is displayed, as unaccountably, by a glacier cata- 
 ract,* in the compression of its mass. 
 
 * Or a stick of sealing-wax. Warm one at the fire slowly through ; 
 and bend it into the form of a horseshoe. You will then see, through 
 
VI. OF BUTTER AND HONEY. 83 X 
 
 And, on applying to learned men in Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge * for elucidation of these modes of motion, I find 
 that, while they can tell me everything I don't want to 
 know, about the collision and destruction of planets, they 
 are not entirely clear on the subject either of the diffusion 
 of a drop of honey from its comb, or the confusion of a 
 rivulet among its cresses. Of which difficult matters, I 
 will therefore reserve inquiry to another chapter ; antici- 
 pating, however, its conclusions, for the reader's better 
 convenience, by the brief statement, that glacier ice has 
 no power of springing whatever ; that it cannot descend 
 into a rock-hollow, and sweep out the bottom of it, as a 
 cascade or a wave can ; but must always sluggishly fill it 
 to the brim before flowing over ; and accumulate, beneath, 
 under dead ice, quiet as the depths of a mountain tarn, 
 the fallen ruins of its colossal shore. 
 
 a lens of moderate power, the most exquisite facsimiles of glacier 
 fissure produced by extension, on its convex surface, and as faithful 
 image of glacier surge produced by compression, on its concave one. 
 
 In the course of such extension, the substance of the ice is actually 
 expanded, (see above, Chap. IV., 7,) by the widening of every minute 
 fissure ; and in the course of such compression, reduced to apparently 
 solid ice, by their closing. The experiments both of Forbes and Agassiz 
 appear to indicate that the original fissures are never wholly effaced by 
 compression ; but I do not myself know how far the supposed result of 
 these experiments may be consistent with ascertained phenomena of 
 regelation. 
 
 * I have received opportune and kind help, from the other side of the 
 Atlantic waves, in a study of them by my friend Professor Rood. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE IRIS OF THE EARTH. 
 
 Lecture given at the London Institution, February \:\in 
 and March %%th, 1876,* the subject announced being, 
 
 "AND THE GOLD OF THAT LAND IS GOOD: THERE IS 
 
 1. THE subject which you permit me the pleasure of 
 illustrating to you this evening, namely, the symbolic use of 
 the colours of precious stones in heraldry, will, I trust, not 
 interest you less because forming part both of the course 
 of education in art which I have been permitted to found 
 in Oxford ; and of that in physical science, which I am 
 about to introduce in the Musuem for working men at 
 Sheffield. 
 
 I say ' to introduce,' not as having anything novel to 
 teach, or show ; for in the present day I think novelty the 
 worst enemy of knowledge, and my introductions are only 
 of things forgotten. And 1 am compelled to be pertina- 
 
 * The abrupt interpolation of this lecture in the text of Deucalion ia 
 explained in the next chapter. 
 
VH. THE IRIS OF THE EARTH. 85 ^ 
 
 ciously it might even seem, insolently, separate in effort 
 from many who would help me, just because I am resolved 
 that no pupil of mine shall see anything, or learn, but 
 what the consent of the past has admitted to be beautiful, 
 aud the experience of the past has ascertained to be true. 
 During the many thousand years of this world's existence 
 the persons living upon it have produced more lovely 
 things than any of us can ever see ; and have ascertained 
 more profitable things than any of us can ever know. Of 
 these infinitely existing, beautiful things, I show to my 
 pupils as many as they can thoroughly see, not more ; 
 and of the natural facts which are positively known, I 
 urge them to know as many as they can thoroughly know, 
 not more ; and absolutely forbid all debate whatsoever. 
 The time for debate is when we have become masters 
 not while we are students. And the wisest of masters are 
 those who debate least. 
 
 2. For my own part holding myself nothing better 
 than an advanced student, guiding younger ones, I never 
 waste a moment of life in dispute, or discussion. It is at 
 least ten years since I ceased to speak of anything but 
 what I had ascertained ; and thus becoming, as far as I 
 know, the most practical and positive of men, left dis- 
 course of things doubtful to those whose pleasure is in 
 quarrel ; content, for my pupils and myself, to range all 
 matters under the broad head of things certain, with which 
 we are vitally concerned, and things uncertain, which 
 don't in the least matter 
 
DEUCALION. 
 
 3. In the working men's museum at Sheffield, then, I 
 mean to place illustrations of entirely fine metal-work, 
 including niello and engraving; and of the stones, and 
 the Flora and Fauna, of Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Durham, 
 and Westmoreland ; * together with such foreign exam- 
 ples as may help to the better understanding of what we 
 have at home. But in teaching metal-work, I am obliged 
 to exhibit, not the uses of iron and steel only, but those 
 also of the most precious metals, and their history ; and 
 for the understanding of any sort of stones, 1 must admit 
 precious stones, and their history. The first elements of 
 both these subjects, I hope it may not be uninteresting to 
 you to follow out with me this evening. 
 
 4. I have here, in my right hand, a little round thing, 
 and in my left a little flat one, about which, and the like 
 of them, it is my first business to explain, in Sheffield, 
 what may positively be known. They have long been 
 both, to me, subjects of extreme interest ; and I do not 
 hesitate to say that I know more about them than most 
 people : but that, having learned what 1 can, the happy 
 feeling of wonder is always increasing upon me how 
 little that is ! What an utter mystery both the little 
 things still are ! 
 
 5. This first in my right hand is what we call a 
 ( pebble,' f or rolled flint, presumably out of Kensington 
 
 * Properly, Westmoreland, the district of Western Meres, 
 f i. A. I. Sheffield Museum ; see Chapter VIII. 
 
VH. THE IRIS OF THE EARTH. 87 
 
 gravel-pits. I picked it up in the Park, the first that lay 
 loose, inside the railings, at the little gate entering from 
 Norfolk Street. I shall send it to Sheffield; knowing that 
 like the bit of lead picked up by Saadi in the ' Arabian 
 Nights,' it will make the fortune of Sheffield, scientifically, 
 if Sheffield makes the most of it, and thoroughly learns 
 what it is. 
 
 6. What it is, I say, you observe ; not merely, what 
 it is made of. Anybody the pitif ullest apothecary round 
 the corner, with a beggarly account of empty boxes 
 can tell you that. It is made of brown stuff called silicon, 
 and oxygen, and a little iron ; and so any apothecary can 
 tell what you all who are sitting there are made of : you, 
 and I, and all of us, are made of carbon, nitrogen, lime, 
 and phosphorus, and seventy per cent, or rather more of 
 water ; but then, that doesn't tell us what we are, 
 what a child is, or what a boy is, much less what a man 
 is, least of all, what supremely inexplicable woman is. 
 And so, in knowing only what it is made of, we don't 
 know what a flint is. 
 
 7. To know what it is, we must know what it can do, 
 and suffer. 
 
 That it can strike steel into white-hot fire, but can it- 
 self be melted down like water, if mixed with ashes ; that 
 it is subject to laws of form one jot of which it cannot 
 violate, and yet which it can continually evade, and ap- 
 parently disobey ; that in the fulfilment of these it be- 
 comes pure, in rebellion against them, foul and base ; 
 
88 DEUCALION. 
 
 that it is appointed on our island coast to endure for 
 countless ages, fortifying the sea cliff; and on the brow 
 of that very cliff, evert spring, to be dissolved, that the 
 green blades of corn may drink it with the dew ; that 
 in its noblest forms it is still imperfect, and in the mean- 
 est, still honourable, this, if we have rightly learned, we 
 begin to know what a flint is. 
 
 8. And of this other thing, in my left hand, this flat 
 bit of yellow mineral matter, commonly called a c sov- 
 ereign,' not indeed to be picked up so easily as the other 
 (though often, by rogues, with small pains ;) yet 
 familiar enough to the sight of most of us, and too fami- 
 liar to our thought, there perhaps are the like inquiries 
 to be put. What is it ? What can it do ; and for 
 whom ? This shape given to it by men, bearing the 
 image of a Caesar ; how far does this make it a thing 
 which is Caesar's ? the opposed image of a saint, riding 
 against a dragon how far does this make it a thing which 
 is of Saints ? Is its testimony true, or conceivably true, 
 on either side ? Are there yet Caesars ruling us, or saints 
 saving us, to whom it does of right belong ? 
 
 9. And the substance of it, not separable, this, into 
 others, but a pure element, what laws are over it, other 
 than Caesar's ; what forms must it take, of its own, in 
 eternal obedience to invisible power, if it escape our 
 human hammer-stroke ? How far, in its own shape, or in 
 this, is it itself a Caesar ; inevitable in authority ; secure 
 of loyalty, loveable, and meritorious of love ? For, read- 
 
VH. THE IRIS OF THE EARTH. 89- 
 
 ing its past history, we find it has been much beloved, 
 righteously or iniquitously, a thing to be known the 
 grounds of, surely ? 
 
 10. Nay, also of this dark and despised thing in iny 
 right hand, we must ask that higher question, has it ever 
 been beloved ? And finding in its past history that in its 
 pure and loyal forms, of amethyst, opal, crystal, jasper, 
 and onyx, it also has been much beloved of men, shall we 
 not ask farther whether it deserves to be beloved, 
 whether in wisdom or folly, equity or inequity, we give 
 our affections to glittering shapes of clay, and found our 
 fortunes on fortitudes of stone ; and carry down from lip 
 to lip, and teach, the father to the child, as a sacred tra- 
 dition, that the Power which made us, and preserves, gave 
 also with the leaves of the earth for our food, and the 
 streams of the earth for our thirst, so also the dust of the 
 earth for our delight and possession : bidding the first of 
 the Rivers of Paradise roll stainless waves over radiant 
 sands, and writing, by the word of the Spirit, of the 
 Hocks that it divided, " The gold of that land is good ; 
 there also is the crystal, and the onyx stone." 
 
 11. Before I go on, 1 must justify to you the familiar 
 word I have used for the rare one in the text. 
 
 If with mere curiosity, or ambitious scholarship, you 
 were to read the commentators on the Pentateuch, you 
 might spend, literally, many years of life, on the discus- "" 
 sions as to the kinds of the gems named in it ; and be no 
 wiser at the end than you were at the beginning. But if, 
 
90 DEUCALION. 
 
 honestly and earnestly desiring to know the meaning of 
 the book itself, you set yourself to read with such ordi- 
 nary help as a good concordance and dictionary, and with 
 fair knowledge of the two languages in which the Testa- 
 ments have been clearly given to us, you may find out all 
 you need know, in an hour. 
 
 12. The word ' bdellium ' occurs only twice in the Old 
 Testament : here, and in the book of Numbers, where you 
 are told the manna was of the colour or look of bdellium. 
 There, the Septuagint uses for it the word /cpvaraXXos, 
 crystal, or more properly anything congealed by cold ; 
 and in the other account of the manna, in Exodus, you 
 are told that, after the dew round the camp was gone up, 
 " there lay a small round thing as small as the hoar- 
 frost upon the ground." Until 1 heard from my friend 
 Mr. Tyrrwhitt * of the cold felt at night in camping on 
 Sinai, I could not understand how deep the feeling of the 
 Arab, no less than the Greek, must have been respecting 
 the divine gift of the dew, nor with what sense of thank- 
 fulness for miraculous blessing the question of Job would 
 be uttered, " The hoary frost of heaven, who hath gen- 
 dered it ? " Then compare the first words of the blessing 
 of Isaac : " God give thee of the dew of heaven, and of 
 
 * See some admirable sketches of travelling in the Peninsula of 
 Sinai, by this writer, in 'Vacation Tourists,' Macmillan, 1864. "I 
 still remember," he adds in a private letter to me, " that the frozen 
 towels stood on their edges as stiff as biscuits. By 11 A. M. the ther- 
 mometer had risen to 85, and was still rising." 
 
VH. THE IRIS OF THE EARTH. 91 
 
 the fatness of earth ; " and, again, the first words of the 
 song of Moses : " Give ear, oh ye heavens, for my speech 
 shall distil as the dew ; " and you will see at once why 
 this heavenly food was made to shine clear in the desert, 
 like an enduring of its dew ; Divine remaining for con- 
 tinual need. Frozen, as the Alpine snow pure for 
 ever. 
 
 13. Seize firmly that first idea of the manna, as the 
 type of the bread which is the Word of God ; * and then 
 look on for the English word ' crystal ' in Job, of Wisdom, 
 " It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the 
 precious onyx, or the sapphire : the gold and the crystal 
 shall not equal it, neither shall it be valued with pure 
 gold ; " in Ezekiel, " firmament of the terrible crystal," or 
 in the Apocalypse, " A sea of glass, like unto crystal, 
 water of life, clear as crystal " " light of the city like a 
 stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as 
 crystal." Your understanding the true meaning of all 
 these passages depends on your distinct conception of the 
 permanent clearness and hardness of the Hock-crystal. 
 You may trust me to tell you quickly, in this matter, 
 what you may all for yourselves discover if you will read. 
 
 14. The three substances named here in the first 
 account of Paradise, stand generally as types the GOLD 
 
 * Sir Philip Sidney, in his translation of the Uprov ofyoyov of the 
 105th Psalm, completes the entire range of idea, 
 
 " Himself, from skies, their hunger to repel, 
 Candies the grasse with sweete congealed dew.* 1 
 
92 DEUCALION. 
 
 of all precious metals ; the CRYSTAL of all clear precious 
 stones prized for lustre / the ONYX of all opaque precious 
 stones prized for colotir. And to mark this distinction as 
 a vital one, in each case when the stones to be set for 
 the tabernacle-service are named, the onyx is named 
 separately. The Jewish rulers brought " onyx stones, and 
 stones to be set for the ephod, and for the breastplate."* 
 And the onyx is used thrice, while every other stone is 
 used only once, in the High Priest's robe ; two onyxes on 
 the shoulders, bearing the twelve names of the tribes, six 
 on each stone, (Exod. xxviii. 9, 10,) and one in the breast- 
 plate, with its separate name of one tribe, (Exod. xxviii. 
 20.) 
 
 15. A. Now note the importance of this grouping. The 
 Gold, or precious metal, is significant of all that the 
 power of the beautiful earth, gold, and of the strong 
 earth, iron, has done for and against man. How much 
 evil I need not say. How much good is a question I will 
 endeavour to show some evidence on forthwith. 
 
 B/\The Crystal is significant of all the power that 
 jewels, from diamonds down through every Indian gem to 
 the glass beads which we now make for ball-dresses, have 
 had over the imagination and economy of men and 
 women from the day that Adam drank of the water of 
 the crystal river to this hour. 
 
 * Exod. xxv. 7, xxxv. 27, comparing Job above quoted, and Ezekiel 
 xxviii. 13. 
 
VII. THE IBIS OF THE EAETH. 93 
 
 How much evil that is, you partially know ; how much 
 good, we have to consider. 
 
 c. The Onyx is the type of all stones arranged in bands 
 of different colours ; it means primarily, nail-stone 
 showing a separation like the white half-crescent at the 
 root of: the finger-nail ; not without some idea of its sub- 
 jection to laws of life. Of these stones, part, which are 
 flinty, are the material used for cameos and all manner of 
 engraved work and pietra dura ; but in the great idea of 
 banded or belted stones, they include the whole range of 
 marble, and especially alabaster, giving the name to the 
 alabastra, or vases used especially for the containing of 
 precious unguents, themselves more precious ; * so that 
 this stone, as best representative of all others, is chosen to 
 be the last gift of men to Christ, as gold is their first ; 
 incense with both : at His birth, gold and frankincense ; 
 at His death, alabaster and spikenard. 
 
 16. The two sources of the material wealth of all 
 nations were thus offered to the King of men in their sim- 
 plicity. But their power among civilized nations has 
 been owing to their workmanship. And if we are to ask 
 whether the gold and the stones are to be holy, much 
 more have we to ask if the worker in gold, and the 
 worker in stone, are to be conceived as exercising holy 
 function. 
 
 17. Now, as we ask of a stone, to know what it is, what 
 
 * Compare the " Nardi parvos onyx," which was to be Virgil's feast- 
 gift, in spring, to Horace. 
 
94 DEUCALION. 
 
 it can do, or suffer, so of a human creature, to know what 
 it is, we ask what it can do, or suffer. 
 
 So that we have two scientific questions put to us, in 
 this matter : how the stones came to be what they are 
 or the law of Crystallization ; and how the jewellers came 
 to be what they are or the law of Inspiration. You see 
 how vital this question is to me, beginning now actually 
 to give my laws of Florentine art in English Schools! 
 How can artists be made artists, in gold and in precious 
 stones? whether in the desert, or the city? and if in the 
 city, whether, as at Jerusalem, so also in Florence, Paris, 
 or London ? 
 
 Must we at this present time, think you, order the 
 jewellers, whom we wish to teach, merely to study and 
 copy the best results of past fashion ? or are we to hope 
 that some day or other, if we behave rightly, and take 
 care of our jewels properly, we shall be shown also how 
 to set them ; and that, merely substituting modern names 
 for ancient ones, some divine message will come to our 
 craftsmen, such as this : ' See, I have called by name 
 Messrs. Hunt and Roskell, and Messrs. London and 
 Ryder, and I have filled them with the Spirit of God, in 
 wisdom and in understanding, and in all manner of work- 
 manship, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and 
 in cutting of stones,' ? 
 
 18. This sentence, which, I suppose, becomes startling 
 to your ear in the substitution of modern for ancient 
 names, is the first, so far as I know, distinctly referring 
 
VII. THE IBIS OF THE EAKTH. 95 
 
 to the ancient methods of instruction in the art of jewel 
 lery. So also the words which I have chosen for the title 
 (or, as perhaps some of my audience may regretfully think 
 it should be called, the text,) of my lecture, are the first I 
 know that give any account of the formation or existence 
 of jewels. So that the same tradition, whatever its value, 
 which gave us the commands we profess to obey for our 
 moral law, implies also the necessity of inspired instruc- 
 tion for the proper practice of the art of jewellery ; and 
 connects the richness of the earth in gold and jewels with 
 the pleasure of Heaven that we should use them under 
 its direction. The scientific mind will of course draw 
 back in scorn from the idea of such possibility ; but then, 
 the scientific mind can neither design, itself, nor perceive 
 the power of design in others. And practically you will 
 find that all noble design in jewellery whatsoever, from 
 the beginning of the world till now, has been either in- 
 stinctive, done, that is to say, by tutorship of nature, with 
 the innocent felicity and security of purely animal art, 
 Etruscan, Irish, Indian, or Peruvian gold being interwoven 
 with a fine and unerring grace of industry, like the touch 
 of the bee on its cell and of the bird on her nest, or else, 
 has been wrought into its finer forms, under the impulse 
 of religion in sacred service, in crosier, chalice, and lamp ; 
 and that the best beauty of its profane service has been 
 debased from these. And the three greatest masters of 
 design in jewellery, the * facile principes' of the entire 
 European School, are centrally, the one who definitely 
 
96 DEUCALION. 
 
 worked always with appeal for inspiration Angelico of 
 F^sole ; and on each side of him, the two most earnest 
 reformers of the morals of the Christian Church Holbein, 
 and Sandro Botticelli. 
 
 19. I have first answered this, the most close home of 
 the questions, how men come to be jewellers. Next, how 
 do stones come to be jewels ? It seems that by all relig- 
 ious, no less than all profane, teaching or tradition, these 
 substances are asserted to be precious, useful to man, and 
 sacred to God. Whether we have not made them deadly 
 instead of useful, and sacrificed them to devils instead 
 of God, you may consider at another time. To-night, I 
 would examine only a little way the methods in which 
 they are prepared by nature, for such service as they are 
 capable of. 
 
 20. There are three great laws by which they, and the 
 metals they are to be set in, are prepared for us ; and at 
 present all these are mysteries to us. 
 
 I. The first, the mystery by which " surely there" is a 
 vein for the silver, and a place for the gold whence * they 
 fine it." No geologist, no scientific person whatsoever, 
 can tell you how this gold under my hand was brought 
 into this cleft in the bdellium ; f no one knows where it 
 was before, or how it got here : one thing only seems to 
 be manifest that it was not here always. This white 
 
 * * Whence,' not ' where,' they sift or wash it : odev StTjflemu, LXX. 
 f 20. A. 1. Sheffield Museum. 
 
VII. THE IRIS OF THE EARTH. 97 
 
 bdellium itself closes rents, and fills hollows, in rocks 
 which had to be rent before they could be rejoined, and 
 hollowed before they could be refilled. Bat no one hith- 
 erto has been able to say where the gold first was, or by 
 what process it came into this its resting-place. First 
 mystery, then, that there is a vein for the silver, and a 
 place for the gold. 
 
 II. The second mystery is that of crystallization ; by 
 which, obeying laws no less arbitrary than those by which 
 the bee builds her cell the water produced by the sweet 
 miracles of cloud and spring freezes into the hexagonal 
 stars of the hoar-frost ; the flint, which can be melted 
 and diffused like water, freezes also, like water, into these 
 hexagonal towers of everlasting ice ; * and the clay, which 
 can be dashed on the potter's wheel as it pleaseth the pot- 
 ter to make it, can be frozen by the touch of Heaven into 
 the hexagonal star of Heaven's own colour the sapphire. 
 
 III. The third mystery, the gathering of crystals them- 
 selves into ranks or bands, by which Scotch pebbles are 
 made, not only is at present unpierced, but which is a 
 wonderful thing in the present century it is even tin- 
 talked about. There has been much discussion as to the 
 nature of metallic veins ; and books have been written 
 with indefatigable industry, and splendid accumulation 
 of facts, on the limits, though never on the methods, of 
 crystallization. But of the structure of banded stones not 
 
 *I Q. 11. Sheffield Museum. 
 
98 DEUCALION. 
 
 a word is ever said, and, popularly, less than nothing 
 known ; there being many very false notions current re- 
 specting them, in the minds even of good mineralogists. 
 
 And the basis of what I find to be ascertainable about 
 them, may be told with small stress to your patience. 
 
 21. I have here in my hand,* a pebble which used to 
 decorate the chimney-piece of the children's playroom in 
 my aunt's house at Perth, when I w T as seven years old, 
 just half a century ago ; which pebble having come out 
 of the hill of Kinnoull, on the other side of the Tay, I 
 show you because I know so well where it came from, and 
 can therefore answer for its originality and genuineness. 
 
 22. The hill of Kinnoull, like all the characteristic 
 crags or craigs of central Scotland, is of a basaltic lava 
 in which, however, more specially than in most others, 
 these balls of pebble form themselves. And of these, in 
 their first and simplest state, you may think as little 
 pieces of flint jelly, filling the pores or cavities of the 
 rock. 
 
 Without insisting too strictly on the analogy for Nature 
 is so various in her operations that you are sure to be de- 
 ceived if you ever think one process has been in all respects 
 like another you may yet in most respects think of the 
 whole substance of the rock as a kind of brown bread, 
 rolcanically baked, the pores and cavities of which, when 
 it has risen, are filled with agate or onyx jelly, as the sim- 
 
 *I. A. 8. Sheffield Museum. 
 
Plate III. 
 MURAL AGATES. 
 
(^NJVlfBSl' 
 
VH. THE IKIS OF THE EAKTH. 99 
 
 ilar pores of a slice of quartern loaf are filled with butter, 
 if the cook has spread it in a hurry. 
 
 23. I use this simile with more satisfaction, because, 
 in the course of last autumn, I was making some practical 
 experiments on glacial motion the substances for experi- 
 ment being supplied to me in any degree of congelation 
 or regelation which might be required, by the perfectly 
 angelic cook of a country friend, who not only gave me 
 the run of her kitchen, but allowed me to make domical 
 mountains of her best dish-covers, and tortuous valleys of 
 her finest napkins; under which altogether favourable 
 conditions, and being besides supplied with any quantity 
 of ice-cream and blancmange, in every state of frost and 
 thaw, I got more beautiful results, both respecting glacier 
 motion, and interstratified rocks, than a year's work would 
 have reached by unculinary analysis. Keeping, however 
 as I must to-night to our present question, I have here 
 a piece of this baked volcanic rock, which is as full of 
 agate pebbles as a plum-pudding is of currants ; each of 
 these agate pebbles consisting of a clear green chalcedony, 
 with balls of banded agate formed in the midst, or at the 
 sides of them. This diagram * represents one enlarged. 
 
 And you have there one white ball of agate, floating 
 apparently in the green pool, and a larger ball, which is 
 cut through by the section of the stone, and shows you the 
 banded structure in the most exquisite precision. 
 
 * This drawing is in Sheffield Museum. 
 
100 DEUCALION. 
 
 24. Now, there is no doubt as to the possible formation of 
 these balls in melted vitreous substance as it cools, because 
 we get them in glass Itself, when gradually cooled in old 
 glass-houses ; and there is no more difficulty in accounting 
 for the formation of round agate balls of this character 
 than for that of common globular chalcedony. But the 
 difficulty begins when the jelly is not allowed to remain 
 quiet, but can run about while it is crystallizing. Then 
 you get glutinous forms that choke cavities in the rock, 
 in which the chalcedony slowly runs down the sides, and 
 forms a level lake at the bottom ; and sometimes you get 
 the whole cavity filled with lake poured over lake, the 
 liquid one over the frozen, floor and walls at last encrusted 
 with onyx fit for kings' signets.* 
 
 25. Of the methods of engraving this stone, and of its 
 general uses and values in ancient and modern days, you 
 will find all that can interest you, admirably told by Mr. 
 King, in his book on precious stones and gems, to which 
 I owe most of the little I know myself on this subject. 
 
 To-night, I would only once more direct your attention 
 to that special use of it in the dress of the Jewish High 
 Priest; that while, as one of the twelve stones of the 
 breastplate, it was engraved like the rest with the name 
 of a single tribe, two larger onyxes were used for the 
 shoulder-studs of the ephod ; and on these, the names of 
 
 * I am obliged to oxnit here the part of the lecture referring to dia- 
 grams. It will be given in greater detail in the subsequent text. 
 
VII. THE IRIS OF THE EARTH. 101 
 
 all the twelve tribes were engraved, six upon each. I do 
 not infer from this use of the onyx, however, any pre-emi- 
 nence of value, or isolation of symbolism, in the stone ; I 
 suppose it to have been set apart for the more laborious 
 piece of engraving, simply because larger surfaces of it 
 were attainable than of true gems, and its substance was 
 more easily cut. I suppose the bearing of the names on 
 the shoulder to be symbolical of the priest's sacrificial 
 office in bearing the guilt and pain of the people ; while 
 the bearing of them on the breast was symbolical of his 
 pastoral office in teaching them : but, except in the broad 
 distinction between gem and onyx, it is impossible now 
 to state with any certainty the nature or meaning of the 
 stones, confused as they have been by the most fantastic 
 speculation of vain Jewish writers themselves. 
 
 There is no such difficulty when we pass to the inquiry 
 as to the use of these stones in Christian Heraldry, on the 
 breastplate and shield of the Knight; for that use is 
 founded on natural relations of colour, which cannot be 
 changed, and which will become of more and more impor- 
 tance to mankind in proportion to the degree in which 
 Christian Knighthood, once proudly faithful to Death, in 
 War, becomes humbly faithful to Life, in Peace. 
 
 27. To these natural relations of colour, the human 
 sight, in health, is joyfully sensitive, as the ear is to the 
 harmonies of sound ; but what healthy sight is, you may 
 well suppose, I have not time to define to-night ; the 
 nervous power of the eye, and its delight in the pure hues 
 
102 DEUCALION. 
 
 of colour presented either by the opal, or by wild flowers, 
 being dependent on the perfect purity of the blood sup- 
 plied to the brain, as well as on the entire soundness of 
 the nervous tissue to which that blood is supplied. And 
 how much is required, through the thoughts and conduct 
 of generations, to make the new blood of our race of chil- 
 dren pure it is for your physicians to tell you, when they 
 have themselves discovered this medicinal truth, that the 
 divine laws of the life of Men cannot be learned in the 
 pain and death of Brutes. 
 
 28. The natural and unchangeable system of visible 
 colour has been lately confused, in the minds of all stu- 
 dents, partly by the pedantry of unnecessary science ; 
 partly by the formalism of illiberal art : for all practical 
 service, it may be stated in a very few words, and ex- 
 pressed in a very simple diagram. 
 
 28. There are three primary colours, Red, Blue, and 
 Yellow ; three secondary, formed by the union of any two 
 of these ; and one tertiary, formed by the union of all three. 
 
 If we admitted, as separate colours, the different tints 
 produced by varying proportions of the composing tints, 
 there would of course be an infinite number of second- 
 aries, and a wider infinitude of tertiaries. But tints can 
 be systematically arranged only by the elements of them, 
 not the proportions of those elements. Green is only 
 green, whether there be less or more of blue in it; purple 
 only purple, whether there be less or more of red in it ; 
 scarlet only scarlet, whether there be less or more of yel- 
 
&* 
 
 VII. THE IRIS OF THE EARTH. 
 
 103 
 
 low in it ; and the tertiary gray only gray, in whatever 
 proportions the three primaries are combined in it. 
 
 29. The diagram used in my drawing schools to express 
 the system of these colours will be found coloured in 
 the ' Laws of Fesole ' : this figure will serve our present 
 purpose.* 
 
 The simple trefoil produced by segments of three cir- 
 
 * Readers interested in this subject are sure to be able to enlarge 
 and colour it for themselves. I take no notice of the new scientific 
 theories of primary colour : because they are entirely false as applied 
 to practical work, natural or artistic. Golden light in blue sky maki 
 green sky ; but green sky and red clouds can't make yellow sky. 
 
104: DEUCALION. 
 
 cles in contact, is inscribed in a curvilinear equilateral 
 triangle. Nine small circles are set, three in the ex- 
 tremities of the foils, thi^ee on their cusps, three in the 
 angles of the triangle. 
 
 The circles numbered 1 to 3 are coloured with the 
 primitive colours ; 4 to 6, with the secondaries ; 7 with 
 white ; 8 with black ; and the 9th, with the tertiary, 
 gray. 
 
 30. All the primary and secondary colours are capable 
 of infinitely various degrees of intensity or depression : 
 they pass through every degree of increasing light, to per- 
 fect light, or white ; and of increasing shade, to perfect 
 absence of light, or black. And these are essential in the 
 harmony required by sight ; so that no group of colours 
 can be perfect that has not white in it, nor any that has 
 not black ; or else the abatement or modesty of them, in 
 the tertiary, gray. So that these three form the limiting 
 angles of the field, or cloudy ground of the rainbow. u I 
 do set my bow in the cloud." 
 
 And the nine colours of which you here see the essen- 
 tial group, have, as you know, been the messenger Iris ; 
 exponents of the highest purpose, and records of the per- 
 fect household purity and honour of men, from the days 
 when Hesiod blazoned the shield of Heracles, to the day 
 when the fighting Temeraire led the line at Trafalgar, 
 the Victory following her, with three flags nailed to her 
 masts, for fear one should be shot away. 
 
 31. The names of these colours in ordinary shields 
 
VII. THE IRIS OF THE EAETH. 
 
 of knighthood, are those given opposite, in the left- 
 hand column. The names given them in blazoning the 
 shields of nobles, are those of the correspondent gems: 
 of heraldry by the planets, reserved for the shields of 
 kings, I have no time to speak, to-night, except incident- 
 ally. 
 
 A. THE PRIMARY COLOURS. 
 
 1. Or. Topaz. 
 
 2. Gules. Kuby. 
 
 3. Azure. Sapphire. 
 
 B. THE SECONDARY COLOURS. 
 
 4. Ecarlate. Jasper. 
 
 5. Yert. Emerald. 
 
 6. Purpure. Hyacinth. 
 
 C. THE TERTIARY COLOURS. 
 
 7. Argent. Carbuncle. 
 
 8. Sable. Diamond. 
 
 9. Colombin. Pearl. 
 
 32. I. Or. Stands between the light and darkness ; as 
 the sun, who " rejoiceth as a strong man to run his course," 
 between the morning and the evening. Its heraldic name, 
 in the shields of kings, is Sol : the Sun, or Sun of Jus- 
 tice ; and it stands for the strength and honour of all men 
 who run their race in noble work ; whose path " is as the 
 shining light, that shineth more and more unto the per- 
 
 feet day." 
 
 y 5* 
 
106 DEUCALION. 
 
 For theirs are the works which are to shine before men, 
 that they may glorify our Father. And they are also to 
 shine before God, so that with respect to them, what was 
 written of St. Bernard may be always true : " Opera 
 sancti patris velut Sol in conspectu Dei." 
 
 For indeed they are a true light of the world, infinitely 
 more good, in the sight of its Creator, than the dead flame 
 of its sunshine ; and the discovery of modern science, that 
 all mortal strength is from the sun, which has thrown 
 irrational persons into stupid atheism, as if there was no 
 God but the sun, is indeed the accurate physical expression 
 of this truth, that men, rightly active, are living sunshine. 
 
 II. Gules, (rose colour,) from the Persian word ' gul,' 
 for the rose. It is the exactly central hue between the 
 dark red, and pale red, or wild-rose. It is the colour of 
 love, the fulfilment of the joy and of the love of life upon 
 the earth. And it is doubly marked for this symbol. We 
 saw earlier, how the vase given by the Madelaine was pre- 
 cious in its material; but it was also to be indicated as 
 precious in its form. It is not only the substance, but the 
 form of the Greek urn, which gives it nobleness ; and 
 these vases for precious perfume were tall, and shaped like 
 the bud of the rose. So that the rose-bud itself, being a 
 vase filled with perfume, is called also ' alabastron ' ; and 
 Pliny uses that word for it in describing the growth of 
 the rose. 
 
 The stone of it is the Ruby. 
 
 III. Azure. The colour of the blue sky in the height 
 
VII. THE IRIS OF THE EAETH. 
 
 of it, at noon ; type of the fulfilment of all joy and love 
 in heaven, as the rose-colour, of the fulfilment of all joy 
 and love in earth. And the stone of this is the Sapphire ; 
 and because the loves of Earth and Heaven are in truth 
 one, the ruby and sapphire are indeed the same stone ; 
 and they are coloured as if by enchantment, how, or 
 with what, no chemist has yet shown, the one azure, and 
 the other rose. 
 
 And now you will understand why, in the vision of the 
 Lord of Life to the Elders of Israel, of which it is written, 
 " Also they saw God, and did eat and drink," you are 
 told, " Under His feet was a plinth of sapphire, and, as it 
 were, the body of Heaven in its clearness." 
 
 IY. Ucarlate (scarlet). I use the French word, because 
 all other heraldic words for colours are Norman-French. 
 The ordinary heraldic term here is tenne ' (tawny) ; for 
 the later heralds confused scarlet with gules; but the 
 colour first meant was the sacred hue of human flesh 
 Carnation ; incarnation : the colour of the body of man 
 in its beauty ; of the maid's scarlet blush in noble love ; 
 of the youth's scarlet glow in noble war ; the dye of the 
 earth into which heaven has breathed its spirit : incarnate 
 strength incarnate modesty. 
 
 The stone of it is the Jasper, which as we shall see, is 
 coloured with the same iron that colours the human blood ; 
 and thus you can understand why on the throne, in the 
 vision of the returning Christ, " He that sat was to look 
 upon like a jasper and a sardine stone." 
 
1 08 DEUCALION. 
 
 Y. Vert, (viridis,) from the same root as the words 
 'virtue' and 'virgin,' the colour of the green rod in 
 budding spring ; the* noble life of youth, born in the 
 spirit, as the scarlet means, the life of noble youth, in 
 flesh.* It is seen most perfectly in clear air after the 
 sun has set, the blue of the upper sky brightening down 
 into it. It is the true colour of the eyes of Athena, 
 Athena PXau/cw7rt9,t looking from the west. 
 
 The stone of it is the Emerald ; and I must stay for a 
 moment to tell you the derivation of that word. 
 
 Anciently, it did not mean our emerald, but a massive 
 green marble, veined apparently by being rent asunder, 
 and called, therefore, the Rent or Torn Hock. 
 
 Now, in the central war of Athena with the Giants, the 
 sign of her victory was that the earth was rent, the power 
 of it torn, and the graves of it opened. We know this is 
 written for the sign of a greater victory than hers. And 
 the word which Hesiod uses the oldest describer of this 
 battle is twice over the same : the sea roared, the heav- 
 ens thundered, the earth cried out in being rent, 
 
 * Therefore, the Spirit of Beatrice is dressed in green, over scarlet, 
 (not rose ; observe this specially). 
 
 " Sovra candido vel, cinta d' oliva 
 Donna m' apparve sotto verde manto, 
 Vestita di color difiamma viva." 
 
 f Accurately described by Pausanias, 1, xiv., as of the colour of a 
 green lake, from the Tritonian pool ; compare again the eyes of Bea- 
 trice. 
 
VH. THE IRIS OF THE EARTH. 
 
 From that word yon have " the rent rock," 
 in Latin, smaragdus ; in Latin dialect, smaraudus 
 softened into emerandu, emeraude, emerald. And now 
 yon see why " there was a rainbow round about the throne 
 in sight like unto an emerald." 
 
 VI. Purpure. The true purple of the Tabernacle, 
 " blue, purple, and scarlet " the kingly colour, retained 
 afterwards in all manuscripts of the Greek Gospels ; 
 therefore known to us absolutely by its constant use in 
 illumination. It is rose colour darkened or saddened with 
 blue ; the colour of love in noble or divine sorrow ; borne 
 by the kings, whose witness is in heaven, and their labour 
 on the earth. Its stono is the Jacinth, Hyacinth, or Ame- 
 thyst, " like to that sable flower inscribed with woe." 
 
 In these six colours, then, you have the rainbow, or an- 
 gelic iris, of the light and covenant of life. 
 
 But the law of the covenant is, " I do set my bow in 
 the cloud, on the shadow of death and the ordinance of 
 it." 
 
 And as here, central, is the sun in his strength, so in the 
 heraldry of our faith, the morning and the evening are the 
 first day, and the last. 
 
 VII. Argent. Silver, or snow-colour ; of the hoar-frost 
 on the earth, or the star of the morning. 
 
 I was long hindered from understanding the entire 
 group of heraldic colours, because of the mistake in our 
 use of the word i carbuncle.' It is not the garnet, but the 
 same stone as the ruby and sapphire only crystallized 
 
110 DEUCALION. 
 
 white, instead of red or blue. It is the white sapphire, 
 showing the hexagonal star of its crystallization perfect- 
 ly ; and therefore it becomes an heraldic bearing as a 
 star. 
 
 And it is the personal bearing of that Geoffrey Planta- 
 genet, who married Maud the Empress, and became the 
 sire of the lords of England, in her glorious time. 
 
 VIII. Sable, (sable, sabulum,) the colour of sand of the 
 great hour-glass of the world, outshaken. Its stone is the 
 diamond never yet, so far as 1 know, found but in the 
 sand.* It is the symbol at once of dissolution, and of en- 
 durance : darkness changing into light the adamant of 
 the grave. 
 
 IX. Gray. (When deep, the second violet, giving 
 Dante's full chord of the seven colours.) The abatement 
 of the light, the abatement of the darkness. Patience, be- 
 tween this which recedes and that which advances ; the 
 colour of the turtle-dove, with the message that the waters 
 are abated; the colour of the sacrifice of the poor, 
 therefore of humility. Its stone is the Pearl ; in Norman 
 heraldry the Marguerite the lowest on the shield, yet of 
 great price ; and because, through this virtue, open first 
 the gates of Paradise, you are told that while the building 
 of the walls of it was of jasper, every several gate was of 
 one pearl. 
 
 33. You hear me tell you thus positively, and without 
 
 * Or in rock virtually composed of it. 
 
VII. THE IRIS OF THE EARTH. 
 
 Ill 
 
 qualification or hesitation, what these things mean. But 
 mind, I tell you so, after thirty years' work, and that di- 
 rected wholly to the one end of finding out the truth, 
 whether it was pretty or ugly to look in face of. During 
 which labour I have found that the ultimate truth, the 
 central truth, is always pretty ; but there is a superficial 
 truth, or half-way truth, which may be very ugly ; and 
 which the earnest and faithful worker has to face and 
 fight, and pass over the body of, feeling it to be his 
 enemy ; but which a careless seeker may be stopped by, 
 and a misbelieving seeker will be delighted by, and stay 
 with, gladly. 
 
 34. When I first gave this lecture, you will find the 
 only reports of it in the papers, with which any pains had 
 been taken, were endeavours to make you disbelieve it, 
 or misbelieve it, that is to say, to make ' meseroyants ' or 
 4 miscreants ' of you. 
 
 And among the most earnest of these, was a really in- 
 dustrious essay in the ' Daily Telegraph,' showing evi- 
 dence that the writer had perseveringly gone to the Her- 
 alds' Office and British Museum to read for the occasion ; 
 and, I think, deserving of serious notice because we really 
 owe to the proprietors of that journal (who supplied the 
 most earnest of our recent investigators with funds for 
 his Assyrian excavations) the most important heraldic 
 discoveries of the generations of Noah and Nimrod, that 
 have been made since printing took the place of cuneiform 
 inscription. 
 
112 DEUCALION. 
 
 I pay, therefore, so much respect to the archseologians 
 of Fleet Street as to notice the results of their suddenly 
 stimulated investigations in heraldry. 
 
 35. " The lecturer appeared to have forgotten," they 
 said, Ck that every nation had its own code of symbols, 
 and that gules, or red, is denominated by the French 
 heralds gueules, and is derived by the best French phi- 
 lologers from the Latin ' gula,' the gullet of a beast of 
 prey." 
 
 It is perfectly true that the best French philologists do 
 give this derivation ; but it is also unfortunately true that 
 the best French philologists are not heralds ; and what is 
 more, and worse, all modern heraldry whatsoever is, to 
 the old science, just what the poor gipsy Hayraddin. in 
 f Quentin Durward,' is to Toison d'Or. But, so far from 
 having s forgotten,' as the writer for the press supposes I 
 had, that there were knights of France, and Yen ice, and 
 Florence, as well as England, it so happens that my first 
 studies in heraldry were in this manuscript, which is the 
 lesson-book of heraldry written for the young Archduke 
 Charles of Austria; and in this one, which is a psalter 
 written in the monastery of the Saint Chapelle for St. 
 Louis, King of France ; and on the upper page of which, 
 here framed,* you will see written, in letters of gold, the 
 record of the death of his mother, Blanche of Castile, on 
 the 27th of November, next after St. Genevieve's day ; 
 
 * The books referred to, in my rooms at Oxford, are always acces* 
 ble for examination. 
 
VII. THE IRIS OF THE EARTH. 11<T 
 
 and on the under page, between the last lines of the 
 Athanasian Creed, her bearing, the Castilian tower, alter- 
 nating with the king's, Azure, seme de France. 
 
 36. "With this and other such surer authority than was 
 open to the investigation of the press- writer, I will clear 
 up for you his point about the word ' gules.' But I must 
 go a long way back first. I do not know if, in reading 
 the account of the pitching of the standards of the princes 
 of Israel round the Tabernacle, you have ever been 
 brought to pause by the singular covering given to the 
 Tabernacle itself, rams' skins dyed red, and badgers 9 
 skins. Of rams' skins, of course, any quantity could be 
 had from the flocks, but of badgers', the supply must have 
 been difficult! 
 
 And you will find, on looking into the matter, that the 
 so-called badgers' skins were indeed those which young 
 ladies are very glad to dress in at the present day, seal- 
 skins ; and that the meaning of their use in the Tabernacle 
 was, that it might be adorned with the useful service of 
 the flocks of the earth and sea: the multitude of the seals 
 then in the Mediterranean being indicated to you both by 
 the name and coinage of the city Phocsea ; and by the at- 
 tribution of them, to the God Proteus, in the first book of 
 the Odyssey, under the precise term of flocks, to be counted 
 by him as their shepherd. 
 
 37. From the days of Moses and of Homer to our own, 
 the traffic in these precious wools and furs, in the Cash- 
 mere wool, and the fur, after the seal disappeared, of the 
 
114: 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 grey ermine, (becoming white in the Siberian winter,) has 
 continued : and in the days of chivalry became of im- 
 mense importance ; because the mantle, and the collar 
 fastening close about the neck, were at once the most 
 useful and the most splendid piece of dress of the warrior 
 nations, who rode and slept in roughest weather, and in 
 open field. l!sow, these rams' skins, or fleeces, dyed of 
 precious red, were continually called by their Eastern 
 merchants 'the red things,' from the Zoroastrian word 
 'gul,' taking the place of the scarlet Chlamydes, which 
 were among the richest wealth of old Rome. The Latin 
 knights could only render the eastern word ' gul ' by gula ; 
 and so in St. Bernard's red-hot denunciation of these 
 proud red dresses, he numbers chiefly among them the 
 little red-dyed skins, pelliculas rubricatas, which they 
 call gulee : " Quas gulas vocant.-' These red furs, for 
 wrist and neck, were afterwards supposed by bad Latin- 
 ists to be called i guise,' as throat-pieces. St. Bernard 
 specifies them, also, in that oflice : " Even some of the 
 clergy," he says, " have the red skins of weasels hanging 
 from their necks dependentes a collo " ; this vulgar in- 
 terpretation of gula became more commonly accepted, as 
 intercourse with the East, and chivalric heraldry, dimin- 
 ished ; and the modern philologist finally jumps fairly 
 down the lion's throat, and supposes that the Tyrian pur- 
 ple, which had been the pride of all the Emperors of East 
 and West, was named from a wild beast's gullet ! 
 
 38. I do not hold for a mischance, or even for a chance 
 
VII. THE IBIS OF THE EARTH. 115 
 
 at all, that this particular error should have been unearth- 
 ed by the hasty studies of the Dail} 7 Telegraph. It is a 
 mistake entirely characteristic of the results of vulgar 
 modern analysis ; and I have exposed it in detail, that 
 I might very solemnly warn you of the impossibility of 
 arriving at any just conclusions respecting ancient classi- 
 cal languages, of which this heraldry is among the noblest, 
 unless we take pains first to render ourselves capable of 
 the ideas which such languages convey. It is perfectly 
 true that every great symbol, as it has, on one side, a 
 meaning of comfort, has on the other one of terror; and 
 if to noble persons it speaks of noble things, to ignoble 
 persons it will as necessarily speak of ignoble ones. Not 
 under one only, but under all, of these heraldic symbols, 
 as there is, for thoughtful and noble persons, the spiritual 
 sense, so for thoughtless and sensual persons, there is the 
 sensual one ; and can be no other. Every word has only 
 the meaning which its hearer can receive ; you cannot ex- 
 press honour to the shameless, nor love to the unloving. 
 Nay, gradually you may fall to the level of having words 
 no more, either for honour or for love : 
 
 " There are whole nations," says Mr. Farrar, in his ex- 
 cellent little book on the families of speech, " people 
 whom no nation now acknowledges as its kinsmen, whose 
 languages, rich in words for all that can be eaten or 
 handled, seem absolutely incapable of expressing the re- 
 flex conceptions of the intellect, or the higher forms of the 
 consciousness ; whose life seems confined to a gratifica- 
 
116 DEUCALION. 
 
 tion of animal wants, with no hope in the future, and no 
 pride in the past. They are for the most part peoples 
 without a literature, and without a history ; peoples whose 
 tongues in some instances have twenty names for murder, 
 but no name for love, no name for gratitude, no name for 
 God." 
 
 39. The English nation, under the teaching of modern 
 economists, is rapidly becoming one of this kind, which, 
 deliberately living, not in love of God or man, but in de- 
 fiance of God, and hatred of man, will no longer have in 
 its heraldry, gules as the colour of love ; but gules only as 
 the colour of the throat of a wild beast. That will be the 
 only part of the British lion symbolized by the British 
 flag ; not the lion heart any more, but only the lion gul- 
 let. 
 
 And if you choose to interpret your heraldry in that 
 modern fashion, there are volumes of instruction open for 
 you everywhere. Yellow shall be to you the colour of 
 treachery, instead of sunshine ; green, the colour of putre- 
 faction, instead of strength ; blue, the colour of sulphur- 
 ous hell-fire, instead of sunlit heaven ; and scarlet, the 
 colour of the harlot of Babylon, instead of the Virgin of 
 God. All these are legitimate readings, nay, inevitable 
 readings. I said wrongly just now that you might choose 
 what the symbols shall be to you. Even if you would, 
 you cannot choose. They can only reflect to you what 
 you have made your own mind, and can only herald to you 
 what you have determined for your own fate. 
 
VH. THE IRIS OF THE EARTH. 117 
 
 40. And now, with safe understanding of the meaning of 
 purple, I can show you the purple and dove-colour of St. 
 Mark's, once itself a sea-borne vase of alabaster full of 
 incense of prayers ; and a purple manuscript, floor, walls, 
 and roof blazoned with the scrolls of the gospel. 
 
 They have been made a den of thieves, and these stones 
 of Venice here in my hand * are rags of the sacred robes 
 of her Church, sold, and mocked like her Master. They 
 have parted her garments, and cast lots upon her vesture. 
 
 41. I return to our question at the beginning : Are we 
 right in setting our hearts on these stones, loving them, 
 holding them precious ? 
 
 Yes, assuredly ; provided it is the stone we love, and 
 the stone we think precious ; and not ourselves we love, 
 and ourselves we think precious. To worship a black 
 stone, because it fell from heaven, may not be wholly 
 wise, but it is half-way to being wise ; half-way to worship 
 of heaven itself. Or, to worship a white stone because it 
 is dug with difficulty out of the earth, and to put it into 
 a log of wood, and say the wood sees with it, may not be 
 
 * Portions of the alabaster of St. Mark's torn away for recent restor- 
 ations. The destruction of the floor of the church, to give work to 
 modern mosaic-mongers, has been going on for years. I cannot bear 
 the pain of describing the facts of it, and must leave the part of the 
 lecture referring to the colour of the marbles to be given farther on, 
 in connection with some extracts from my ' Stones of Venice.' The 
 superb drawing, by Mr. Bunney, of the north portico, which illustrated 
 them, together with the alabasters themselves, will be placed in the 
 Sheffield Museum. 
 
118 DEUCALION. 
 
 wholly wise ; but it is half-way to being wise ; half-way 
 to believing that the God who makes earth so bright, may 
 also brighten the eyes of the blind. It is no true folly to 
 think that stones see, but it is, to think that eyes do not ; 
 it is no true folly to think that stones live, but it is, to 
 think that souls die ; it is no true folly to believe that, in 
 the day of the making up of jewels, the palace walls shall 
 be compact of life above their corner-stone, but it is, to 
 believe that in the day of dissolution the souls of the 
 globe shall be shattered with its emerald ; and no spirit 
 survive, unterrified, above the ruin. 
 
 42. Yes, pretty ladies ! love the stones, and take care 
 of them ; but love your own souls better, and take care of 
 them, for the day when the Master shall make up His 
 jewels. See that it be first the precious stones of the breast- 
 plate of justice you delight in, and are brave in ; not first 
 the stones, of your own diamond necklaces * you delight 
 in, and are fearful for, lest perchance the lady's maid miss 
 that box at the station. Get your breastplate of truth 
 first, and every earthly stone will shine in it. 
 
 * Do you think there was no meaning- of fate in that omen of the 
 diamond necklace ; at the end of the days of queenly pride ; omen of 
 another line, of scarlet, on many a fair neck ? It was a foul story, you 
 say slander of the innocent. Yes, undoubtedly, fate meant it to be so. 
 Slander, and lying, and every form of loathsome shame, cast on the 
 innocently fading Royalty. For the corruption of the best is the worst ; 
 and these gems, which are given by God to be on the breast of the pure 
 priest, and in the crown of the righteous king, sank into the black gravel 
 of diluvium, under streams of innocent blood. 
 
UN' 
 
 ^- 
 
 VII. THE IEIS OF THE EARTH. 119^ 
 
 Alas ! most of you know no more what justice means, 
 than what jewels mean ; but here is the pure practice of 
 it to be begun, if you w r ill, to-morrow. 
 
 43. For literal truth of your jewels themselves, abso- 
 lutely search out and cast away all manner of false, or 
 dyed, or altered stones. And at present, to make quite 
 sure, wear your jewels uncut; they will be twenty times 
 more interesting to you, so. The ruby in the British 
 crown is uncut ; and is, as far as my knowledge extends, 
 I have not had it to look at close, the loveliest precious 
 stone in the world. And, as a piece of true gentle- 
 woman's and true lady's knowledge, learn to know theso 
 stones when you see them, uncut. So much of mineralogy 
 the abundance of modern science may, I think, spare, as a 
 piece of required education for the upper classes. 
 
 44. Then, when you know them, and their shapes, get 
 your highest artists to design the setting of them. Hol- 
 bein, Botticelli, or Angelico, will always be ready to 
 design a brooch for you. Then you will begin to think 
 how to get your Holbein and Botticelli, which will lead 
 to many other wholesome thoughts. 
 
 45. And lastly, as you are true in the choosing, be just 
 in the sharing, of your jewels. They are but dross and 
 dust, after all ; and you, my sweet religious friends, who 
 are so anxious to impart to the poor your pearls of great 
 price, may surely also share with them your pearls of little 
 price. Strangely (to my own mind at least), you are not 
 so zealous in distributing your estimable rubies, as you 
 
120 DEUCALION. 
 
 are in communicating your ^estimable wisdom. Of the 
 grace of God, which you can give away in the quantity 
 you think others are in need of, without losing any your- 
 selves, I observe you to be affectionately lavish ; but 
 of the jewels of God, if any suggestions be made by char- 
 ity touching the distribution of them^ you are apt, in your 
 wisdom, to make answer like the wise virgins, " Not so, 
 lest there be not enough for us and you." 
 
 46. Now, my fair friends, doubtless, if the Tabernacle 
 were to be erected again, in the middle of the Park, you 
 would all be eager to stitch camels' hair for it ; some, to 
 make presents of sealskins to it ; and, perhaps, not a few 
 fetch your jewel-cases, offering their contents to the selec- 
 tion of Bezaleel and Aholiab. 
 
 But that cannot be, now, with so Crystal-Palace-like 
 entertainment to you. The tabernacle of God is now 
 with men ; in men, and women, and sucklings also ; 
 which temple ye are, ye and your Christian sisters ; 
 of whom the poorest, here in London, are a very undec- 
 orated shrine indeed. They are the Tabernacle, fair 
 friends, which you have got leave, and charge, to adorn. 
 Not, in anywise, those charming churches and altars 
 which you wreathe with garlands for God's sake, and the 
 eloquent clergyman's. You are quite wrong, and barbar- 
 ous in language, when you call them i Churches ' at all. 
 They are only Synagogues ; the very same of which 
 Christ spoke, with eternal meaning, as the places that 
 hypocrites would love to be seen in. Here, in St. Giles's, 
 
VH. THE IRIS OF THE EARTH. 121 
 
 and the East, sister to that in St. George's, and the West, 
 is the Church ! raggedly enough curtained, surely ! Let 
 those arches and pillars of Mr. Scott's alone, young ladies : 
 it is you whom God likes to see well decorated, not them. 
 Keep your roses for your hair your embroidery for your 
 petticoats. You are yourselves the Church, dears ; and 
 see that you be finally adorned, as women professing god- 
 liness, with the precious stones of good works, which may 
 be quite briefly defined, for the present, as decorating the 
 entire Tabernacle ; and clothing your poor sisters, with 
 yourselves. Put roses also in their hair, put precious 
 stones also on their breasts ; see that they also are clothed 
 in your purple and scarlet, with other delights ; that they 
 also learn to read the gilded heraldry of the sky ; and, 
 upon the earth, be taught, not only the labours of it, but 
 the loveliness. For them, also, let the hereditary jewel 
 recall their father's pride, their mother's beauty : so shall 
 your days, and theirs, be long in the sweet and sacred 
 land which the Lord your God has given you : so, truly, 
 
 Shall THE GOLD OF THAT LAND BE GOOD, AND THERE, ALSO, 
 THE CRYSTAL, AND THE ONYX STONE. 
 
CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 THE ALPHABET. 
 
 (Chapter written to introduce the preceding Lecture ; but 
 transposed, that the Lecture might not be divided be- 
 tween two numbers.) 
 
 1. SINCE the last sentence of the preceding number 
 of ' Deucalion ' was written, I have been compelled, 
 in preparing for the arrangement of my Sheffield mu- 
 seum, to look with nicety into the present relations 
 of theory to knowledge in geological science ; and find, 
 to my no small consternation, that the assertions which I 
 had supposed beyond dispute, made by the geologists 
 of forty years back, respecting the igneous origin of the 
 main crystalline masses of the primary rocks, are now all 
 brought again into question ; and that the investigations 
 of many of the most intelligent observers render many 
 former theories, in their generality, more than doubtful. 
 My own studies of rock structure, with reference to land- 
 scape, have led me, also, to see the necessity of retreating 
 to and securing the very bases of knowledge in this infin- 
 itely difficult science: and I am resolved, therefore; 
 
Vin. THE ALPHABET. 
 
 at once to make the series of ( Deucalion ' an absolutely 
 trustworthy foundation for the geological teaching in St. 
 George's schools ; by first sifting what is really known 
 from what is supposed ; and then, out of things known, 
 sifting what may be usefully taught to young people, 
 from the perplexed vanity of prematurely systematic 
 science. 
 
 2. I propose, also, in the St. George's Museum at Shef- 
 field, and in any provincial museums hereafter connected 
 with it, to allow space for two arrangements of inorganic 
 substances ; one for mineralogists, properly so called, and 
 the general public ; the other for chemists, and advanced 
 students in physical science. The mineral ogical collec- 
 tion will be fully described and explained in its cata- 
 logue, so that very young people may begin their study 
 of it without difficulty, and so chosen and arranged as to 
 be comprehensible by persons who have not the time to 
 make themselves masters of the science of chemistry, but 
 who may desire some accurate acquaintance with the as- 
 pect of the principal minerals which compose the world. 
 And I trust, as I said in the preceding lecture, that the 
 day is near when the knowledge of the native forms and 
 aspects of precious stones will be made a necessary part 
 of a lady's education ; and knowledge of the nature of 
 the soils, and the building stones, of his native country, a 
 necessary part of a gentleman's. 
 
 3. The arrangement of the chemical collection I shall 
 leave to any good chemist who will undertake it : I sup- 
 
124 DEUCALION. 
 
 pose that now adopted by Mr. Maskelyne for the minera 
 collection in the British Museum may be considered as 
 permanently authoritative. 
 
 But the mineralogical collection I shall arrange myself, 
 as aforesaid, in the manner which I think likely to be 
 clearest for simple persons ; omitting many of the rarer 
 elements altogether, in the trust that they will be suffi- 
 ciently illustrated by the chemical series ; and placing the 
 substances most commonly seen in the earth beneath our 
 feet, in an order rather addressed to the convenience of 
 memory than to the symmetries of classification. 
 
 4. In the outset, therefore, I shall divide our entire 
 
 
 
 collection into twenty groups, illustrated each by a sepa- 
 rately bound portion of catalogue. 
 
 These twenty groups will illustrate the native states, 
 and ordinary combinations, of nine solid oxides, one 
 gaseous element (fluorine), and ten solid elements, placed 
 in the following order : 
 
 1. Silica. 
 
 2. Oxide of Titanium. 
 
 3. Oxide of Iron. 
 
 4. Alumina. 
 
 5. Potassa. 
 
 6. Soda. 
 
 7. Magnesia. 
 
 8. Calcium. 
 
 9. Glucina. 
 10. Fluorine. 
 
VIII. THE ALPHABET. 
 
 125 
 
 11. Carbon. 
 
 12. Sulphur. 
 
 13. Phosphorus. 
 14 Tellurium. 
 
 15. Uranium. 
 
 16. Tin. 
 IT. Lead. 
 
 18. Copper. 
 
 19. Silver. 
 
 20. Gold. 
 
 5. A few words will show the objects proposed by this 
 limited arrangement. The three first oxides are placed 
 in one group, on account of the natural fellowship and 
 constant association of their crystals. 
 
 Added to these, the next group of the alkaline earths 
 will constitute one easily memorable group of nine 
 oxides, out of which, broadly and practically, the solid 
 globe of the earth is made, containing in the cracks, 
 rents, or volcanic pits of it, the remaining eleven sub- 
 stances, variously prepared for man's use, torment, or 
 temptation. 
 
 6. I put fluorine by itself, on account of its notable 
 importance in natural mineralogy, and especially in that 
 of Cornwall, Derbyshire, and Cumberland : what I have 
 to say of chlorine and iodine will be arranged under the 
 same head ; then the triple group of anomalous sub- 
 stances created for ministry by fire, and the seven-fold 
 group of the great metals, complete the list of substances 
 
126 DEUCALION. 
 
 which must be generally known to the pupils in St. 
 George's schools. The phosphates, sulphates, and car- 
 bonates of the earths, will be given with the earths ; and 
 those of the metals, under the metals. The carburets, 
 sulphurets, and phosphurets, * under carbon, sulphur, and 
 phosphorus. Under glucina, given representatively, on 
 account of its importance in the emerald, will be given 
 what specimens may be desirable of the minor or auxili- 
 ary earths baryta, strontia, etc. ; and under tellurium 
 and uranium, the auxiliary metals platinum, columbium, 
 etc., naming them thus together, under those themselves 
 named from Tellus and Uranus. With uranium I shall 
 place the cupreous micas, for their similarity of aspect. 
 
 7. The minerals referred to each of these twenty 
 groups will be further divided, under separate letters, into 
 such minor classes as may be convenient, not exceeding 
 twenty : the letters being initial, if possible, of the name 
 of the class ; but the letters I and J omitted, that they 
 may not be confused with numerals ; and any letter of 
 important sound in the mineral's name substituted for 
 these, or for any other that would come twice over. 
 Then any number of specimens may be catalogued under 
 each letter. 
 
 For instance, the siliceous minerals which are the sub- 
 ject of study in the following lecture will be lettered 
 thus : 
 
 * I reject the modern term 'sulphide* unhesitatingly. It is ft* 
 barbarous as ' carbide.' 
 
VIII. THE ALPHABET. 127' 
 
 A. Agate. 
 0. Carnelian. 
 H. Hyalite. 
 L. Chalcedony. 
 M. Amethyst. 
 O. Opal. 
 Q. Quartz. 
 S. Jasper. 
 
 In which list, M is used that we may not have A repeated, 
 and will yet be sufficiently characteristic of Ame- 
 thyst ; and L, to avoid the repetition of 0, may stand 
 for Chalcedony ; while S, being important in the 
 sound of Jasper, will serve instead of excluded J, or pre- 
 engaged A. 
 
 The complete label, then, on any (principally) siliceous 
 mineral will be in such form as these following : 
 
 1 A 1, meaning Silica, Agate, No. 1. 
 
 1 L 40, " Silica, Chalcedony, No. 40. 
 
 1 Q 520, " Silica, Quartz, No. 520. 
 
 8. In many of the classes, as in this first one of Silica, 
 we shall not need all our twenty letters ; but there will be 
 a letter A to every class, which will contain the examples 
 that explain the relation and connection of the rest. It 
 happens that in Silica, the agates exactly serve this pur- 
 pose ; and therefore may have A for their proper initial 
 letter. But in the case of other minerals, the letter A 
 will not be the initial of the mineral's name, but the 
 
128 DEUCALION. 
 
 indication of its character, as explanatory of the succeed- 
 ing series. 
 
 Thus the specimen* of gold, referred to as 20 A 1 in 
 the preceding lecture, is the first of the series exhibiting 
 the general method of the occurrence of native gold in 
 the rocks containing it; and the complete series in the 
 catalogue will be 
 
 A. Native Gold, in various geological 
 
 formations. 
 
 B. Branched Gold. 
 
 C. Crystalline Gold. 
 
 D. Dispersed Gold. 
 G. Granulate Gold. 
 K Knitted Gold. 
 L. Leaf Gold. 
 
 M. Mossy Gold. 
 
 E. Boiled Gold. 
 
 9. It may be at once stated that I shall always retain 
 the word ' branched ' for minerals taking either of the 
 forms now called arborescent ' or ' dendritic.' The 
 advance of education must soon make all students feel 
 the absurdity of using the epithet ' tree-like ' in Latin, 
 with a different meaning from the epithet ' tree-like ' in 
 Greek. My general word * branched ' will include both 
 the so-called ' arborescent ' forms (meaning those branched 
 in straight crystals), and the so-called l dendritic' 
 (branched like the manganese or oxide in Mocha stones ;) 
 
Plate IV. 
 
 AMETHYST-QUARTZ, 
 With Warped Faults in Concretion. 
 
Ssi 
 
VIII. THE ALPHABET. 
 
 129 
 
 but with most accurate explanation of tile difference; 
 while the term ' spun ' will be reserved for the variously 
 thread-like forms, inaccurately now called dendritic, 
 assumed characteristically by native silver and copper. 
 
 Of course, thread, branch, leaf, and grain, are all in! 
 most cases crystalline, no less definitely than larger crys- 
 tals ; but all my epithets are for practical service, not 
 scientific definition ; and I mean by ' crystalline gold ' a 
 specimen which distinctly shows octohedric or other speci- 
 fic form ; and by ' branched gold ' a specimen in which 
 such crystalline forms are either so indistinct or so minute 
 as to be apparently united into groups resembling branches 
 of trees. 
 
 10. Everyone of the specimens will be chosen for some 
 specialty of character ; and the points characteristic of it 
 described in the catalogue ; and whatever questions 
 respecting its structure are yet unsolved, and significant, 
 will be submitted in succession, noted each by a Greek 
 letter, so that any given question may be at once referred 
 to. Thus, for instance : question a in example 20 G 1 
 will be the relation of the subdivided or granular condi- 
 tion of crystalline gold to porous states of the quartz 
 matrix. As the average length of description required 
 by any single specimen, chosen on such principle, ought to 
 be at least half a page of my usual type, the distribution 
 of the catalogue into volumes will not seem unnecessary ; 
 especially as in due course of time, I hope that each 
 volume will consist of two parts, the first contain- 
 
130 DEUCALION. 
 
 ing questions submitted, and the second, solutions re- 
 ceived. 
 
 The geological serfes will be distinguished by two 
 letters instead of one, the first indicating the principal 
 locality of the formation, or at least that whence it was 
 first named. And I shall distinguish all formations by 
 their localities " M. L., Malham limestone " ; " S. S., 
 Skiddaw slate"; etc., leaving the geologists to assign 
 systematic or chronological names as they like. What is 
 pliocene to-day may be pleistocene to-morrow ; and what 
 is triassic in Mr. A.'s system, tesserassic in Mr. B.'s ; but 
 Turin gravels and Warwick sands remain where they 
 used to be, for all that. 
 
 These particulars being understood, the lecture which I 
 gave this spring on the general relations of precious 
 minerals to human interests, may most properly introduce 
 us to our detailed and progressive labour ; and two para- 
 graphs of it, incidentally touching upon methods of public 
 instruction, may fitly end the present chapter. 
 
 11. In all museums intended for popular teaching, 
 there are two great evils to be avoided. The first is, 
 superabundance ; the second, disorder. The first is hav- 
 ing too much of everything. You will find in your own 
 work that the less you have to look at, the better you at- 
 tend. You can no more see twenty things worth seeing 
 in an hour, than you can read twenty books worth reading 
 in a day. Give little, but that little good and beautiful, 
 and explain it thoroughly. For instance, here in crystal, 
 
VHI. THE ALPHABET 131 
 
 you may have literally a thousand specimens, every one 
 with something new in it to a mineralogist ; but what is 
 the use of that to a man who has only a quarter of an 
 hour to spare in a week? Here are four pieces showing 
 it in perfect purity, with the substances which it is 
 fondest of working with, woven by it into tissues as fine 
 as Penelope's; and one crystal of it stainless, with the 
 favourite shape it has here in Europe the so-called 
 ' flute-beak ' of Dauphine, let a man once understand 
 that crystal, and study the polish of this plane surface, 
 given to it by its own pure growth, and the word ' crys- 
 tal ' will become a miracle to him, and a treasure in his 
 heart for evermore. 
 
 12. Not too much, is the first law ; not in disorder, is 
 
 % 
 
 the second. Any order will do, if it is fixed and intelli- 
 gible : no system is of use that is disturbed by additions, 
 or difficult to follow ; above all, let all things, for popular 
 use, be 'beautifully exhibited. In our own houses, we 
 may have our drawers and bookcases as rough as we 
 please ; but to teach our people rightly, we must make it 
 a true joy to them to see the pretty things we have to 
 show : and we must let them feel that, although, by 
 poverty, they may be compelled to the pain of labour,, 
 they need not, by poverty, be debarred from the felicifrj 
 and the brightness of rest ; nor see the work of great 
 artists, or of the great powers of nature, disgraced by 
 commonness an} vileness in the manner of setting them 
 forth. Stateliness, splendour, and order are above all 
 
132 DEUCALION. 
 
 things needful in places dedicated to the highest labours 
 of thought : what we willingly concede to the Graces of 
 Society, we must reverently offer to the Muses of Seclu- 
 sion ; and out of the millions spent annually to give 
 attractiveness to folly, may spare at least what is necessary 
 to give honour to Instruction. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 FIRE AND WATER. 
 
 1. IN examining any mineral, I wish my pupils first tc 
 be able to ascertain easily what it is ; then to be accur- 
 ately informed of what is known respecting the processes 
 of its formation ; lastly, to examine, with such precision 
 as their time or instruments may permit, the effects of 
 such formation on the substance. Thus, from almost any 
 piece of rock, in Derbyshire, over which spring water has 
 trickled or dashed for any length of time, they may break 
 with a light blow a piece of brown incrustation, which, 
 with little experience, they may ascertain to be carbonate 
 of lime ; of which they may authoritatively be told that 
 it was formed by slow deposition from the dripping 
 water ; and in which, with little strain of sight, they 
 may observe structural lines, vertical to the surface, which 
 present many analogies with those which may be seen in 
 coats of semi-crystalline quartz, or reniform chalcedony. 
 
 2. The mofe accurate the description they can give of 
 the aspect of the stone, and the more authoritative and 
 sifted the account they can render of the circumstances of 
 its origin, the greater shall I consider their progress, and 
 the more hopeful their scientific disposition. 
 
134 DEUCALION. 
 
 But I absolutely forbid their proceeding to draw any 
 logical inferences from what they know of stalagmite, to 
 what they don't know* of chalcedony. They are not to 
 indulge either their reason or their imagination in the 
 feeblest flight beyond the verge of actual experience ; and 
 they are to quench, as demoniacal temptation, any dispo- 
 sition they find in themselves to suppose that, because 
 stalagmite and chalcedony both show lines of structure 
 vertical to reniform surface, both have been deposited in 
 a similar manner from a current solution. They are to 
 address themselves to the investigation of the chalcedony 
 precisely as if no stalagmite were in existence, to inquire 
 first what it is ; secondly, when and how it is known to be 
 formed ; and, thirdly, what structure is discernible in it, 
 leaving to the close of their lives, and of other people's, 
 the collection, from evidence thus securely accumulated, 
 of such general conclusions as may then, without dispute, 
 and without loss of time through prejudice in error, man- 
 ifest themselves, not as 'theories,' but as demonstrable 
 laws. 
 
 When, however, for the secure instruction of my thus 
 restrained and patient pupils, I look, myself, for what is 
 actually told me by eye-witnesses, of the formation of 
 mineral bodies, I find the sources of information so few, 
 the facts so scanty, and the connecting paste, or diluvial 
 detritus, of past guesses, so cumbrously delaying the oper- 
 ation of rational diamond-washing, that I am fain, as the 
 shortest way, to set such of my friends as are minded to 
 
IX. FIRE AND WATER. 135" 
 
 help me, to begin again at the very beginning ; and reas- 
 sert, for the general good, what their eyes can now see, 
 in what their hands can now handle. 
 
 3. And as we have begun with a rolled flint, it seems 
 by special guidance of Fors that the friend who has 
 already first contributed to the art-wealth of the Sheffield 
 Museum, Mr. Henry Willett, is willing also to be the 
 first contributor to its scientific treasuries of fact ; and 
 has set himself zealously to collect for us the pheno- 
 mena observable in the chalk and flint of his neighbour 
 hood. 
 
 Of which kindly industry, the following trustworthy 
 notes have been already the result, which, (whether the 
 like observations have been made before or not being quite 
 immaterial to the matter in hand,) are assuredly them- 
 selves original and secure : not mere traditional gossip. 
 Before giving them, however, I will briefly mark their 
 relations to the entire subject of the structure of siliceous 
 minerals. 
 
 4. There are a certain number of rocks in the world, 
 which have been seen by human eyes, flowing, white-hot, 
 and watched by human eyes as they cool down. The 
 structure of these rocks is therefore absolutely known tc 
 have had something to do with fire. 
 
 There are a certain number of other rocks in the world 
 which have been seen by human eyes in a state of wet 
 sand or mud, and which have been watched, as they dried; 
 into substances more or less resembling stone. The struc- 
 
136 DEUCALION. 
 
 ture of these rocks is therefore known to have had some 
 thing to do with water. 
 
 Between these two*mate rials, whose nature is avouched 
 by testimony, there occur an indefinite number of rocks, 
 which no human eyes have ever seen, either hot or muddy ; 
 but which nevertheless show curious analogies to the as- 
 certainably cooled substances on the one side, and to the 
 ascertainably dried substances on the other. Respecting 
 these medial formations, geologists have disputed in my 
 ears during the half-century of my audient life ; (and had 
 been disputing for about a century before I was born,) 
 without having yet arrived at any conclusion whatever; 
 the book now held to be the principal authority on the 
 subject, entirely contradicting, as aforesaid, the conclu- 
 sions which, until very lately, the geological world, if it 
 had not accepted as incontrovertible, at least asserted as 
 positive. 
 
 5. In the said book, however, Gustaf Bischof's Chem- 
 ical Geology, there are, at last, collected a large num- 
 ber of important and secure facts, bearing on mineral for- 
 mation : and principles of microscopic investigation have 
 been established by Mr. Sorby, some years ago, which 
 have, I doubt not, laid the foundation, at last, of the sound 
 knowledge of the conditions under which crystals are 
 formed. Applying Mr. Sorby 's method, with steady in- 
 dustry, to the rocks of Cumberland, Mr. Clifton Ward 
 has, so far as I can judge, placed the nature of these, at 
 least, within the range of secure investigation. M r . 
 
IX. FIRE AND WATER. 
 
 137 - 
 
 "Ward's kindness has induced him also to spare the time 
 needful for the test of the primary phenomena of agates- 
 cent structure in a similar manner ; and I am engraving 
 the beautiful drawings he sent me, with extreme care, for 
 our next number ; to be published with a letter from him, 
 containing, I suppose, the first serviceable description of 
 agatescent structure yet extant.* 
 
 6. Hitherto, however, notwithstanding all that has been 
 accomplished, nobody can tell us how a common flint is 
 made. Nobody ever made one; nobody has ever seen 
 one naturally coagulate, or naturally dissolve ; nobody 
 has ever watched their increase, detected their diminu- 
 tion, or explained the exact share which organic bodies 
 have in their formation. The splendid labours of Mr. 
 Bowerbank have made us acquainted with myriads of 
 organic bodies which have provoked siliceous concretion, 
 or become entangled in it : but the beautiful forms which 
 these present have only increased the difficulty of deter- 
 mining the real crystalline modes of siliceous structure, 
 unaffected by organic bodies. 
 
 Y. Crystalline modes ^ I say, as distinguished from crys- 
 talline laws. It is of great importance to mineralogy 
 that we should carefully distinguish between the laws or 
 limits which determine the possible angles in the form of 
 
 * I must, however, refer the reader to the valuable summary of work 
 hitherto done on this subject by Professor Kupert Jones. (Proceedings 
 of Geologists' Association, Vol. IV., No. 7,) for examination of these 
 questions of priority. 
 
138 DEUCALIOIT. 
 
 a mineral, and the modes, or measures, in which, accord- 
 ing to its peculiar nature or circumstances, it conducts 
 itself under these resfrictions. 
 
 Thus both cuprite and fluor are under laws which en- 
 force cubic or octohedric angles in their crystals ; but 
 cuprite can arrange its cubes in fibres finer than those 
 of the softest silk, while fluor spar only under rare con- 
 ditions distinctly elongates its approximate cube into a 
 parallelepiped. 
 
 Again, the prismatic crystals of Wavellite arrange 
 themselves invariably in spherical or reniform concre- 
 tions ; but the rhombohedral crystals of quartz and hema- 
 tite do so only under particular conditions, the study of 
 which becomes a quite distinct part of their lithology. 
 
 8. This stellar or radiant arrangement is one essential 
 condition in the forms and phenomena of agate and chal- 
 cedony ; and Mr. Clifton Ward has shown in the paper 
 to which I have just referred, that it is exhibited under 
 the microscope as a prevalent condition in their most 
 translucent substance, and on the minutest scale. 
 
 Now all siliceous concretions, distinguishing themselves 
 from the mass of the surrounding rocks, are to be ar- 
 ranged under two main classes ; briefly memorable as 
 knots and nuts ; the latter, from their commonly oval 
 form, ha\ r e been usually described by mineralogists as, 
 more specially, l almonds.' 
 
 'Knots' are concretions of silica round some central 
 point or involved substance, (often organic) ; such knots 
 
. i \ 
 
 IX. FIKE AND WATER. 
 
 being usually harder and more solid in the centre than at 
 the outside, and having their fibres of crystallization, if 
 visible, shot outwards like the rays of a star, forming pyra- 
 midal crystals on the exterior of the knot. 
 
 9. ( Almonds ' are concretions of silica formed in cavi- 
 ties of rocks, or, in some cases, probably by their own 
 energy producing the cavities they enclose ; the fibres of 
 crystallization, if visible, being directed from the outside 
 of the almond-shell towards its interior cavity. 
 
 10. These two precisely opposite conditions are sever- 
 ally represented best by a knot of sound black flint in 
 chalk, and by a well-formed hollow agate in a volcanic 
 rock. 
 
 I have placed in the Sheffield Museum a block of black 
 flint, formed round a bit of Inoceramus shell ; and an 
 almond-shell of agate, about six times as big as a cocoa 
 nut, which will satisfactorily illustrate these two states. 
 But between the two, there are two others of distinctly 
 gelatinous silica, and distinctly crystalline silica, filling 
 pores, cavities, and veins, in rocks, by infiltration or se- 
 cretion. And each of these states will be found passing 
 through infinite gradations into some one of the three 
 others, so that separate account has to be given of every 
 step in the transitions before we can rightly understand 
 the main types. 
 
 11. But at the base of the whole subject lies, first, the 
 clear understanding of the way a knot of solid crystalline 
 substance say, a dodecahedral garnet forms itself out of 
 
140 DEUCALION. 
 
 a rock-paste, say greenstone trap, without admitting a hairs- 
 breadth of interstice between the formed knot and enclos- 
 ing paste ; and, secondly, clear separation in our thoughts, 
 of the bands or layers which are produced by crystalline 
 segregation, from those produced by successively accu 
 mulating substance. But the method of increase of crys- 
 tals themselves, in an apparently undisturbed solution, 
 has never yet been accurately described ; how much less 
 the phenomena resulting from influx of various elements, 
 and changes of temperature and pressure. The frontis- 
 piece to the third number of ' Deucalion ' gives typical 
 examples of banded structure resulting from pure crystal- 
 line action ; and the three specimens, 1. A. 21, 22, and 23, 
 at Sheffield, furnish parallel examples of extreme inter- 
 est. But a particular form of banding in flint, first no- 
 ticed and described by Mr. S. P. Woodward,* is of more 
 interest than any other in the total obscurity of its origin ; 
 and in the extreme decision of the lines by which, in a 
 plurality of specimens, the banded spaces are separated 
 from the homogeneous ones, indicating the first approach 
 to the conditions which produce, in more perfect mate- 
 rials, the forms of, so-called, l brecciated ' agates. To- 
 gether with these, a certain number of flints are to be ex- 
 amined which present every appearance of having been 
 violently fractured and re-cemented. Whether fractured 
 by mechanical violence, by the expansive or decomponent 
 
 * 'Geological Magazine,' 1864, vol. i., p. 145, pi. vii. and viii 
 
IX. FIRE AND WATER. 14:1 
 
 forces of contained minerals, or by such slow contraction 
 and re-gelation as must have taken place in most veins 
 through masses of rock, we have to ascertain by the con- 
 tinuance of such work as my friend has here begun. 
 
 LETTER I. * Introductory. 
 
 12. " I am beginning to be perplexed about the num- 
 ber of flints, containing problems and illustrations, and 
 wondering to what extent my inquiries will be of any use 
 to you. 
 
 " I intended at first to collect only what was really 
 beautiful in itself * crystalline M but how the subject 
 widens, and how the arbitrary divisions do run into one 
 another ! What a paltry shifting thing our classification 
 is ! One is sometimes tempted to give it all up in disgust, 
 and I have a shrewd suspicion that all scientific classifi- 
 cation (except for mutual aid to students) is absurd 
 and pedantic : (a) varieties, species, genera, classes, 
 orders, have most of them more in common than of 
 divergence, c a forming spirit ' everywhere, for use and 
 beauty. 
 
 * I shall put my own notes on these and any future communications 
 I may insert, in small print at the bottom of the pages ; and with let- 
 ter-references a, 5, etc. ; but the notes of the authors themselves will 
 be put at the end of their papers, in large print, and with number-ref- 
 erences 1, 2, etc. 
 
 (a) All, at least, is imperfect ; and most of it absurd in the attempt 
 to be otherwise. 
 
142 DEUCALION. 
 
 "It is (to me) impossible to separate purely mineral 
 and chemical siliceous bodies in chalk, (b) from those 
 which are partly formed by the silicate-collecting sponges, 
 which seem to have given them their forms. 
 
 " Who is to say that the radiations and accretions of a 
 crystal are not life, but that the same arrangements in a 
 leaf or a tree are life ? that the clouds which float in 
 their balanced changeableness are not as much guided and 
 defined as the clouds of the chalcedony, or the lenses of 
 the human eye which perceives them ? 
 
 " I think the following facts are plain : 
 
 " 1. The chalk bands do go through the flint. 
 
 " 2. Fissures in flints are constantly repaired by fresh 
 deposits of chalcedony and silex. 
 
 " 3. Original sponge matter is preserved (c) and obliter- 
 ated by siliceous deposit, in extent and degree varying 
 infinitely, and apparently proportioned to the amount of 
 iron present i. e., the iron preserves original form, unless 
 when combined with sulphur enough to crystallize, when 
 all the original structure disappears. 
 
 " 4. Amygdaloids seem to be formed by a kind of inde- 
 pendent or diverse arrangement of molecules, caused by 
 slight admixture of foreign minerals." 
 
 (5) It may be doubtful if any such exist in chalk ; but, if they exist, 
 they will eventually be distinguishable. 
 
 (c) Q. The form or body of it only ; is the matter itself ever pre- 
 served ? 
 
IX. FIRE AND WATER. 143' 
 
 LETTER II. Memoranda made at ManteWs Quarry^ 
 Cuckfieldj on the banding noticed in the beds and 
 nodules of the siliceous calciferous sandstone there, 
 31st May, 1876. 
 
 Nos. I. and II. Ovate, concentric, ferruginous bandings ; 
 the centre apparently (1) free from banding. 
 
 III. Bands arranged at acute angles. These bands are 
 not caused by fracture, but apparently by the intersection, 
 at an acute angle, of the original lines of deposit, (d) 
 
 IV. In this specimen the newly fractured surfaces 
 show no bandings, but the weathered surface develops 
 the banding. 
 
 V. Ditto i. e. bands parallel ; much more ferrugi 
 nous, and consequently more friable when exposed to 
 weathering. 
 
 May not something be learnt regarding the laws of 
 banding in agates, flints, etc., from observing the arrange- 
 ment of banding in rocks composed mainly of siliceous 
 matter ? (e} 
 
 May not some of the subtler influences which regulate 
 the growth of trees in their lines of annual increase (mag- 
 
 Note 1, page 170. 
 
 (d) These angular concretions require the closest study ; see the seg- 
 ments of spheres in the plate given in the last number. 
 
 (e) More, I should say, from the agates, respecting the laws of band 
 ing in rocks: see the plate to the present number. When we can 
 explain the interruptions of the bands on such scale as this, we may 
 begin to understand some of those in larger strata. 
 
144 DEUCALION. 
 
 netic probably) have some effect in the arrangement of 
 minerals in solution ? nay, even of the higher vital pro- 
 cesses, such as the deposition of osseous matter in teeth 
 and bones ? (f) 
 
 LETTER III. Memoranda inspecting landed chalk. 
 
 I. In the banded lines (ferruginous) noticed above and 
 below the horizontal fissures beneath the cliff at the Hope 
 Gap, Seaford, it is evident that these lines are not mark- 
 ings of original deposition, but are caused by successive 
 infiltrations of water containing iron in solution, (g) 
 
 II. Concentric markings of the same nature are observ- 
 able in places where 
 
 a. Iron pyrites are decomposing, and the iron in solu- 
 tion is being successively infiltrated into the surrounding 
 chalk rock. 
 
 b. From dropping of ferruginous springs through crev- 
 ices on horizontal surfaces. 
 
 c. This is observable also on surfaces of tabular flint. 
 
 III. Yery peculiar contorted bandings, (similar to the 
 so-called contorted-rocks,) are observable in certain places, 
 notably in the face of the chalk-pit on the east side of Gold- 
 stone Bottom. This chalk-pit, or quarry, is remarkable 
 
 (/) Yes, certainly; but in such case, the teeth and bones act by 
 mineral law ; not the minerals by teeth and bone law. 
 
 (g) Questionable. Bands are almost always caused by concretion, 
 or separation, not infiltration. However caused, the essential point, 
 in the assertion of which this paper has so great value, is their distino 
 tion from strata. 
 
IX. FIRE AND WATER. 145 
 
 t. For the contorted bandings in the chalk rock which 
 are not markings of original deposition , being quite inde- 
 pendent of original stratification. (A) 
 
 2. For the excessive shattering and fissuring observable. 
 
 3. For the fact that these cracks and fissures have been 
 refilled with distinctive and varying substances, as with 
 flint, clay, Websterite, and intermediate admixtures of 
 these substances. 
 
 4. For veins of flint, formerly horizontal, which show 
 visible signs of displacement by subsidence. 
 
 5. For the numerous fissures in these veins of tabular 
 flint being stained by iron, which apparently aids in 
 the further process of splitting up and of widening the 
 minute crevices in the flint. The iron also appears to be 
 infiltrated at varying depths into the body of unfractured 
 flint. 
 
 Qy. Has not ordinary flint the power or property of 
 absorbing ferruginous fluid ? 
 
 LETTER 1Y. Memoranda respecting brecciate flint. 
 
 "June 7, 1876. 
 
 " I hasten to report the result of my fresh inquiry re- 
 specting the specimen 1 first sent to you as ' breccia,' but 
 which you doubted. 
 
 (h) A most important point. It is a question with me whether the 
 greater number of minor contortions in Alpine limestones may not have 
 been produced in this manner. When once the bands are arranged by 
 segregation, chemical agencies will soon produce mechanical separation, 
 as of original beds. 
 
146 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 " The site is the embouchure of the little tidal river 
 Cuckmere, about two miles east of Seaford. I found a 
 block at about the same spot (about three hundred yards 
 east of the coastguard station, and about three quarters 
 of the distance west of the river's mouth). 
 
 " The rocks are here covered with sand, or with a bed 
 of the old valley alluvium, not yet removed by wave 
 action. Travelling westward, the transported blocks of 
 breccia gradually increase in size, (a pretty sure augury 
 that they were derived from a western source). The 
 whole coast is subject to a very rapid degradation and con- 
 sequent encroachment of the sea, the average in some 
 places being from twenty-five to thirty feet yearly. At 
 a spot a hundred yards east of the coastguard station, 
 blocks of one or two tons were visible. The denuded 
 chalk rock is of chalk, seamed and fissured ; the cliff of 
 the same nature ; but all the flints, and especially the tab- 
 ular veins, are splintered and displaced to an unusual 
 extent. 
 
 "Farther westward yet, the blocks of breccia weigh 
 several tons, the cement being itself fissured, and in some 
 places consisting of angular fragments stained with iron. 
 From one mass I extracted a hollow circular flint split 
 into four or five pieces, the fragments, although displaced, 
 re-cemented in juxtaposition, (i) 
 
 (i) I am not prepared to admit, yet, that any of these phenomena are 
 owing to violence. We shall see. 
 
IX. FIRE AND WATER. 147' 
 
 " At the Ebpe Gap, the whole cliff becomes a fractured 
 mass, the fissures being refilled, sometimes with calcareous 
 cement, sometimes with clay, and in other places being 
 hollow. 
 
 " From the sides of an oblique fissure filled with clay I 
 extracted two pieces of a nodular flint, separated from 
 each other by a two-inch seam of clay : when replaced 
 (the clay having been removed) the two fitted exactly. An 
 examination of the rocks shows that the fissures, which 
 run in all directions, are largest when nearly horizontal, 
 dipping slightly seawards. 
 
 " The upper and lower portions of some of these hori 
 zontal fissures are banded with iron stains, evidently 
 derived from iron- water percolating the seams. 
 
 " If I am right, therefore, the mystery seems to be ex- 
 plained thus : (k) 
 
 " I. Rain water, charged with carbonic acid, falling on 
 the hills behind, trickles past the grass and humus beneath, 
 through the cracks in the chalk, dissolving the carbonate 
 of lime into a soluble bi-carbonate. Falling downwards, 
 it escapes seawards through the horizontal fissures, widen- 
 ing them by its solvent power. 
 
 " II. The weight of the superincumbent mass by slow, 
 
 (k) I think this statement of Mr. Willett's extremely valuable ; and 
 see no reason to doubt its truth, as an explanation of the subsidence of 
 chalk and limestone in certain localities. I do not hitherto receive it 
 as any explanation of fracture in flints. I believe Dover Cliffs might 
 gink to Channel bottom without splitting a flint, unless bedded. 
 
148 DEUCALION. 
 
 certain, irregular pressure, descends, maintaining the con- 
 tact of surfaces, but still ever sinking at intervals, varied 
 by the resisting forces* of weight and pressure. 
 
 " III. This process is probably accelerated by the inflow 
 and reflow of salt water at the ebb and flow of tide (into 
 the fissures.) 
 
 " IV. At certain periods, probably in the summer, (as 
 soluble bi-carbonate of lime becomes less soluble as 
 temperature increases,) a portion becomes redeposited as 
 a hard semi-crystalline calcareous cement. 
 
 " Y. This cement appears, in some instances, to be 
 slightly siliceous, and may have a tendency, by the 
 mutual attraction of siliceous matter, to form solid layers 
 of tabular flint. 
 
 " YI. If these deductions be correct, it is probable that 
 the great results involved in the sinking of limestone 
 hills, and the consequent encroachment of the sea, may 
 be traced (step by step) to the springs in valleys i which 
 run among the hills ; ' thence to the rain and dewdrops ; 
 higher up to the mists and clouds ; and so onward, by 
 solar heat, to the ocean, where at last again they find 
 their rest." 
 
 LETTER Y. Final Abstract. 
 
 "June 13, 1876. 
 
 "In addition to the heat derived from summer and 
 atmospheric changes, there will be a considerable amount 
 of heat evolved from the friction produced between the 
 sides of fissures when slipping and subsidence occur, 
 
IX. FIRE AND WATER. 
 
 and from the crushing down of flint supports when weight 
 overcomes resistance. 
 
 " After heavy rainfall 
 
 1. Fissures are filled. 
 
 2. Solution is ravid. 
 
 3. Hydraulic pressure increases. 
 
 4. Fissures are widened. 
 
 " After a period of dry weather 
 1". Solution is diminished. 
 
 2. Hydraulic pressure relieved. 
 
 3. Subsidence and flint-crushing commence, or pro- 
 
 gress more rapidly. 
 
 4. Heat is evolved. 
 
 5. Carbonic acid discharged. 
 
 6. Semi-crystalline carbonate of lime is deposited 
 
 around. 
 
 a. Fragments of crushed flint, (at rest at intermit- 
 ting intervals between motion of rocks). 
 5. Angular fragments of original chalk rock. 
 c. Angular fractured pieces of old cement. 
 " 1 have a dawning suspicion that siliceous deposits (as 
 chalcedony, etc.) are made when the temperature falls, 
 for reasons which 1 must postpone to a future paper." 
 
 (1) Probably the same arrangement exists (concentric), 
 but has not been made visible because the iron has not 
 been oxydized. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 VILLAGE OP SIMPLON, 2d September, 1876. 
 
 1. I AM writing in the little one-windowed room open- 
 ing from the salle-a-manger of the Hotel de la Poste ; 
 bin under some little disadvantage, being disturbed partly 
 by the invocation, as it might be fancied, of calamity on 
 the heads of nations, by the howling of a frantic wind 
 from the Col ; and partly by the merry clattering of the 
 knives and forks of a hungry party in the salon doing 
 their best to breakfast adequately, while the diligence 
 changes horses. 
 
 In that same room, a little earlier in the year, two- 
 and-thirty years ago, my father and mother and I were 
 sitting at one end of the long table in the evening : and 
 at the other end of it, a quiet, somewhat severe-looking, 
 and pale, English (as we supposed) traveller, with his 
 wife ; she, and my mother, working ; her husband care- 
 fully completely some mountain outlines in his sketch- 
 book. 
 
 2. Those days are become very dim to me ; and I for- 
 get which of the groups spoke first. My father and 
 
x. 'THIRTY YEARS SINCE. 151- 
 
 mother were always as shy as children ; and our busy 
 fellow-traveller seemed to us taciturn, slightly inaccessi- 
 ble, and even Alpestre, and, as it were, hewn out of 
 mountain flint, in his serene labour. 
 
 Whether some harmony of Scottish accent struck my 
 father's ear, or the pride he took in his son's accomplish- 
 ments prevailed over his own shyness, I think we first 
 ventured word across the table, with view of informing 
 the grave draughtsman that we also could draw. Where- 
 upon my own sketch-book was brought out, the pale 
 traveller politely permissive. My good father and 
 mother had stopped at the Simplon for me, (and now, 
 feeling miserable myself in the thin air, I know what it 
 cost them,) because 1 wanted to climb the high point 
 immediately west of the Col, thinking thence to get a 
 perspective of the chain joining the Fletschhorn to the 
 Monte Rosa. I had been drawing there the best part of 
 the afternoon, and had brought down w^ith me careful 
 studies of the Fletschhorn itself, and of a great pyramid 
 far eastward, whose name I did not know, but, from its 
 bearing, supposed it must be the Matterhorn, which 1 
 had then never seen. 
 
 3. I have since lost both these drawings ; and if they 
 were given away, in the old times when I despised the 
 best I did, because it was not like Turner, and any friend 
 has preserved them, I wish they might be returned to me ; 
 for they would be of value in Deucalion, and of greater 
 value to myself ; as having won for me, that evening, the 
 
152 DEUCALION. 
 
 sympathy and help of James Forbes. For his eye grew 
 keen, and his face attentive, as he examined the drawings ; 
 and he turned instantly to me as to a recognized fellow- 
 workman, though yet young, no less faithful than him- 
 self. 
 
 He heard kindly what I had to ask about the chain I 
 had been drawing ; only saying, with a slightly proud 
 smile, of my peak supposed to be the Matterhora,* u No, 
 and when once you have seen the Matterhorn, you will 
 never take anything else for it ! " 
 
 He told me as much as I was able to learn, at that 
 time, of the structures of the chain, and some pleasant 
 general talk followed ; but I knew nothing of glaciers 
 then, and he had his evening's work to finish. And I 
 never saw him again. 
 
 I wonder if he sees me now, or guided my hand as I 
 cut the leaves of M. Yiolet-le-Duc's f Massif du Mont 
 Blanc ' this morning, till I came to page 58, and stop- 
 ped ! 
 
 I must yet go back, for a little while, to those dead 
 days. 
 
 4. Failing of Matterhorn on this side of the valley of 
 the Rhone, I resolved to try for it from the other ; and 
 begged my father to wait yet a day for me at Brieg. 
 
 No one, then, had ever heard of the Bell Alp ; and few 
 English knew even of the Aletsch glacier. I laid my 
 
 * It was the Weisshorn. 
 
X. ' THIRTY YEAKS SINCE.' 153" 
 
 plans from the top of the Simplon Col ; and was up at 
 four, next day ; in a cloudless morning, climbing the lit- 
 tle rock path which ascends directly to the left, after 
 crossing the bridge over the Rhone, at Brieg ; path which 
 is quite as critical a little bit of walking as the Fonts of 
 the Her de Glace ; and now, encumbered with the late 
 fallen shatterings of a flake of gneiss of the shape of an 
 artichoke leaf, and the size of the stern of an old ship of 
 the line, which has rent itself away, and dashed down like 
 a piece of the walls of Jericho, leaving exposed, under- 
 neath, the undulatory surfaces of pure rock, which, I am 
 under a very strong impression, our young raw geologists 
 take for real " muttoned " glacier tracks.* 
 
 5. I took this path because I wanted first to climb the 
 green wooded mass of the hill rising directly over the val- 
 ley, so as to enfilade the entire profiles of the opposite 
 chain, and length of the valley of the Khone, from its 
 brow. 
 
 By midday I had mastered it, and got up half as high 
 again, on the barren ridge above it, commanding a little 
 tarn ; whence, in one panorama are seen the Simplon and 
 Saas Alps on the south, with the Matterhorn closing the 
 avenue of the valley of St. Nicolas ; and the Aletsch 
 Alps on the north, with all the lower reach of the Aletsch 
 glacier. This panorama I drew carefully ; and slightly 
 
 * I saw this wisely suggested in a recent number of the ' Alpine 
 Journal/ 
 
154: DEUCALION. 
 
 coloured afterwards, in such crude way as I was then 
 able ; and fortunately not having lost this, I place it in 
 the Sheffield Museum, "for a perfectly trustworthy witness 
 to the extent of snow on the Breithorn, Fletschhorn, and 
 Montagne de Saas, thirty years ago. 
 
 My drawing finished, I ran round and down obliquely 
 to the Bell Alp, and so returned above the gorge of the 
 Aletsch torrent making some notes on it afterwards used 
 in ' Modern Painters,' many and many such a day of foot 
 and hand labour having been needed to build that book, 
 in which my friends, nevertheless, I perceive, still regard 
 nothing but what they are pleased to call its elegant lan- 
 guage, and are entirely indifferent, with respect to that 
 and all other books they read, whether the elegant lan- 
 guage tells them truths or lies. 
 
 That book contains, however, (and to-day it is needful 
 that I should not be ashamed in this confidence of boast- 
 ing,) the first faithful drawings ever given of the Alps, 
 not only in England, but in Europe ; and the first defini- 
 tions of the manner in which their forms have been de- 
 veloped out of their crystalline rocks. 
 
 6. ' Definitions ' only, observe, and descriptions ; but 
 no ( explanations.' I knew, even at that time, far too 
 much of the Alps to theorize on them ; and having 
 learned, in the thirty years since, a good deal more, with 
 the only consequence of finding the facts more inexplica- 
 ble to me than ever, laid M. Yiolet-le-Duc's book on the 
 seat of the carriage the day before yesterday, among other 
 
X, ' THIRTY YEARS SINCE.' 155 * 
 
 stores and preparations for passing the Simplon, contem- 
 plating on its open first page the splendid dash of its first 
 sentence into space, " La croute terrestre, refroidie au 
 moment da plissement qui a forme le massif du Mont 
 Blanc," with something of the same amazement, and same 
 manner of the praise, which our French allies are reported 
 to have rendered to our charge at Balaclava : 
 
 " C'est magnifique ; mais ce n'est pas" la geologic. 
 
 7. I soon had leisure enough to look farther, as the 
 steaming horses dragged me up slowly round the first 
 ledges of pines, under a drenching rain which left noth- 
 ing but their nearest branches visible. Usually, their 
 nearest branches, and the wreaths of white cloud braided 
 among them, would have been all the books I cared to 
 read ; but both curiosity and vanity were piqued by the 
 new utterances, prophetic, apparently, in claimed author- 
 ity, on the matters timidly debated by me in old time. 
 
 I soon saw that the book manifested, in spite of so 
 great false-confidence, powers of observation more true in 
 their scope and grasp than can be traced in any writer on 
 the Alps since De Saussure. But, alas, before we had got 
 up to Berisal, I had found also more fallacies than 1 could 
 count, in the author's first statements of physical law ; 
 and seen, too surely, that the poor Frenchman's keen 
 natural faculty, and quite splendid zeal and industry, had 
 all been wasted, through the wretched national vanity 
 which made him interested in Mont Blanc only ' since it 
 
156 DEUCALION. 
 
 became a part of France,' and had thrown him totally 
 into the clique of Agassiz and Desor, with results in 
 which neither the clique, nor M. Yiolet, are likely, in the 
 end, to find satisfaction. 
 
 8. Too sorrowfully weary of bearing with the provin- 
 cial temper, and insolent errors, of this architectural 
 restoration of the Gothic globe, I threw the book aside, 
 and took up my Carey's Dante, which is always on the 
 carriage seat, or in my pocket not exactly for reading, 
 but as an antidote to pestilent things and thoughts in 
 general ; and store, as it were, of mental quinine, a few 
 lines being usually enough to recover me out of any 
 shivering marsh fever fit, brought on among foulness or 
 stupidity. 
 
 It opened at a favourite old place, in the twenty-first 
 canto of the Paradise, (marked with an M. long ago, 
 when I was reading Dante through to glean his mountain 
 descriptions) : 
 
 " 'Twixt either shore 
 Of Italy, nor distant from thy land," etc. ; 
 
 and I read on into the twenty-third canto, down to St 
 Benedict's 
 
 " There, all things are, as they have ever been ; 
 Our ladder reaches even to that clime, 
 Whither the patriarch Jacob saw it stretch 
 Its topmost round, when it appeared to him 
 With angels laden. But to mount it now 
 None lifts his foot from earth ; and hence my rule 
 
157 
 
 Is left a profitless stain upon the leaves. 
 
 The walls, for abbey reared, turned into dens ; 
 
 The cowls, to sacks choked up with musty meal. 
 
 His convent, Peter founded without gold 
 
 Or silver ; I, with prayers and fasting, mine ; 
 
 And Francis, his, in meek humility. 
 
 And if thou note the point whence each proceeds, 
 
 Then look what it hath erred to, thou shalt find 
 
 The white turned murky. 
 
 Jordan was turned back, 
 And a less wonder than the refluent sea 
 May, at God's pleasure, work amendment here." 
 
 9. I stopped at this, (holding myself a brother of the 
 third order of St. Francis,) and began thinking how long 
 it would take for any turn of tide by St. George's work, 
 when a ray of light came gleaming in at the carriage 
 window, and I saw, where the road turns into the high 
 ravine of the glacier galleries, a little piece of the Breit- 
 horn snowfield beyond. 
 
 Somehow, I think, as fires never burn, so skies never 
 clear, while they are watched ; so I took up my Danto 
 again, though scarcely caring to read more ; and it 
 opened, this time, not at an accustomed place at all, but 
 at the " I come to aid thy wish," of St. Bernard, in the 
 thirty-first canto. Not an accustomed place, because I 
 always think it very unkind of Beatrice to leave him to 
 St. Bernard ; and seldom turn expressly to the passage : 
 but it has chanced lately to become of more significance to 
 
158 DEUCALION. 
 
 me, and I read on eagerly, to the " So burned the peace- 
 ful oriflamme," when the increasing light became so 
 strong that it awaked me, like a new morning ; and I 
 closed the book again, and looked out. 
 
 We had just got up to the glacier galleries, and the 
 last films of rain were melting into a horizontal bar of 
 blue sky which had opened behind the Bernese Alps. 
 
 I watched it for a minute or two through the alternate 
 arch and pier of the glacier galleries, and then as we got 
 on the open hill flank again, called to Bernardo * to stop. 
 
 10. Of all views of the great mountains that I know in 
 Switzerland, I think this, of the southern side of the 
 Bernese range from the Simplon, in general the most dis- 
 appointing for two reasons : the first, that the green 
 mass of their foundation slopes so softly to the valley that 
 it takes away half the look of their height ; and the 
 second, that the greater peaks are confused among the 
 crags immediately above the Aletsch glacier, and cannot, 
 in quite clear weather, be recognized as more distant, or 
 more vast. But at this moment, both these disadvan- 
 tages were totally conquered. The whole valley was full 
 of absolutely impenetrable wreathed cloud, nearly all 
 pure white, only the palest grey rounding the changeful 
 domes of it ; and beyond these domes of heavenly 
 marble, the great Alps stood up against the blue, not 
 
 * Bernardo Bergonza, of the Hotel d'ltalie, Arona, in whom any 
 friend of mine will find a glad charioteer ; and they cannot anywhere 
 find an abler or honester one. 
 
X. * THIRTY YEARS SINCE.' 159 
 
 wholly clear, but clasped and entwined with translucent 
 folds of mist, traceable, but no more traceable, than the 
 thinnest veil drawn over St. Catherine's or the Virgin's 
 hair by Lippi or Luini ; and rising as they were with- 
 drawn from such investiture, into faint oriflammes, as if 
 borne by an angel host far distant; the peaks themselves 
 strewn with strange light, by snow fallen but that mo- 
 ment, the glory shed upon them as the veil fled ; and 
 intermittent waves of still gaining seas of light increas- 
 ing upon them, as if on the first day of creation. 
 
 " A present, vous pouvez voir 1'hotel sur le Bell Alp, 
 bati par Monsieur Tyndall." 
 
 The voice was the voice of the driver of the supple- 
 mentary pair of horses from Brieg, who, just dismissed 
 by Bernardo, had been for some minutes considering how 
 he could best recommend himself to me for an extra 
 franc. 
 
 I not instantly appearing favourably stirred by this in- 
 formation, he went on with increased emphasis, " Mon- 
 sieur \Qprofesseur Tyndall." 
 
 The poor fellow lost his bonnemain by it altogether 
 not out of any deliberate spite of mine ; but because, at 
 this second interruption, I looked at him, with an ex- 
 pression (as I suppose) so little calculated to encourage 
 his hopes of my generosity that he gave the matter up in 
 a moment, and turned away, with his horses, down the 
 hill ; I partly not caring to be further disturbed, 
 and being besides too SiOw as I always am in cases 
 
160 DEUCALION. 
 
 where presence of mind is needful in calling him back 
 again. 
 
 11. For, indeed, fhe confusion into which he had 
 thrown my thoughts was all the more perfect and dia- 
 bolic, because it consisted mainly in the stirring up of 
 every particle of personal vanity and mean spirit of con- 
 tention which could be concentrated in one blot of pure 
 black ink, to be dropped into the midst of my aerial vision. 
 
 Finding it totally impossible to look at the Alps any 
 more, for the moment, I got out of the carriage, sent it 
 on to the Simplon village ; and began climbing, to re- 
 cover my feelings and wits, among the mossy knolls above 
 the convent. 
 
 They were drenched with the just past rain; glittering 
 now in perfect sunshine, and themselves enriched by 
 autumn into wreaths of responding gold. 
 
 The vast hospice stood desolate in the hollow behind 
 them ; the first time I had ever passed it with no welcome 
 from either monk, or dog. Blank as the fields of snow 
 above, stood now the useless walls ; and for the first time, 
 unredeemed by association ; only the thin iron cross in 
 the centre of the roof remaining to say that this had once 
 been a house of Christian Hospitallers. 
 
 12. Desolate this, and dead the office of this, for the 
 present, it seems ; and across the valley, instead, " 1'hotel 
 sur le Bell Alp, bati par Monsieur Tyndall," no nest of 
 dreamy monks, but of philosophically peripatetic or peri- 
 saltatory i puces des glaces.' 
 
x. 'THIRTY YEARS SINCE.' 161 
 
 For, on the whole, that is indeed the dramatic aspect 
 and relation of them to the glaciers ; little jumping black 
 things, who appear, under the photographic microscope, 
 active on the ice- waves, or even inside of them ; giving 
 to most of the great views of the Alps, in the windows at 
 Geneva, a more or less animatedly punctuate and puli- 
 carious character. 
 
 Such their dramatic and picturesque function, to any 
 one with clear eyes ; their intellectual function, however, 
 being more important, and comparable rather to a sym- 
 metrical succession of dirt-bands, each making the ice 
 more invisible than the last ; for indeed, here, in 1876, 
 are published, with great care and expense, such a quan- 
 tity of accumulated rubbish of past dejection, and mo 
 raine of finely triturated mistake, clogging together gi- 
 gantic heaped blocks of far- travelled blunder, as it 
 takes away one's breath to approach the shadow of. 
 
 13. The first in magnitude, as in origin, of these long- 
 sustained stupidities, the pierre-a-Bot, or Frog-stone, par 
 excellence, of the Neuchatel clique, is Charpentier's 
 Dilatation Theory, revived by M. Yiolet, not now as a 
 theory, but an assured principle ! without, however, 
 naming Charpentier as the author of it ; and of course 
 without having read a word of Forbes's demolition of it. 
 The essential work of Deucalion is construction, not de- 
 molition ; but when an avalanche of old rubbish is shot 
 in our way, I must, whether I would or no, clear it aside 
 before I can go on. I suppose myself speaking to my 
 
162 DEUCALION. 
 
 Sheffield men ; and shall put so much as they need know 
 of these logs upon the line, as briefly as possible, before 
 them. 
 
 14. There are three theories extant, concerning glacier- 
 motion, among the gentlemen who live at the intellectual 
 ' Hotel des Neuchatelois.' These are specifically known 
 as the Sliding, Dilatation, and Regelation, theories. 
 
 When snow lies deep on a sloping roof, and is not sup- 
 ported below by any cornice or gutter, you know that 
 when it thaws, and the sun has warmed it to a certain 
 extent, the whole mass slides off into the street. 
 
 That is the way the scientific persons who hold the 
 ' Sliding theory,' suppose glaciers to move. They assume, 
 therefore, two things more ; namely, first that all moun- 
 tains are as smooth as house-roofs ; and, secondly, that a 
 piece of ice a mile long and three or four hundred feet 
 deep will slide gently, though a piece a foot deep and a 
 yard long slides fast, in other words, that a paving-stone 
 will slide fast on another paving-stone, but the Rossberg 
 fall at the rate of eighteen inches a day. 
 
 There is another form of the sliding theory, which is 
 that glaciers slide in little bits, one at a time; or, for 
 example, that if you put a railway train on an incline, 
 with loose fastening to the carriages, the first carriage 
 will slide first, as far as it can go, and then stop ; then 
 the second start, and catch it up, and wait for the third ; 
 and so on, till when the last has come up, the first will 
 start again. 
 
X. * THIRTY YEAB8 SINCE.' 16<T 
 
 Having once for all sufficiently explained the ' Sliding 
 theory ' to you, I shall not trouble myself any more in 
 Deucalion about it. 
 
 15. The next theory is the Dilatation theory. The 
 scientific persons who hold that theory suppose that 
 whenever a shower of rain falls on a glacier, the said rain 
 freezes inside of it ; and that the glacier being thereby 
 made bigger, stretches itself uniformly in one direction, 
 and never in any other ; also that, although it can only 
 be thus expanded in cold and wet weather, such expansion 
 is the reason that it always goes fastest in hot and dry 
 weather. 
 
 There is another form of the Dilatation theory, which 
 is that the glacier expands by freezing its own meltings. 
 
 16. Having thus sufficiently explained the Dilatation 
 theory to you, I shall not trouble myself in Deucalion 
 farther about it ; noticing only, in bidding it goodbye, 
 the curious want of power in scientific men, when once 
 they get hold of a false notion, to perceive the common- 
 est analogies implying its correction. One would have 
 thought that, with their thermometer in their hand to 
 measure congelation with, and the idea of expansion in 
 their head, the analogy between the tube of the thermom- 
 eter, and a glacier channel, and the ball of the thermom- 
 eter, and a glacier reservoir, might, some sunshiny day, 
 have climbed across the muddily-fissured glacier of their 
 wits : and all the quicker, that their much-studied Mer 
 de Glace bears to the great reservoirs of ice above it pre- 
 
164 DEUCALION. 
 
 cisely the relation of a very narrow tube to a very large 
 ball. The vast ( instrument' seems actually to have been 
 constructed by Nature, to show to the dullest of savants 
 the difference between the steady current of flux through 
 a channel of drainage, and the oscillatory vivacity of 
 expansion which they constructed their own tubular appa- 
 ratus to obtain ! 
 
 17. The last popular theory concerning glaciers is the 
 Regelation theory. The scientific persons who hold that 
 theory, suppose that a glacier advances by breaking itself 
 spontaneously into small pieces ; and then spontaneously 
 sticking the pieces together again ; that it becomes con- 
 tinually larger by a repetition of this operation, and that 
 the enlargement (as assumed also by the gentlemen of 
 the Dilatation party), can only take place downwards. 
 
 You may best conceive the gist of the Regelation 
 theory by considering the parallel statement, which you 
 may make to your scientific young people, that if they 
 put a large piece of barleysugar on the staircase landing, 
 it will walk downstairs by alternately cracking and mend- 
 ing itself. 
 
 I shall not trouble myself farther, in Deucalion, about 
 the Regelation theory. 
 
 18. M. Violet- le-Duc, indeed, appears to have written 
 his book without even having heard of it ; but he makes 
 most dextrous use of the two others, fighting, as it were, 
 at once with sword and dagger ; and making his glaciers 
 move on the Sliding theory when the ground is steep, and 
 
X. ' THIRTY YEAE8 SINCE.' 165 
 
 on the Dilatation theory when it is level. The woodcuts 
 at pages 65, 66, in which a glacier is represented dilating 
 itself up a number of hills and down again, and that at 
 page 99, in which it defers a line of boulders, which by 
 unexplained supernatural power have been deposited all 
 across it, into moraines at its side, cannot but remain tri- 
 umphant among monuments of scientific error, bestow- 
 ing on their author a kind of St. Simeon-Stylitic pre-emi- 
 nence of immortality in the Paradise of Fools. 
 
 19. Why I stopped first at page 58 of this singular vol- 
 ume, I see there is no room to tell in this number of Deu- 
 calion ; still less to note the interesting repetitions by M. 
 Violet-le-Duc of the Tyndall-Agassiz demonstration that 
 Forbes' assertion of the plasticity of ice in large pieces, is 
 now untenable, by reason of the more recent discovery of 
 its plasticity in little ones. I have just space, however, 
 for a little woodcut from the ' Glaciers of the Alps,' (or 
 ' Forms of Water,' I forget which, and it is no matter,) 
 in final illustration of the Tyndall-Agassiz quality of wit. 
 
 20. Fig. 5, A, is Professor Tyndall's illustration of the 
 effect of sunshine on a piece of glacier,' originally of the 
 form shown by the dotted line, and reduced by solar 
 power on the south side to the beautifully delineated 
 wave in the shape of a wedge. 
 
 It never occurred to the scientific author that the sun- 
 shine would melt some of the top, as well as of the side, 
 of his parallelepiped ; nor that, during the process, even 
 on the shady side of it, some melting would take place in 
 
166 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 the summer air. The figure at B represents three stages 
 of the diminution which would really take place, allow- 
 ing for these other sornewhat important conditions of the 
 
 PIG. 5. 
 
 question ; and it shows, what may farther interest the 
 ordinary observer, how rectangular portions of ice, origin- 
 ally produced merely by fissure in its horizontal mass, 
 may be gradually reduced into sharp, axe-edged ridges, 
 having every appearance of splintery and vitreous frac- 
 ture. In next Deucalion I hope to give at last some 
 account of my experiments on gelatinous fracture, made 
 in the delightful laboratory of my friend's kitchen, with 
 the aid of her infinitely conceding, and patiently collabor- 
 ating, cook. 
 

 CHAPTER XL 
 
 OF SILICA IN LAVAS. 
 
 1. THE rocks through whose vast range, as stated in the 
 ninth chapter, our at first well-founded knowledge of 
 their igneous origin gradually becomes dim, and fades 
 into theory, may be logically divided into these four 
 following groups. 
 
 1. True lavas. Substances which have been rapidly 
 cooled from fusion into homogeneous masses, showing no 
 clear traces of crystallization. 
 
 II. Basalts.* Rocks in which, without distinct separa- 
 tion of their elements, a disposition towards crystalline 
 structure manifests itself. 
 
 III. Porphyries. Rocks in which one or more mineral 
 elements separate themselves in crystalline form from a 
 homogeneous paste. 
 
 IY. Granites. Rocks in which all their elements have 
 taken crystalline form. 
 
 2. These, I say, are logical divisions, very easily tenable. 
 But Nature laughs at logic, and in her infinite imagina- 
 
 * I use this word as on the whole the best for the vast class of rocks 
 I wish to include ; but without any reference to columnar desiccation, 
 I consider, in this arrangement, only internal structure. 
 
168 DEUCALION. 
 
 tion of rocks, defies all Kosmos, except the mighty one 
 which we, her poor puppets, shall never discern. Our 
 logic will help us but a little way ; so far, however, we 
 will take its help. 
 
 3. And first, therefore, let us ask what questions im- 
 peratively need answer, concerning indisputable lavas, 
 seen by living human eyes to flow incandescent out of the 
 earth, and thereon to cool into ghastly slags. 
 
 On these I have practically burnt the soles of my boots, 
 and in their hollows have practically roasted eggs ; and in 
 the lee of them, have been wellnigh choked with their 
 stench ; and can positively testify respecting them, that 
 they were in many parts once fluid under power of fire, 
 in a very fine and soft flux ; and did congeal out of that 
 state into ropy or cellular masses, variously tormented and 
 kneaded by explosive gas ; or pinched into tortuous ten- 
 sion, as by diabolic tongs ; and are so finally left by the 
 powers of Hell, to submit themselves to the powers of 
 Heaven, in black or brown masses of adamantine sponge 
 without water, and horrible honeycombs without honey, 
 interlaid between drifted banks of earthy flood, poured 
 down from merciless clouds whose rain was ashes. 
 
 The seas that now beat against these, have shores of 
 black sand ; the peasant, whose field is in these, ploughs 
 with his foot, and the wind harrows. 
 
 4. Now of the outsides of these lava streams, and unal- 
 tered volcanic ashes, I know the look well enough ; and 
 could supply Sheffield with any quantity of characteristic 
 
TJKIV ; v 
 
 \^Uf0^^ 
 
 XI. OF SILICA IK LAVAS. ~ 169 
 
 specimens, if their policy and trade had not already 
 pretty nearly buried them, and great part of England 
 besides, under such devil's ware of their own production. 
 But of the insides of these lava streams, and of the 
 recognized alterations of volcanic tufa, I know nothing. 
 And, accordingly, I want authentic answer to these fol- 
 lowing questions, with illustrative specimens. 
 
 5. a. In lavas which have been historically hot to per- 
 fect fusion, so as to be progressive, on steep slopes, in the 
 manner of iron out of a furnace in its pig-furrows; 
 in such perfect lavas, I say what kind of difference is 
 there between the substance at the surface and at the 
 extremest known depths, after cooling? It is evident 
 that such lavas can only accumulate to great depths in 
 infernal pools or lakes. Of such lakes, which are the 
 deepest known ? and of those known, where are the best 
 sections ? I want for Sheffield a series of specimens of 
 any well-fused lava anywhere, showing the gradations 
 of solidity or crystalline consolidation, from the outside 
 to extreme depth. 
 
 J. On lavas which have not been historically hot, but 
 of which there is no possible doubt that they were once 
 fluent, (in the air,) to the above-stated degree, what 
 changes are traceable, produced, irrespectively of atmos- 
 pheric action, by lapse of time ? What evidence is 
 there that lavas, once cool to their centres, can sustain 
 any farther crystalline change, or re-arrangement of 
 mineral structure ? 
 
170 DEUCALION. 
 
 c. In lavas either historically or indisputably once 
 fluent, what forms of ^ilica are found ? I limit myself 
 at present to the investigation of volcanic silica : other 
 geologists will in time take up other minerals ; but I 
 find silica enough, and more than enough, for my life, 
 or at least for what may be left of it. 
 
 Now I am myself rich in specimens of Hyalite, and 
 Auvergne stellar and guttate chalcedonies ; but I have 
 no notion whatever how these, or the bitumen associated 
 with them, have been developed ; and I shall be most 
 grateful for a clear account of their locality, possible 
 or probable mode of production in that locality, and 
 microscopic structure. Of pure quartz, of opal, or of 
 agate, I have no specimen connected with what I should 
 call a truly ' living' lava; one, that is to say, which lias 
 simply cooled down to its existing form from the fluid 
 state ; but I have sent to the Sheffield Museum a piece 
 of Hyalite, on a living lava, so much like a living wasp's 
 nest, and so incredible for a lava at all to the general 
 observer, that I want forthwith some help from my 
 mineralogical friends, in giving account of it. 
 
 6. And here I must, for a paragraph or two, pass from 
 definition of flinty and molten minerals, to the more 
 difficult definition of flinty and molten hearts ; in order 
 to explain why the Hyalite which I have just sent to 
 the men of Sheffield, for their first type of volcanic 
 silica,* is not at all the best Hyalite in my collection. 
 
 * I give the description of these seven pieces of Hyalite at Sheffield, 
 
t 
 
 XI. OF SILICA IN LAVAS. 171 
 
 This is because I practically find a certain quantity of 
 selfishness necessary to live by ; arid having no manner 
 of saintly nature in me, but only that of ordinary men, 
 (which makes me all the hotter in temper when I 
 can't get ordinary men either to see what I know they 
 can see if they look, or do what I know they can do if 
 they like,) I get sometimes weary of giving things 
 away, letting my drawers get into disorder, and losing 
 the powers of observation and thought which are con- 
 nected with the complacency of possession, and the 
 pleasantness of order. Whereupon I have resolved to 
 bring my own collection within narrow limits ; but to 
 constitute it resolutely and irrevocably of chosen and 
 curious pieces, for my own pleasure ; trusting that they 
 may be afterwards cared for by some of the persons 
 who knew me, when I myself am troubled with care no 
 more.* 
 
 7. This piece of Hyalite, however, just sent to Shef- 
 field, though not my best, is the most curiously definite 
 example I ever saw. It is on a bit of brown lava, which 
 looks, as aforesaid, a little way off, exactly like a piece 
 
 in Deucalion, because their description is necessary to explain certain 
 general principles of arrangement and nomenclature. 
 
 * By the way, this selfish collection is to be primarily of stones 
 that will wash. Of petty troubles, none are more fretting than the 
 effect of dust on minerals that can neither be washed nor brushed. 
 Hence, my specialty of liking for silica, felspar, and the granitic or 
 gneissic rocks. 
 
172 DEUCALION". 
 
 of a wasp's nest : seen closer, the cells are not hexagonal, 
 but just like a cast of a spoonful of pease ; the spherical 
 hollows having this of notable in them, that they are 
 only as close to each other as they can be, to admit of 
 their ~being perfectly round : therefore, necessarily, with 
 little spaces of solid stone between them. I have not 
 the slightest notion how such a lava can be produced. 
 It is like an oolite with the yolks of its eggs dropped 
 out, and not in the least like a ductile substance churned 
 into foam by expansive gas. 
 
 8. On this mysterious bit of gaseous wasp's nest, the 
 Hyalite seems to have been dropped, like drops of glass 
 from a melting glass rod. It seems to touch the lava 
 just as little as it can ; sticks at once on the edges of the 
 cells, and laps over without running into, much less 
 filling them. There is not any appearance, and I think 
 .no possibility, of exudation having taken place ; the 
 silica cannot but, I think, have been deposited ; and it 
 is stuck together just as if it had fallen in drops, which 
 is what I mean by calling Hyalite characteristically 
 6 guttate ' ; but it shows, nevertheless, a tendency to 
 something like crystallization, in irregularities of surface 
 like those of glacier ice, or the kind of old Venetian 
 glass which is rough, and apparently of lumps coagu- 
 lated. The fracture is splendidly vitreous, the sub- 
 stance, mostly quite clear, but in parts white and opaque. 
 9. Now although no other specimen that I have yet 
 seen is so manifestly guttate as this, all the hyalites I 
 
XI. OF SILICA Itf LAVAS. 173" 
 
 know agree in approximate conditions; and associate 
 themselves with forms of chalcedony which exactly re- 
 semble the droppings from a fine wax candle. Such 
 heated waxen effluences, as they congeal, will be found 
 thrown into flattened coats ; and the chalcedonies in 
 question on the under surface precisely resemble them ; 
 while on the upper they become more or less crystalline, 
 and, in some specimens, form lustrous stellar crystals in 
 the centre. 
 
 10. Now, observe, this chalcedony, capable of crystal- 
 lization, differs wholly from chalcedony properly so 
 called, which may indeed be covered with crystals, but 
 itself remains consistently smooth in surface, as true 
 Hyalite does, also. 
 
 Not to be teazed with too many classes, however, I 
 shall arrange these peculiar chalcedonies with Hyalite; 
 and, accordingly, I send next to the Sheffield Museum, 
 to follow this first Hyalite, an example of the transition 
 from Hyalite to dropped chalcedony, (i. H. 2,) being an 
 Indian volcanic chalcedony, translucent, aggregated like 
 Hyalite, and showing a concave fracture where a ball of 
 it has been broken out. 
 
 11. Next, (i. H. 3,) pure dropped chalcedony. I do 
 not like the word 'dropped' in this use, so that, in- 
 stead, I shall call this in future wax chalcedony ; then 
 (i. H. 4) the same form, with crystalline surface, this I 
 shall henceforward call sugar chalcedony ; and, lastly, the 
 ordinary stellar form of Au vergne, star chalcedony (i. H. 5). 
 
174 DEUCALION. 
 
 These five examples are typical, and perfect in their 
 kind ; next to them (i. H. 6) I place a wax chalcedony 
 formed on a porous rock, (volcanic ash ?) which has at 
 the surface of it small circular concavities, being also 
 so irregularly coagulate throughout that it suggests 
 no mode of deposition whatever, and is peculiar in this 
 also, that it is thinner in the centre than at the edges, 
 and that no vestige of its substance occurs in the pores 
 of the rock it overlies. 
 
 Take a piece of porous broken brick, drop any tal- 
 lowy composition over four or five inches square of its 
 surface, to the depth of one-tenth of an inch ; then drop 
 more on the edges till you have a rampart round, the 
 third of an inch thick ; and you will have some likeness 
 of this piece of stone : but how Nature held the compo- 
 sition in her fingers, or composed it to be held, I leave 
 you to guess, for I cannot. 
 
 12. Next following, I place the most singular example 
 of all (i. H. 7). The chalcedony in i. H. 6 is apparently 
 dropped on the ashes, and of irregular thickness ; it is 
 difficult to understand how it was dropped, but once get 
 Nature to hold the candle, and the thing is done. 
 
 But here, in i. H. 7, it is no longer apparently dropped, 
 but apparently boiled ! It rises like the bubbles of a 
 strongly boiling liquid ; but not from a liquid mass ; on 
 the contrary, (except in three places, presently to be 
 described,) it coats the volcanic ash in perfectly even 
 thickness a quarter of an inch, and no more, nor less. 
 
XI. OF SILICA Itf LAVAS. 175 
 
 everywhere, over a space five inches square ! and the ash, 
 or lava, itself, instead of being porous throughout the 
 mass, with the silica only on the surface, is filled with 
 chalcedony in every cavity ! 
 
 Now this specimen completes the transitional series 
 from hyalite to perfect chalcedony ; and with these 
 seven specimens, in order, before us, we can define some 
 things, and question of others, with great precision. 
 
 13. First, observe that all the first six pieces agree in 
 two conditions, varying, and coagulated, thickness of 
 the deposit. But the seventh has the remarkable char- 
 acter of equal, and therefore probably crystalline, deposi- 
 tion everywhere. 
 
 Secondly. In the first six specimens, though the 
 coagulations are more or less rounded, none of them are 
 regularly spherical. But in the seventh, though the 
 larger bubbles (so to call them) are subdivided into many 
 small ones, every uninterrupted piece of the surface is 
 a portion of a sphere, as in true bubbles. 
 
 Thirdly. The sugar chalcedony, i. H. 4, and stellar 
 chalcedony, i. H. 5, show perfect power of assuming, 
 under favourable conditions, prismatic crystalline form. 
 But there is no trace of such tendency in the first three, 
 or last two, of the seven examples. Nor has there ever, 
 so far as I know, been found prismatic true hyalite, or 
 prismatic true chalcedony. 
 
 Therefore we have here essentially three different 
 minerals, passing into each other, it is true ; but, at a 
 
176 DEUCALION. 
 
 certain point, changing their natures definitely, so that 
 hyalite, becoming wax chalcedony, gains the power of 
 prismatic crystallization ; and wax chalcedony, becoming 
 true chalcedony, loses it again ! 
 
 And now I must pause, to explain rightly this term 
 'prismatic,' and others which are now in use, or which 
 are to be used, in St. George's schools, in describing 
 crystallization. 
 
 14:. A prism, (the sawn thing,) in Newton's use of the 
 word, is a triangular pillar with flat top and bottom. Put- 
 ting two or more of these together, we can make pillars 
 of any number of plane sides, in any regular or irregular 
 shape. Crystals, therefore, which are columnar, and thick 
 enough to be distinctly seen, are called ' prismatic.' 
 
 2. But crystals which are columnar, and so delicate that 
 
 they look like needles, are called ' acicular,' from 
 acus, a needle. 
 
 3. When such crystals become so fine that they look like 
 
 hair or down, and lie in confused directions, the 
 mineral composed of them is called 'plumose.' 
 
 4. And when they adhere together closely by their sides, 
 
 the mineral is called ' fibrous.' 
 
 5. When a crystal is flattened by the extension of two of 
 
 its planes, so as to look like a board, it is called 'tab- 
 ular' ; but people don't call it a ' tabula.' 
 
 6. But when such a board becomes very thin, it is called a 
 
 'lamina,' and the mineral composed of many such 
 plates, laminated. 
 
XT. OF SILICA IK LAVAS. 177 
 
 7. When laminae are so thin that, joining with others 
 
 equally so, they form fine leaves, the mineral is 
 < foliate.' 
 
 8. And when these leaves are capable of perpetual sub- 
 
 division, the mineral is c micaceous.' 
 
 15. Now, so far as I know their works, mineralogists 
 hitherto have never attempted to show cause why some 
 minerals rejoice in longitude, others in latitude, and others 
 in platitude. They indicate to their own satisfaction, 
 that is to say, in a manner totally incomprehensible by 
 the public, all the modes of expatiation possible to the 
 mineral, by cardinal points on a sphere : but why a crys- 
 tal of ruby likes to be short and fat, and a crystal of ru- 
 tile, long and lean ; why amianth should bind itself into 
 bundles of threads, cuprite weave itself into tissues, and 
 silver braid itself into nests, the use, in fact, that any 
 mineral makes of its opportunities, and the cultivation 
 which it gives to its faculties, of all this, my minera- 
 logical authorities tell me nothing. Industry, indeed, is 
 theirs to a quite infinite degree, in pounding, decocting, 
 weighing, measuring, but they have remained just as un- 
 conscious as vivisecting physicians that all this was only 
 the anatomy of dust, not its history. 
 
 Bat here at last, in Cumberland, I find a friend, Mr. 
 Clifton Ward, able and willing to begin some true history 
 of mineral substance, and far advanced already in prelim- 
 inary discovery ; and in answer to my request for help, 
 
 taking up this first hyalitic problem, he has sent me the 
 12 
 
178 DEUCALION. 
 
 drawings engraved, I regret to say, with little justice to 
 their delicacy ; * in Plate Y. 
 
 16. This plate represents, in Figure 1, the varieties of 
 structure in an inch vertical section of a lake-agate ; and 
 in Figures 2, 3, 4, and 5, still farther magnified portions 
 of the layers so numbered in Figure 1. 
 
 Figures 6 to 9 represent the structure and effect of pol- 
 arized light in a lake-agate of more distinctly crystalline 
 structure ; and Figures 10 to 13, the orbicular concre- 
 tions of volcanic Indian chalcedony. But before entering 
 farther on the description of these definitely concretion- 
 ary bands, I think it will be desirable to take note of some 
 facts regarding the larger bands of our Westmoreland 
 mountains, which become to me, the more I climb them, 
 mysterious to a point scarcely tolerable ; and only the more 
 so, in consequence of their recent more accurate survey. 
 
 17. Leaving their pebbles, therefore, for a little while, 
 I will ask my readers to think over some of the condi- 
 tions of their crags and pools, explained as best I could, 
 in the following lecture, to the Literary and Scientific 
 Society of the town of Kendal. For indeed, beneath the 
 evermore blessed Kendal-green of their sweet meadows 
 and moors, the secrets of hill-structure remain, for all the 
 work spent on them, in colourless darkness; and indeed, 
 " So dark, Hal, that thou could'st not see thine hand." 
 
 * But not by my fault, for I told the engraver to do his best ; and 
 took more trouble with the plate than with any of my own. 
 
Plate V. 
 STRUCTURE OF LAKE AGATE. 
 
V 
 
 XII. YEWDALE AND ITS STKEAMLETS. 179 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 YEWDALE AND ITS STREAMLETS. 
 
 Lecture delivered before the Members of the Literary and Scientific Insti- 
 tution, Kendal, 1st October, 1877. 
 
 1. I FEAKthat some of my hearers may think an apolo- 
 gy due to them for having brought, on the first occasion 
 of my being honoured by their audience, a subject before 
 them which they may suppose unconnected with my own 
 special work, past or present. But the truth is, I knew 
 mountains long before I knew pictures ; and these moun- 
 tains of yours, before any other mountains. From this 
 town, of Kendal, I went out, a child, to the first joyful 
 excursions among the Cumberland lakes, which formed 
 my love of landscape and of painting : and now, being an 
 old man, I find myself more and more glad to return 
 and pray you to-night to return with me from shadows 
 to the reality. 
 
 I do not, however, believe that one in a hundred of our 
 youth, or of our educated classes, out of directly scientific 
 circles, take any real interest in geology. And for my 
 own part, I do not wonder, for it seems to me that geol- 
 ogy tells us nothing really interesting. It tells us much 
 about a world that once was. But, for my part, a world 
 
180 DEUCALION". 
 
 that only was, is as little interesting as a world that only is 
 to be. I no more care to hear of the forms of mountains 
 that crumbled away a million of years ago to leave room 
 for the town of Kendal, than of forms of mountains that 
 some future day may swallow up the town of Kendal in 
 the cracks of them. I am only interested so ignoble and 
 unspeculative is my disposition in knowing how God 
 made the Castle Hill of Kendal, for the Baron of it to 
 build on, and how he brought the Kent through the dale 
 of it, for its people and flocks to drink of. 
 
 2. And these things, if you think of them, you will 
 find are precisely what the geologists cannot tell you. 
 They never trouble themselves about matters so recent, 
 or so visible ; and while you may always obtain the most 
 satisfactory information from them respecting the con- 
 gelation of the whole globe out of gas, or the direction 
 of it in space, there is really not one who can explain 
 to you the making of a pebble, or the running of a 
 rivulet. 
 
 May I, however, before pursuing my poor little in- 
 quiry into these trifling matters, congratulate those mem- 
 bers of my audience who delight more in literature than 
 science, on the possession, not only of dales in reality, 
 but of dales in name. Consider, for an instant or two, 
 how much is involved, how much indicated, by our pos- 
 session in English of the six quite distinct words vale, 
 valley, dale, dell, glen, and dingle ; consider the grada- 
 tions of character in scene, and fineness of observation in 
 
XII. YEWDALE AND ITS STREAMLETS. 181 
 
 the inhabitants, implied by that sixfoil cluster of words; 
 as compared to the simple ' thai ' of the Germans, ' valle ' 
 of the Italians, and * vallee' of the French, shortening into 
 'val' merely for ease of pronunciation, but having no 
 variety of sense whatever ; so that, supposing I want to 
 translate, for the benefit of an Italian friend, Words- 
 worth's ' Reverie of Poor Susan,' and come to " Green 
 pastures she views in the midst of the dale," and look for 
 4 dale ' in my Italian dictionary, I find " valle lunga e 
 stretta tra poggi alti," and can only convey Mr. Words- 
 worth's meaning to my Italian listener by telling him 
 that " la povera Susanna vede verdi prati, nel mezzo della 
 valle lunga e stretta tra poggi alti"! It is worth while, 
 both for geological and literary reasons, to trace the es- 
 sential differences in the meaning and proper use of these 
 words. 
 
 3. ' Yale ' signifies a large extent of level land, sur- 
 rounded by hills, or nearly so ; as the Yale of the White 
 Horse, or Yale of Severn. The level extent is necessary 
 to the idea; while the next word, 'valley,' means a large 
 hollow among hills, in which there is little level ground, 
 or none. Next comes ' dale,' which signifies properly a 
 tract of level land on the borders of a stream, continued 
 for so great a distance as to make it a district of import- 
 ance as a part of the inhabited country ; as Ennerdale, 
 Langdale, Liddesdale. 'Dell' is to dale, what valley is 
 to vale ; and implies that there is scarcely any level land 
 beside the stream. l Dingle ' is such a recess or dell 
 
182 DEUCALION-. 
 
 clothed with wood;* and 'glen' one varied with rocks. 
 The term ' ravine,' a ^'ent chasm among rocks, has its 
 necessary parallel in other languages. 
 
 Our richness of expression in these particulars may be 
 traced to the refinement of our country life, chiefly since 
 the fifteenth century; and to the poetry founded on the 
 ancient character of the Border peasantry ; mingling 
 agricultural with shepherd life in almost equal measure. 
 
 I am about to endeavour, then, to lay before you this 
 evening the geological laws which have produced the 
 6 dale,' properly so called, of which I take for a sweet 
 and near example the green piece of meadow land 
 through which flows, into Coniston Water, the brook 
 that chiefly feeds it. 
 
 4. And now, before going farther, let me at once vin- 
 dicate myself from the blame of not doing full justice to 
 the earnest continuance of labour, and excellent subtlety 
 of investigation, by which Mr. Aveline and Mr. Clifton 
 Ward have presented you with the marvellous maps and 
 sections of this district, now in course of publication in 
 the Geological Survey. Especially let me, in the strong- 
 est terms of grateful admiration, refer to the results 
 which have been obtained by the microscopic observa- 
 
 * Connected partly, I doubt not, with Ingle, or Inglewood, brush- 
 wood to burn, (hence Justice Inglewood in 'Rob Hoy'). I have 
 still omitted 'clough,' or cleugh, given by Johnson in relation to 
 ' dingle,' and constant in Scott, from ' Gander-cleugh ' to ' Buc(k)- 
 cleugh.' 
 
XII. YEWDALE AND ITS STREAMLETS. 183 
 
 tions of minerals instituted by Mi*. Sorby, and carried out 
 indefatigably by Mr. Clifton Ward, forming tlie first 
 sound foundations laid for the solution of the most 
 secret problems of geology. 
 
 5. But while I make this most sincere acknowledg- 
 ment of what has been done by these gentlemen, and by 
 their brother geologists in the higher paths of science, I 
 must yet in all humility lament that this vast fund of 
 gathered knowledge is every bit of it, hitherto, beyond 
 you and me. Dealing only with infinitude of space and 
 remoteness of time, it leaves us as ignorant as ever we 
 were, or perhaps, in fancying ourselves wiser, even more 
 ignorant, of the things that are near us and around, of 
 the brooks that sing to us, the rocks that guard us, and 
 the fields that feed. 
 
 6. To-night, therefore, I am here for no other pur- 
 pose than to ask the simplest questions ; and to win your 
 interest, if it may be, in pleading with our geological 
 teachers for the answers which as yet they disdain to give. 
 
 Here, in your long winding dale of the Kent, and 
 over the hills, in my little nested dale of the Yew, will 
 you ask the geologist, with me, to tell us how their 
 pleasant depth was opened for us, and their lovely bor- 
 ders built. For, as yet, this is all that we are told con- 
 cerning them, by accumulated evidence of geology, as 
 collected in this summary at the end of the first part 
 of Mr. Clifton Ward's volume on the geology of the 
 lakes : 
 
184. DEUCALION. 
 
 " The most ancient geologic records in the district 
 indicate marine conditions with a probable proximity of 
 land. Submarine volcanoes broke out during the close 
 of this period, followed by an elevation of land, with 
 continued volcanic eruptions, of which perhaps the pres- 
 ent site of Keswick was one of the chief centres. 
 Depression of the volcanic district then ensued beneath 
 the sea, with the probable cessation of volcanic activity ; 
 much denudation was effected ; another slight volcanic 
 outburst accompanied the formation of the Coniston 
 Limestone, and then the old deposits of Skiddaw Slate 
 and volcanic material were buried thousands of feet deep 
 beneath strata formed in an upper Silurian sea. Next 
 followed an immensely long period of elevation, accom- 
 panied by disturbance and alteration of the rocks, and by 
 a prodigious amount of marine and atmospheric denuda- 
 tion. A subsequent depression, to a considerable extent, 
 marked the coming on of the Carboniferous epoch, her- 
 alded however, in all likelihood, by a period of more 
 or less intense cold. Then for succeeding ages, the dis- 
 trict elevated high above the surrounding seas of later 
 times, underwent that large amount of sub-aerial denuda- 
 tion which has resulted in the formation of our beautiful 
 English Lake-country." 
 
 7. The only sentence in this passage of the smallest 
 service to us, at present, is that stating the large amount 
 of ' sub-aerial denudation ' which formed our beautiful 
 country. 
 
XII. YEWDALE AKD ITS STREAMLETS. 185 
 
 Putting the geological language into simple English, 
 that means that your dales and hills were produced by 
 being * rubbed down in the open air,' rubbed down, 
 that is to say, in the manner in which people are rubbed 
 down after a Turkish bath, so as to have a good deal of 
 their skin taken off them. But observe, it. would be 
 just as rational to say that the beauty of the human form 
 was owing to the immemorial and continual use of the 
 flesh-brush, as that we owe the beauty of our mountains 
 to the mere fact of their having been rubbed away. No 
 quantity of stripping or denuding will give beauty when 
 there is none to denude ; you cannot rub a statue out 
 of a sandbank, or carve the Elgin frieze with rottenstone 
 for a chisel, and chance to drive it. 
 
 8. We have to ask then, first, what material there was 
 here to carve ; and then what sort of chisels, and in what 
 workman's hand, were used to produce this large piece 
 of precious chasing or embossed work, which we call 
 Cumberland and Weste-more-land. 
 
 I think we shall get at our subject more clearly, how- 
 ever, by taking a somewhat wider view of it than our 
 own dales permit, and considering what * sub-aerial denu- 
 dation ' means, on the surface of the world, instead of in 
 "Westmoreland only. 
 
 9. Broadly, therefore, we have, forming a great part 
 of that surface, vast plains or steppes, like the levels of 
 France, and lowlands' of England, and prairies of Amer- 
 ica, composed mostly of horizontal beds of soft stone or 
 
186 DEUCALIOK. 
 
 gravel. Nobody in general talks of these having been 
 rubbed down ; so little, indeed, that I really do not my- 
 self know what the nations of geologists are on the mat- 
 ter. They tell me that some four-and-twenty thousand 
 feet or so of slate say, four miles thick of slate must 
 have been taken off the top of Skiddaw to grind that 
 into what it is ; but I don't know in the least how much 
 chalk or freestone they think has been ground off the 
 East Cliff at Brighton, to flatten that into what it is. 
 They tell me that Mont Blanc must have been three 
 times as high as he is now, when God, or the affinity of 
 atoms, first made him ; but give me no idea whatever 
 how much higher the shore of the Adriatic was than it is 
 now, before the lagoon of Venice was rubbed out of it. 
 
 10. Collecting and inferring as best I can, it seems to 
 me they mean generally that all the mountains were 
 much higher than they are now, and all the plains lower; 
 and that what has been scraped off the one has been 
 heaped on to the other : but that is by no means gen- 
 erally so ; and in the degree in which it is so, hitherto 
 has been unexplained, and has even the aspect of being 
 inexplicable. 
 
 I don't know what sort of models of the district you 
 have in the Museum, but the kind commonly sold repre- 
 sent the entire mountain surface merely as so much 
 sandheap washed into gutters. It is totally impossible 
 for your youth, while these false impressions are con- 
 veyed by the cheap tricks of geographical manufacture, 
 
XII. YEWDALE AND ITS STREAMLETS. 187"' 
 
 to approach the problems of mountain form under any 
 sense of their real conditions : while even advanced 
 geologists are too much in the habit of thinking that 
 every mountain mass may be considered as a heap of 
 homogeneous clay, which some common plough has fret- 
 ted into similar clods. 
 
 But even to account for the furrows of a field you 
 must ask for plough and ploughman. How much more 
 to account for the furrows of the adamantine rock. Shall 
 one plough there with oxen ? 
 
 I will ask you, therefore, to-night, to approach this 
 question in its first and simplest terms, and to examine 
 the edge of the weapon which is supposed to be still at 
 work. The streamlets of the dale seem yet in many 
 places to be excavating their glens as they dash down 
 them, or deepening the pools under their cascades. Let 
 us in such simple and daily visible matters consider more 
 carefully what are the facts. 
 
 11. Towards the end of July, this last summer, I 
 was sauntering among the fern, beside the bed of the 
 Yewdale stream, and stopped, as one does instinctively, 
 at a place where the stream stopped also, bending itself 
 round in a quiet brown eddy under the root of an oak tree 
 
 How many thousand thousand times have I not stopped 
 to look down into the pools of a mountain stream, and 
 yet never till that day had it occurred to me to ask how 
 the pools came there. As a matter of course, I had 
 always said to myself, there must be deep places and shal- 
 
188 DEUCALION. 
 
 low ones, and where the water is deep there is an eddy, 
 and where it is shallow there is a ripple, and what more 
 is there to say about it ? 
 
 However, that day, having been of late in an interrog- 
 ative humour about everything, it did suddenly occur 
 to me to ask why the water should be deep there, more 
 than anywhere else. This pool was at a bend of the 
 stream, and rather a wide part of it; and it seemed 
 to me that, for the most part, the deep pools I recol- 
 lected had been at bends of streams, and in rather wide 
 parts of them ; with the accompanying condition of 
 slow circular motion in the water ; and also, mostly under 
 steep banks. 
 
 12. Gathering my fifty years' experience of brooks, 
 this seemed to me a tenable generalization, that on the 
 whole, where the bank was steepest, and one was most 
 likely to tumble in, one was least likely to get out again. 
 
 And that gloomily slow and sullen motion on the sur- 
 face, as if the bubbles were unwillingly going round in a 
 mill, this also I recollected as a usual condition of the 
 deeper water, so usual, indeed, that (as I say) I never 
 once before had reflected upon it as the least odd. 
 "Whereas now, the thought struck me as I looked, and 
 struck me harder as I looked longer, If the hubbies stay 
 at the top, why don't the stones stay at the bottom ? If, 
 when I throw in a stick here in the back eddy at the sur- 
 face, it keeps spinning slowly round and round, and never 
 goes down-stream am I to expect that when I throw a 
 
JLII. YEWDALE AND ITS STREAMLETS. 189 
 
 stone into the same eddy, it will be immediately lifted 
 by it out of the hole and carried away ? And yet unless 
 the water at the bottom of the hole has this power of lift- 
 ing stones out of it, why is the hole not filled up ? 
 
 13. Coming to this point of the question, I looked up 
 the beck, and down. Up the beck, above the pool, there 
 was a shallow rapid over innumerable stones of all sizes : 
 and down the beck, just below the pool, there was a ledge 
 of rock against which the stream had deposited a heap of 
 rolled shingle, and over the edges of which it flowed in 
 glittering tricklets, so shallow that a child of four years 
 old might have safely waded across ; and between the 
 loose stones above in the steep rapid, and the ledge of 
 rock below which seemed put there expressly for them 
 to be lodged against here was this deep, and wide, and 
 quiet, pool. 
 
 So I stared at it, and stared ; and the more I stared, the 
 less I understood it. And if you like, any of you may 
 easily go and stare too, for the pool in question is visible 
 enough from the coach-road, from Mr. Sly's Waterhead 
 Inn, up to Tilberthwaite. You turn to the right from the 
 bridge at Mr. Bowness's smithy, and then in a quarter of 
 a mile you may look over the roadside wall into this quiet 
 recess of the stream, and consider of many things. For, 
 observe, if there were anything out of the way in the 
 pool I should not send you to look at it. I mark it only 
 for one of myriads such in every mountain stream that 
 ever trout leaped or ripple laughed in. 
 
190 DEUCALION. 
 
 And beside it, as a type of all its brother deeps, these 
 following questions may be wisely put to yourselves. 
 
 14. First How are any of the pools kept clear in a 
 stream that carries shingle ? There is some power the 
 water has got of lifting it out of the deeps hitherto un- 
 explained unthought of. Coming down the rapid in a 
 rage, it drops the stones, and leaves them behind ; coming 
 to the deep hole, where it seems to have no motion, it 
 picks them up and carries them away in its pocket. Ex- 
 plain that. 
 
 15. But, secondly, beside this pool let us listen to the 
 wide murmuring geological voice, telling us " To sub- 
 aerial denudation you owe your beautiful lake scenery" ! 
 Then, presumably, Yewdale among the rest? There- 
 fore we may look upon Yewdale as a dale sub-aerially 
 denuded. That is to say, there was once a time when no 
 dale was there, and the process of denudation has exca- 
 vated it to the depth you see. 
 
 16. But now I can ask, more definitely and clearly, 
 With what chisel has this hollow been hewn for us ? Of 
 course, the geologist replies, by the frost, and the rain, and 
 the decomposition of its rocks. Good ; but though frost 
 may break up, and the rain wash down, there must have 
 been somebody to cart away the rubbish, or still you 
 would have had no Yewdale. Well, of course, again the 
 geologist answers, the streamlets are the carters ; and this 
 stream past Mr. Bowness's smithy is carter-in-chief. 
 
 17. How many cartloads, then, may we suppose the 
 
V 
 
 XII. YEWDALE AND ITS STREAMLETS. 191 
 
 stream lias carried past Mr. Bowness's, before it carted 
 away allYewdale to this extent, and cut out all the north- 
 ern side of Wetherlam, and all that precipice of Yewdale 
 Crag, and carted all the rubbish first into Coniston Lake, 
 and then out of it again, and so down the Crake into the 
 sea ? Oh, the geologists reply, we don't mean that the 
 little Crake did all that. Of course it was a great river 
 full of crocodiles a quarter of a mile long ; or it was a 
 glacier five miles thick, going ten miles an hour ; or a sea 
 of hot water fifty miles deep, or, something of that 
 sort. "Well, I have no interest, myself, in (mything of 
 that sort : and I want to know, here, at the side of my 
 little puzzler of a pool, whether there's any sub-aerial 
 denudation going on still, and whether this visible Crake, 
 though it can only do little, does anything. Is it carry- 
 ing stones at all, now, past Mr. Bowness's ? Of course, 
 reply the geologists ; don't you see the stones all along it, 
 and doesn't it bring down more every flood ? "Well, yes ; 
 the delta of Coniston Waterhead may, perhaps, within 
 the memory of the oldest inhabitant, or within the last 
 hundred years, have advanced a couple of yards or so. 
 At that rate, those two streams, considered as navvies, are 
 proceeding with the works in hand ; to that extent they 
 are indeed filling up the lake, and to that extent sub- 
 aerially denuding the mountains. But now, I must ask 
 your attention very closely : for I have a strict bit of logic 
 to put before you, which the best I can do will not make 
 clear without some helpful effort on your part. 
 
192 DEUCALION. 
 
 18. The streams, we say, by little and little, are fill- 
 ing up the lake. They did not cut out the basin of that. 
 Something else must have cut out that, then, before the 
 streams began their work. Could the lake, then, have 
 been cut out all by itself, and none of the valleys that 
 lead to it ? "Was it punched into the mass of elevated 
 ground like a long grave, before the streams were set to 
 work to cut Yewdale down to it ? 
 
 19. You don't for a moment imagine that. "Well, then, 
 the lake and the dales that descend with it, must have 
 been cut out together. But if the lake not by the stream- 
 lets, then the dales not by the streamlets ? The stream- 
 lets are the consequence of the dales then, not the 
 causes ; and the sub-aerial denudation to which you owe 
 your beautiful lake scenery, must have been something, 
 not only different from what is going on now, but, in one 
 half of it at least, contrary to what is going on now. 
 Then, the lakes which are now being filled up, were being 
 cut down ; and as probably, the mountains now being 
 cut down, were being cast up. 
 
 20. Don't let us go too fast, however. The streamlets 
 are now, we perceive, filling up the big lake. But are 
 they not, then, also filling up the little ones? If they 
 don't cut Coniston water deeper, do you think they are 
 cutting Mr. Marshall's tarns deeper ? If not Mr. Mar- 
 shall's tarns deeper, are they cutting their own little pools 
 deeper? This pool by which we are standing we have 
 seen it is inconceivable how it is not filled up, much 
 
XII. YEWDALE AND ITS STREAMLETS. 193 
 
 more it is inconceivable that it should be cut deeper 
 down. You can't suppose that the same stream which is 
 filling up the Coniston lake below Mr. Bowness's, is cut- 
 ting out another Coniston lake above Mr. Bowness's? 
 The truth is that, above the bridge as below it, and from 
 their sources to the sea, the streamlets have the same 
 function, and are filling, not deepening, alike lake, tarn, 
 pool, channel, and valley. 
 
 21. And that being so, think how you have been mis- 
 led by seeking knowledge far afield, and for vanity's sake, 
 instead of close at home, and for love's sake. You must 
 go and see Niagara, must you ? and you will brick up and 
 make a foul drain of the sweet streamlet that ran past 
 your doors. And all the knowledge of the waters and 
 the earth that God meant for you, flowed with it, as water 
 of life. 
 
 Understand, then, at least, and at last, to-day, Niagara 
 is a vast Exception and Deception. The true cataracts 
 and falls of the great mountains, as the dear little cascades 
 and leaplets of your own rills, fall where they fell of old ; 
 that is to say, wherever there's a hard bed of rock for 
 them to jump over. They don't cut it away and they 
 can't. They do form pools beneath in a mystic way, 
 they excavate them to the depth which will break their 
 fall's force and then they excavate no more.* 
 
 We must look, then, for some other chisel than the 
 
 * Else every pool would become a well, of continually increasing 
 depth. 
 13 
 
194 DEUCALION. 
 
 streamlet ; and therefore, as we have hitherto interrogat- 
 ed the waters at their .work, we will now interrogate the 
 hills, in their patience. 
 
 22. The principal flank of Yewdale is formed by a steep 
 range of crag, thrown out from the greater mass of Weth- 
 erlarn, and known as Yewdale Crag. 
 
 It is almost entirely composed of basalt, or hard vol- 
 canic ash ; and is of supreme interest among the southern 
 hills of the lake district, as being practically the first 
 rise of the great mountains of England, out of the low- 
 lands of England. 
 
 And it chances that my own study window being just 
 opposite this crag, and not more than a mile from it as the 
 bird flies, I have it always staring me, as it were, in the 
 face, and asking again and again, when I look up from 
 writing any of my books, " How did /come here ?" 
 
 I wrote that last sentence hurriedly, but leave it as it 
 was written ; for, indeed, however well I know the vanity 
 of it, the question is still sometimes, in spite of my best 
 effort, put to me in that old form by the mocking crags, 
 as by a vast couchant Sphinx, tempting me to vain labour 
 in the inscrutable abyss. 
 
 But as I regain my collected thought, the mocking ques- 
 tion ceases, and the divine one forms itself, in the voice of 
 vale and streamlet, and in the shadowy lettering of the 
 engraven rock. 
 
 " Where wast thou when I laid the foundation of the 
 earth ? declare, if thou hast understanding." 
 
XII. YEWDALE AND ITS STREAMLETS. 195 
 
 23. How Yewdale Crags came there, I, for one, will no 
 more dream, therefore, of knowing, than the wild grass 
 can know, that shelters in their clefts. I will only to- 
 night ask you to consider one more mystery in the things 
 they have suffered since they came. 
 
 You might naturally think, following out the idea of 
 6 sub-aerial denudation,' that the sudden and steep rise of 
 the crag above these softer strata was the natural conse- 
 quence of its greater hardness ; and that in general the 
 district was only the remains of a hard knot or kernel in 
 the substance of the island, from which the softer super- 
 incumbent or surrounding material had been more or less 
 rubbed or washed away.* 
 
 24. But had that been so, one result of the process must 
 have been certain that the hard rocks would have resist- 
 ed more than the soft ; and that in some distinct propor- 
 tion and connection, the hardness of a mountain would be 
 conjecturable from its height, and the whole surface of 
 the district more or less manifestly composed of hard 
 bosses or ridges, with depressions between them in softer 
 materials. Nothing is so common, nothing so clear, as 
 this condition, on a small scale, in every weathered rock. 
 
 * The most wonderful piece of weathering, in all my own district, 
 is on a projecting mass of intensely hard rock on the eastern side of 
 Goat's Water. It was discovered and shown to me by my friend the 
 Rev. F. A. Malleson ; and exactly resembles deep ripple-marking, 
 though nothing in the grain of the rock indicates its undulatory struc- 
 ture. 
 
196 DEUCALION". 
 
 Its quartz, or other hard knots and veins, stand out from 
 the depressed surface in raised walls, like the divisions be- 
 tween the pits of Dant&'s eighth circle, and to a certain 
 extent, Mr. Ward tells us, the lava dykes, either by their 
 hardness or by their decomposition, produce walls and 
 trenches in the existing surface of the hills. But these 
 are on so small a scale, that on this map they cannot be 
 discernibly indicated ; and the quite amazing fact stands 
 out here in unqualified and indisputable decision, that by 
 whatever force these forms of your mountains were hewn, 
 it cut through the substance of them, as a sword-stroke 
 through flesh, bone, and marrow, and swept away the 
 masses to be removed, with as serene and indiscriminating 
 power as one of the shot from the Devil's great guns at 
 Shoeburyness goes through the oak and the iron of its 
 target. 
 
 25. It is with renewed astonishment, whenever I take 
 these sections into my hand, that I observe the phenome- 
 non itself ; and that I remember the persistent silence of 
 geological teachers on this matter, through the last forty 
 years of their various discourse. In this shortened sec- 
 tion, through Bowfell to Brantwood, you go through the 
 summits of three first-rate mountains down to the low- 
 land moors: you find them built, or heaped; barred, or 
 bedded ; here with forged basalt, harder than flint and 
 tougher than iron, there, with shivering shales that split 
 themselves into flakes as fine as puff-paste, and as brittle 
 as shortbread. And behold, the hewing tool of the Mas- 
 
Fig.l. Slates of Bull Crag and Maiden Moor. (GEOLf SURVEY.] 
 
 Fig. 2. Pie -Paste Compression from the right, simple. 
 
 Fig. 3. Pie-Paste. Compression, modified ^y elevatory forces. 
 
 Fig. 4-. Pie Paste. Compression, restricted to tTie lower Strata 
 
 Plate VI under a rl 3 id u PP er one - 
 LATERAL COMPRESSION OF STRATA. 
 Fig.l, Ideal . Figs. 2. 3.& 4. Practical. 
 
XII. YEWDALE AND ITS STREAMLETS. 
 
 ter Builder sweeps along the forming lines, and shapes 
 the indented masses of them, as a draper's scissors shred 
 a piece of striped sarsnet ! 
 
 26. Now do but think a little of the wonderf ulness in 
 this. If the process of grinding was slow, why don't the 
 hard rocks project ? If swift, what kind of force must it 
 have been ? and why do the rocks it tore show no signs 
 of rending ? Nobody supposes it was indeed swift as a 
 sword or a cannon-ball ; but if not, why are the rocks not 
 broken ? Can you break an oak plank and leave no splin- 
 ters, or cut a bed of basalt a thousand feet thick like 
 cream-cheese. 
 
 But you suppose the rocks were soft when it was done. 
 Why don't they squeeze, then? 
 
 Make Dover cliffs of baker's dough, and put St. Paul's 
 on the top of them, won't they give way somewhat, 
 think you ? and will you then make Causey Pike of 
 clay, and heave Scawfell against the side of it ; and yet 
 shall it not so much as show a bruise ? 
 
 Yet your modern geologists placidly draw the folded 
 beds of the Skiddaw and Causey Pike slate, first, with- 
 out observing whether the folds they draw are possible 
 folds in anything ; and, secondly, without the slightest 
 suggestion of sustained pressure, or bruise, in any part 
 of them. 
 
 27. I have given in my diagram, (Plate VL, Fig. 1,) 
 the section, attributed, in that last issued by the Geologi- 
 cal Survey, to the contorted slates of Maiden Moor, be- 
 
198 DEUCALIOK. 
 
 tween Causey Pike and the erupted masses of the cen- 
 tral mountains. Now, for aught I know, those contor- 
 sions may be truly represented ; but if so, they are not 
 contortions by lateral pressure. For, first, they are im- 
 possible forms in any substance whatever, capable of be- 
 ing contorted ; and, secondly, they are doubly impossible 
 in any substance capable of being squeezed. 
 
 Impossible, I say, first in any substance capable of 
 being contorted. Fold paper, cloth, leather, sheets of 
 iron, what you will, and still you can't have the folded 
 bed at the top double the length of that at the bottom. 
 But here, I have measured the length of the upper bed, 
 as compared with that of the lower, and it is twenty 
 miles, to eight miles and a half. 
 
 Secondly, 1 say, these are impossible folds in any sub- 
 stance capable of being squeezed, for every such sub- 
 stance will change its form as well as its direction under 
 pressu're. And to show you how such a substance does 
 actually behave, and contort itself under lateral pressure, 
 I have prepared the sections Figures 2, 3, and 4. 
 
 28. I have just said, you have no business to seek 
 knowledge far afield, when you can get it at your doors. 
 But more than that, you have no business to go outside 
 your doors for it, when you can get it in your parlour. 
 And it so happens that the two substances which, while 
 the foolish little king was counting out his money, the 
 wise little queen was eating in the parlour, are precisely 
 the two substances beside which wise little queens, and 
 

 
 XII. YEWDALE AKD ITS STREAMLETS. 199 
 
 kings, and everybody else, may also think, in the par- 
 lour, Bread and honey. For whatever bread, or at 
 least dough, will do under pressure, ductile rocks, in 
 their proportion, must also do under pressure ; and in 
 the manner that honey will move, poured upon a slice of 
 them, in that manner, though in its own measure, ice 
 will move, poured upon a bed of them. Rocks, no more 
 than pie-crust, can be rolled out without squeezing them 
 thinner ; and flowing ice can no more excavate a valley, 
 than flowing treacle a teaspoon. 
 
 29. I said just now, Will you dash Scawfell against 
 Causey Pike ? 
 
 I take, therefore, from the Geological Survey the 
 section of the Skiddaw slates, which continue the mass 
 of Causey Pike under the Yale of Newlands, to the 
 point where the volcanic mass of the Scawfell range 
 thrusts itself up against them, and laps over them. They 
 are represented, in the section, as you see, (Plate VI., 
 Fig. 1 ;) and it has always been calmly assumed by 
 geologists that these contortions were owing to lateral 
 pressure. 
 
 But I must beg you to observe that since the upper- 
 most of these beds, if it were straightened out, would be 
 more than twice the length of the lower ones, you could 
 only obtain that elongation by squeezing the upper bed 
 more than the lower, arid making it narrower where it 
 is elongated. Now, if this were indeed at the surface of 
 the ground, the geologists might say the upper bed had 
 
200 DEUCALION. 
 
 been thrown up because there was less weight on it. 
 But, by their own accounts, there were five miles thick 
 of rocks on the top of all this when it \vas bent. So you 
 could not have made one bed tilt up, and another stay 
 down ; and the structure is evidently an impossible one. 
 
 30. Nay, answer the surveyors, impossible or not, it 
 is there. I partly, in pausing, myself doubt its being 
 there. This looks to me an ideal, as well as an impossi- 
 ble, undulation. 
 
 But if it is indeed truly surveyed, then assuredly, 
 whatever it may be owing to, it is not owing to lateral 
 pressure. 
 
 That is to say, it may be a crystalline arrangement 
 assumed under pressure, but it is assuredly not a form 
 assumed by ductile substance under mechanical force. 
 Order the cook to roll out half a dozen strips of dough, 
 and to stain three of them with cochineal. Put red and 
 white alternately one above the other. Then press them 
 in any manner you like ; after pressure, a wetted carv- 
 ing knife will give you quite unquestionable sections, 
 and you see the results of three such experiments in the 
 lower figures of the plate. 
 
 31. Figure 2 represents the simplest possible case. 
 Three white and three red dough-strips were taken, a 
 red one uppermost, (for the pleasure of painting it after- 
 wards) ! They were left free at the top, enclosed at the 
 sides, and then reduced from a foot to six inches in 
 length, by pressure from the right. The result, you see, 
 
XII. YEWDALE AND ITS STREAMLETS. 201 
 
 is that the lower bed rises into sharpest gables ; the 
 upper ones are rounded softly. But in the geological 
 section it is the upper bed that rises, the lower keeps 
 down ! The second case is much more interesting. The 
 pastes were arranged in the same order, but bent up a 
 little, to begin with, in two places, before applying the 
 pressure. The result was, to my own great surprise, 
 that at these points of previous elevation, the lower bed 
 first became quite straight by tension as it rose, and then 
 broke into transverse faults. 
 
 32. The third case is the most interesting of all. In 
 this case, a roof of slate was put over the upper bed, 
 allowing it to rise to some extent only, and the pressure 
 was applied to the two lower beds only.* The upper 
 bed of course exuded backwards, giving these flame-like 
 forms, of which afterwards I got quite lovely complica- 
 tions by repeated pressures. These I must reserve for 
 future illustration, concluding to-night, if you will per- 
 mit me, with a few words of general advice to the 
 younger members of this society, formed as it has been 
 to trace for itself a straight path through the fields of 
 literature, and over the rocks of science. 
 
 33. First. Whenever you write or read English, write 
 it pure, and make it pure if ill written, by avoiding all 
 unnecessary foreign, especially Greek, forms of words 
 
 * Here I had to give the left-hand section, as it came more neatly. 
 The wrinkled mass on the left coloured brown represents the push- 
 ing piece of wood, at the height to which it was applied. 
 
202 DEUCALION". 
 
 yourself, and translating them when used by others. 
 Above all, make this a practice in science. Great part 
 of the supposed scientific knowledge of the day is sim- 
 ply bad English, and vanishes the moment you trans- 
 late it. 
 
 There is a farther very practical reason for avoiding 
 all vulgar Greek-English. Greece is now a kingdom, 
 and will I hope remain one, and its language is now 
 living. The ship-chandler, within six doors of me on 
 the quay at Yenice, had indeed a small English sign 
 calling himself Ship-Chandler ; but he had a large and 
 practically more serviceable, Greek one, calling himself 
 a " Tfpo^Oe rrr}s TGOV nXoioov." IsTowwhen the Greeks 
 want a little of your science, as in very few years they 
 must, if this absurd practice of using foreign languages 
 for the clarification of scientific principle still holds, 
 what you, in compliment to Greece, call a 4 Dinothe- 
 rium,' Greece, in compliment to you, must call a ' Nasty- 
 beastium,' and you know that interchange of compli- 
 ments can't last long. 
 
 34. II. Observe generally that all knowledge, little or 
 much, is dangerous, in which your progress is likely to 
 be broken short by any strict limit set to the powers of 
 mortals: while it is precisely that kind of knowledge 
 which provokes vulgar curiosity, because it seems so far 
 away ; and idle ambition, because it allows any quantity 
 of speculation, without proof. And the fact is that the 
 greater quantity of the knowledge which modern science 
 

 
 XII. YEWDALE AND ITS STREAMLETS. 203 
 
 is so saucy about, is only an asses' bridge, which the 
 asses all stop at the top of, and which, moreover, they 
 can't help stopping at the top of; for they have from 
 the beginning taken the wrong road, and so come to a 
 broken bridge a Ponte Rotto over the river of Death, 
 by which the Pontifex Maximus allows them to pass no 
 step farther. 
 
 35. For instance, having invented telescopes and 
 photography, you are all stuck up on your hobby-horses, 
 because you know how big the moon is, and can get 
 pictures of the volcanoes in it ! 
 
 But you never can get any more than pictures of these, 
 while^in your own planet there are a thousand volcanoes 
 which you may jump into, if you have a mind to; and 
 may one day perhaps be blown sky high by, whether 
 you have a mind or not. The last time the great volca- 
 no in Java was in eruption, it threw out a stream of hot 
 water as big as Lancaster Bay, and boiled twelve thou- 
 sand people. That's what I call a volcano to be in- 
 terested about, if you want sensational science. 
 
 36. But if not, and you can be content in the wonder 
 and the power of Nature, without her terror, here is a 
 little bit of a volcano, close at your very doors Yew- 
 dale Crag, which I think will be quiet for our time, 
 and on w r hich the anagallis tenella, and the golden poten- 
 tilla, and the sundew, grow together among the dewy 
 moss in peace. And on the cellular surface of one of 
 the blocks of it, you may find more beauty, and learn 
 
204 DEUCALION. 
 
 more precious things, than with telescope or photograph 
 from all the moons in the milky way, though every drop 
 of it were another solar system. 
 
 I have a few more very serious words to say to the 
 fathers, and mothers, and masters, who have honoured 
 me with their presence this evening, with respect to the 
 influence of these far-reaching sciences on the temper of 
 children. 
 
 37. Those parents who love their children most ten- 
 derly, cannot but sometimes dwell on the old Christian 
 fancy, that they have guardian angels. I call it an old 
 fancy, in deference to your modern enlightenment in 
 religion ; but I assure you nevertheless, in spite of all 
 that illumination, there remains yet some dark possi- 
 bility that the old fancy may be true : and that, although 
 the modern apothecary cannot exhibit to you either an 
 angel, or an imp, in a bottle, the spiritual powers of 
 heaven and hell are no less now, than heretofore, con- 
 tending for the souls of your children ; and contending 
 with you for the privilege of their tutorship. 
 
 38. Forgive me if I use, for the few minutes I have 
 yet to speak to you, the ancient language, metaphorical, 
 if you will, of Luther and Fenelon, of Dante and Milton, 
 of Goethe and Shakspeare, of St. John and St. Paul, 
 rather than your modern metaphysical or scientific slang : 
 and if I tell you, what in the issue of it you will iind is 
 either life-giving, or deadly, fact, that the fiends and 
 the angels contend with you daily for the spirits of your 
 
XII. YEWDALE AND ITS STREAMLETS. 205" 
 
 children : the devil using to you his old, his hitherto 
 immortal, bribes, of lust and pride ; and the angels 
 pleading with you, still, that they may be allowed to lead 
 your babes in the divine life of the pure and the lowly. 
 To enrage their lusts, and chiefly the vilest lust of 
 money, the devils would drag them to the classes that 
 teach them how to get on in the world ; and for the 
 better pluming of their pride, provoke their zeal in the 
 sciences which will assure them of there being no God 
 in nature but the gas of their own graves. 
 
 And of these powers you may discern the one from 
 the other by a vivid, instant, practical test. The devils 
 always will exhibit to you what is loathsome, ugly, and, 
 above all, dead ; and the angels, what is pure, beautiful, 
 and, above all, living. 
 
 39. Take an actual, literal instance. Of all known 
 quadrupeds, the unhappiest and vilest, yet alive, is the 
 sloth, having this farther strange devilry in him, that 
 what activity he is capable of, is in storm, and in the 
 night. Well, the devil takes up this creature, and makes 
 a monster of it, gives it legs as big as hogsheads, claws 
 stretched like the roots of a tree, shoulders like a hump 
 of crag, and a skull as thick as a paving-stone. From 
 this nightmare monster he takes what poor faculty of 
 motion the creature, though wretched, has in its minuter 
 size ; and shows you, instead of the clinging climber that 
 scratched and scrambled from branch to branch among 
 the rattling trees as they bowed in storm, only a vast 
 
206 DEUCALION. 
 
 heap of stony bones and staggering clay, that drags its 
 meat down to its mouth out of the forest ruin. This 
 creature the fiends delight to exhibit to you, but are per- 
 mitted by the nobler powers only to exhibit to you in its 
 death.* 
 
 * The Mylodon. An old sketch, (I think, one of Leech's) in 
 Punch, of Paterfamilias improving Master Tom's mind among the 
 models on the mud-bank of the lowest pond at Sydenham, went to 
 the root of the matter. For the effect, on Master Tom's mind of the 
 living squirrel, compare the following account of the most approved 
 modes of squirrel-hunting, by a clerical patron of the sport, extracted 
 for me by a correspondent, from ' Rabbits : how to rear and manage 
 them ; with Chapters on Hares, Squirrels, etc.' S. O. Beeton, 248, 
 Strand, W. C. 
 
 " It may be easily imagined that a creature whose playground is 
 the top twigs of tall trees, where no human climber dare venture, is 
 by no means easy to capture especially as its hearing is keen, and 
 its vision remarkably acute. Still, among boys living in the vicinity 
 of large woods and copses, squirrel -hunting is a favourite diversion, 
 and none the less so because it is seldom attended by success. ' The 
 only plan,' says the Rev. Mr. Wood, ' is to watch the animal until it 
 has ascended an isolated tree, or, by a well-directed shower of mis- 
 siles, to drive it into such a place of refuge, and then to form a ring 
 round the tree so as to intercept the squirrel, should it try to escape 
 by leaping to the ground and running to another tree. The best 
 climber is then sent in chase of the squirrel, and endeavours, by vio- 
 lently shaking the branches, to force the little animal to loose its hold 
 and fall to the earth. But it is by no means an easy matter to shake 
 a squirrel from a branch, especially as the little creature takes refuge 
 on the topmost and most slender boughs, which even bend under the 
 weight of its own small body, and can in no way be trusted with the 
 weight of a human being. By dint, however, of perseverance, the 
 
XII. YEWDALE AND ITS STREAMLETS. 207 
 
 40. On the other hand, as of all quadrupeds there is 
 none so ugly or so miserable as the sloth, so, take him for 
 all in all, there is none so beautiful, so happy, so wonder- 
 ful as the squirrel. Innocent in all his ways, harmless 
 in his food, playful as a kitten, but without cruelty, and 
 surpassing the fantastic dexterity of the monkey, with 
 the grace and the brightness of a bird, the little dark- 
 eyed miracle of the forest glances from branch to branch 
 more like a sunbeam than a living creature : it leaps, 
 and darts, and twines, where it will ; a chamois is slow 
 to it ; and a panther, clumsy : grotesque as a gnome, 
 gentle as a fairy, delicate as the silken plumes of the 
 rush, beautiful and strong like the spiral of a fern, it 
 haunts you, listens for you, hides from you, looks for 
 you, loves you, as if the angel that walks with your chil- 
 dren had made it himself for their heavenly plaything. 
 
 And this is what you do, to thwart alike your child's 
 angel, and his God, you take him out of the woods into 
 the town, you send him from modest labour to com- 
 petitive schooling, you force him out of the fresh air 
 
 squirrel is at last dislodged, and comes to the ground as lightly as a 
 snow-flake. Hats, caps, sticks, and all available missiles are imme- 
 diately flung at the luckless animal as soon as it touches the ground, 
 and it is very probably struck and overwhelmed by a cap. The suc- 
 cessful hurler flings himself upon the cap, and tries to seize the 
 squirrel as it lies under his property. All his companions gather 
 round him, and great is the disappointment to find the cap empty, 
 and to see the squirrel triumphantly scampering up some tree where 
 it would be useless to follow it.' " ' 
 
208 DEUCALION. 
 
 into the dusty bone-bouse, you sbow him the skeleton 
 of the dead monster, and make him pore over its rotten 
 cells and wire-stitchea joints, and vile extinct capacities 
 of destruction, and when he is choked and sickened 
 with useless horror and putrid air, you let him regret- 
 ting the waste of time go out for once to play again by 
 the woodside ; and the first squirrel he sees, he throws a 
 stone at! 
 
 Carry, then, I beseech you, this assured truth away 
 with you to-night. All true science begins in the love, 
 not the dissection, of your fellow-creatures; and it ends 
 in the love, not the analysis, of God. Your alphabet of 
 science is in the nearest knowledge, as your alphabet of 
 science is in the nearest duty. " Behold, it is nigh thee, 
 even at the doors." The Spirit of God is around you in 
 the air that you breathe, His glory in the light that 
 you see ; arid in the fruitf ulness of the earth, and the 
 joy of its creatures, He has written for you, day by day, 
 His revelation, as He has granted you, day by day, your 
 daily bread. 
 
XIII. OF STELLAR SILICA. 209 ' 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 OF STELLAR SILICA. 
 
 1. THE issue of tins number of Deucalion has been so 
 long delayed, first by other work, and recently by my 
 illness, that I think it best at once to begin Mr. Ward's 
 notes on Plate Y. : reserving their close, with full ex- 
 planation of their importance and bearing, to the next 
 following number. 
 
 GRETA BANK COTTAGE, KESWICK, 
 June 13, 1876. 
 
 My dear Sir, I send you a few notes on the micro- 
 scopic structure of the three specimens I have had cut. 
 In them I have stated merely what I have seen. There 
 has been much which I did not expect, and still more is 
 there that I don't understand. 
 
 I am particularly sorry I have not the time to send a 
 whole series of coloured drawings illustrating the various 
 points ; but this summer weather claims my time on the 
 mountain-side, and I must give up microscopic work 
 until winter comes round again. 
 
 The minute spherulitic structure especially along the 
 fine brown lines was quite a surprise, and I shall hope 
 14 
 
210 DEUCALION. 
 
 on some future occasion to see more of this subject. Be- 
 lieve me, yours very truly, 
 
 J. CLIFTON WARD. 
 
 P.S. There seems to be a great difference between 
 the microscopic structure of the specimens now examined 
 and that of the n'lled-up vesicles in many of my old lavas 
 here, so far as my limited examination has gone. 
 
 SPECIMEN A. 
 
 No. 1 commences at the end of the section farthest from 
 A in specimen. 
 
 1. Transparent zone with irregular curious cavities 
 (not liquid), and a few mossy-looking round spots 
 (brownish). 
 
 Polarization. Indicating an indefinite semi-crystal- 
 line structure. (See note at page 211.) 
 
 2. Zone with minute seed-like bodies of various sizes 
 (narrow brownish bands in the specimen of darker and 
 lighter tints). 
 
 a. Many cavities, and of an indefinite oval form in 
 general. 
 
 5. The large spherulites (2) are very beautiful, the 
 outer zone (radiate) of a delicate greenish-yellow, the 
 nucleus of a brownish-yellow, and the intermediate zone 
 generally clear. 
 
 c. A layer of densely packed bodies, oblong, or oval 
 in form. 
 
 d. Spherulites generally similar to Z>, but smaller, 
 
XIII. OF STELLAR SILICA. 211 " 
 
 much more stained of a brownish-yellow, and with more 
 defined nuclei. 
 
 Polarization. The splierulites show a clearly radiate 
 polarization, with rotation of a dark cross on turning 
 either of the prisms ; the intermediate ground shows the 
 irregular semi-crystalline structure. 
 
 3. Clear zone, with little yellowish, dark, squarish 
 specks. 
 
 Polarization. Irregular, semi-crystalline. 
 
 4. Row of closely touching spherulites with large nu- 
 cleus and defined margin, rather furry in character (3). 
 Margins and nuclei brown ; intermediate space brownish- 
 yellow. 
 
 Polarization. Radiate, as in the spherulites 2 b. 
 
 (This is a short brown band which does not extend 
 down through the whole thickness of the specimen.) 
 
 "5. Generally clear ground, with a brownish cloudy ap- 
 pearance in parts. 
 
 Polarization. Indefinite semi-crystalline. 
 
 6 a. On a hazy ground may be seen the cloudy mar- 
 gins of separately crystalline spaces. 
 
 Polarization. Definite semi-crystalline.* 
 
 * By ' indefinite semi-crystalline ' is meant the breaking up of the 
 ground under crossed prisms with sheaves (5) of various colours not 
 clearly margined. 
 
 By 'definite semi-crystalline' is meant the breaking up of the 
 ground under crossed prisms with a mosaic (4) of various colours 
 clearly margined. 
 
 By * semi-crystalline ' is meant the interference of crystalline spaces 
 
212 DEUCALION". 
 
 6 5. A clear band with very indefinite polarization. 
 
 7. A clearisb zone with somewhat of a brown mottled 
 appearance (light clouds of brown colouring matter). 
 
 Polarization. Indefinite semi-crystalline. 
 
 8. Zone of brownish bodies (this is a fine brown line, 
 about the middle of the section in the specimen). 
 
 a. Yellowish-brown nucleated disks. 
 
 5. Smaller, scattered, and generally non-nucleated 
 disks. 
 
 c. Generally non-nucleated. 
 
 Polarization. The disks are too minute to show sep- 
 arate polarization effects, but the ground exhibits the in- 
 definite semi-crystalline. 
 
 9. Ground showing indefinite semi-crystalline polari- 
 zation. 
 
 10. Irregular line of furry-looking yellowish disks. 
 
 11. Zone traversed by a series of generally parallel 
 and faint lines of a brownish-yellow. These are appar- 
 ently lines produced by colouring matter alone, at any 
 rate, not by visible disks of any kind. 
 
 Polarization. Tolerably definite, and limited by the 
 cross lines (6). 
 
 12. Dark-brown flocculent-looking matter, as if grow- 
 ing out from a well-defined line, looking like a moss- 
 growth. 
 
 with one another, so as to prevent a perfect crystalline form being 
 assumed. 
 
XIII. OF STELLAR SILICA. 213 
 
 13. Defined crystalline interlocked spaces. 
 Polarisation. Definite semi-crystalline. 
 
 14. Generally, not clearly defined spaces ; central part 
 rather a granular look (spaces very small). 
 
 Polarization. Under crossed prisms breaking up into 
 tolerably definite semi-crystalline spaces. 
 
 SPECIMEN B. 
 
 B 1. In the slice taken from this side there seems to 
 be frequently a great tendency to spherulitic arrange- 
 ment, as shown by the polarization phenomena. In 
 parts of the white quartz where the polarization appear- 
 ance is like that of a mosaic pavement, there is even a 
 semi-spherulitic structure. In other parts there are 
 many spherulites on white and yellowish ground. 
 
 Between the many parallel lines of a yellowish colour 
 the polarization (7) effect is that of fibrous coloured 
 sheaves. 
 
 Here (8) there is a central clear band (b) ; between it 
 and (a) a fine granular line with some larger granules 
 (or very minute spherulites). The part (a) is carious, 
 apparently with glass cavities. On the other side of the 
 clear band, at c, are half-formed and adherent spheru- 
 lites; the central (shaded) parts are yellow, and the 
 outer coat, the intermediate portion clearish. 
 
 B 2. The slice from this end of the specimen shows 
 the same general structure. 
 
 'The general tendency to spherulitic arrangement is 
 
214 DEUCALION. 
 
 well seen in polarized light, dark crosses frequently 
 traversing the curved structures. 
 
 Here (in Fig. 9) the portion represented on the left 
 was situated close to the other portion, where the point 
 of the arrow terminates, both crosses appearing together, 
 and revolving in rotation of one of the prisms. 
 
 SPECIMEN c. 
 
 The slice from this specimen presents far less variety 
 than in the other cases. There are two sets of structural 
 lines those radiate (10), and those curved and circum- 
 ferential (11). The latter structure is exceedingly fine 
 and delicate, and not readily seen, even with a high 
 power, owing to the fine radii not being marked out by 
 any colour, the whole section being very clear and 
 white. 
 
 A more decidedly^nueleated structure is seen in part 
 12. 
 
 In (13) is a very curious example of a somewhat more 
 glassy portion protruding in finger-like masses into a 
 radiate, clear, and largely spherical portion. 
 
 2. These notes of Mr. Clifton Ward's contain the first 
 accurate statements yet laid before mineralogists respect- 
 ing the stellar crystallization of silica, although that 
 mode of its formation lies at the very root of the struc- 
 ture of the greater mass of amygdaloidal rocks, and of 
 all the most beautiful phenomena of agates. And in- 
 deed I have no words to express the wonder with which 
 
. OF STELLAR SILICA. 215 
 
 I see work like that done by Cloizeanx in the measure- 
 ment of quartz angles, conclude only in the construction 
 of the marvellous diagram, as subtle in execution as 
 amazing in its accumulated facts,* without the least 
 reference to the conditions of varying energy which 
 produce the spherical masses of chalcedony ! He does 
 not even use the classic name of the mineral, but coins 
 the useless one, Geyserite, for the absolutely local con- 
 dition of the Iceland sinter. 
 
 3. And although, in that formation, he went so near 
 the edge of Mr. Clifton Ward's discovery as to announce 
 that "leur masse se compose ellememe de spheres en- 
 chassees dans une sorte de pate gelatineuse," he not only 
 fails, on this suggestion, to examine chalcedonic struc- 
 ture generally, but arrested himself finally in the pur- 
 suit of his inquiry by quietly asserting, u ce genre de 
 structure n'a jamais ete rencontre jusqu'ici sur aucune 
 autre variete de silice naturelle ou artificielle," the fact 
 being that there is no chalcedonic mass whatever, which 
 does not consist of spherical concretions more or less 
 perfect, enclosed in a "pate gelatineuse." 
 
 4. In Professor Miller's manual, which was the basis 
 of Cloizeaux's, chalcedony is stated to appear to be a 
 mixture of amorphous with crystalline silica ! and its 
 form taken no account of. Malachite might just as 
 well have been described as a mixture of amorphous 
 with crystalline carbonate of copper ! 
 
 * Facing page 8 of the ' Manuel de Mineralogie.' 
 
216 DEUCALIOK. 
 
 5. I will not, however, attempt to proceed farther in 
 this difficult subject .until Mr. Clifton "Ward has time 
 to continue his own observations. Perhaps I may per- 
 suade him to let me have a connected series of figured 
 examples, from pure stellar quartz down to entirely 
 fluent chalcedony, to begin the next volume of Deuca- 
 lion with ; but I must endeavour, in closing the present 
 one, to give some available summary of its contents, and 
 clearer idea of its purpose ; and will only trespass so far 
 on my friend's province as to lay before him, together 
 with my readers, some points noted lately on another 
 kind of semi-crystallization, which bear not merely on 
 the domes of delicate chalcedony, and pyramids of micro- 
 scopic quartz, but on the far-seen chalcedony of the 
 Dome du Goute, and the prismatic towers of the Cervin 
 and dark peak of Aar. 
 
XIV. SCHISMA MONTIUM. 217 
 
 CHAPTER XIY. 
 
 SCHISMA MONTIUM. 
 
 1. THE index closing this column of Deucalion, drawn 
 up by myself, is made as short as possible, and classifies 
 the contents of the volume so as to enable the reader to 
 collect all notices of importance relating to any one sub- 
 ject, and to collate them with those in my former writ- 
 ings. That they need such assemblage from their desul- 
 tory occurrence in the previous pnges, is matter of pin- 
 cere regret to me, but inevitable, since the writing of a 
 systematic treatise was incompatible with the more 
 serious work I had in hand, on greater subjects. The 
 6 Laws of Fesole ' alone might well occupy all the hours 
 I can now permit myself in severe thought. But any 
 student of intelligence may perceive that one inherent 
 cause of the divided character of this book, is its func- 
 tion of advance in parallel columns over a wide field ; 
 seeing that, on no fewer than four subjects, respecting 
 which geological theories and assertions have long been 
 alike fantastic and daring, it has shown at least the 
 necessity for revisal of evidence, and, in two cases, for 
 reversal of judgment. 
 
 2. I say " it has shown," fearlessly ; for at my time 
 of life, every man of ordinary sense, and probity, knows 
 
218 
 
 what he has done securely, and what perishably. And 
 'during the last twenty years, none of my words have 
 been set down untriecT ; nor has any opponent succeeded 
 in overthrowing a single sentence of them. 
 
 3. But respecting the four subjects above alluded to, 
 (denudation, cleavage, crystallization, and elevation, as 
 causes of mountain form,) proofs of the uncertainty, or 
 even falseness, of current conceptions have been scat- 
 tered at intervals through my writings, early and late, 
 from < Modern Painters' to the 'Ethics of the Dust:' 
 and, with gradually increasing wonder at the fury of so- 
 called scientific ' speculation, I have insisted, year by 
 year, on the undealt with, and usually undreamt of, 
 difficulties which lay at the threshold of secure knowl- 
 edge in such matters ; trusting always that some in- 
 genuous young reader would take up the work I had no 
 proper time for, and follow out the investigations of 
 which the necessity had been indicated. But I waited 
 in vain ; and the rough experiments made at last by my- 
 self, a year ago, of which the results are represented in 
 Plate YI. of this volume, are actually the first of which 
 there is record in the annals of geology, made to ascer- 
 tain the primary physical conditions regulating the forms 
 of contorted strata. The leisure granted me, unhappily, 
 by the illness which has closed my relations with the 
 University of Oxford, has permitted the pursuit of these 
 experiments a little farther ; but I must defer account 
 of their results to the following volume, contenting my- 
 
XIV. SCHISMA MOKTIUM. 219- 
 
 self with indicating, for conclusion of the present one, to 
 what points of doubt in existing theories they have been 
 chiefly directed. 
 
 4. From the examination of all mountain ground 
 hitherto well gone over, one general conclusion has been 
 derived, that wherever there are high mountains, there 
 are hard rocks. Earth, at its strongest, has difficulty in 
 sustaining itself above the clouds; and could not hold 
 itself in any noble height, if knitted infirmly. 
 
 5. And it has farther followed, in evidence, that on 
 the flanks of these harder rocks, there are yielding beds, 
 which appear to have been, in some places, compressed 
 by them into wrinkles and undulations ; in others, shat- 
 tered, and thrown up or down to different levels. My 
 own interest was excited, very early in life,* by the 
 forms and fractures in the mountain groups of Savoy ; 
 and it happens that the undulatory action of the lime- 
 stone beds on each shore of the Lake of Annecy, and 
 the final rupture of their outmost wave into the preei- 
 
 * I well yet remember my father's rushing up to the drawing-room 
 at Herne Hill, with wet and flashing eyes, with the proof in his hand 
 of the first sentences of his son's writing ever set in type, ' Enquiries 
 on the Causes of the Colour of the Water of the Rhone/ (Magazine 
 of Natural History, September, 1834; (followed next month by 
 ' Facts and Considerations on the Strata of Mont Blanc, and on 
 some Instances of Twisted Strata observable in Switzerland.' I 
 was then fifteen.) My mother and I eagerly questioning the cause 
 of his excitement, " It's it's only print" said he ! Alas ! how 
 much the ' only ' meant ! 
 
220 DEUCALIOK. 
 
 pice of the Sal eve, present examples so clear, and so im- 
 posing, of each condition of form, that I have been led, 
 without therefore layiflg claim to any special sagacity, at 
 least into clearer power of putting essential questions 
 respecting such phenomena than geologists of far wider 
 experience, who have confused or amused themselves 
 by collecting facts indiscriminately over vast spaces of 
 ground. I am well convinced that the reader will find 
 more profit in following my restricted steps ; and satis- 
 fying, or dissatisfying himself, with precision, respect- 
 ing forms of mountains which he can repeatedly and 
 exhaustively examine. 
 
 6. In the uppermost figure in Plate VII. , I have en- 
 larged and coloured the general section given rudely 
 above in Figure 1, page 11, of the Jura and Alps, with 
 the intervening plain. The central figure is the south- 
 ern, and the lowermost figure, which should be con- 
 ceived as joining it on the right hand, the northern, 
 series of the rocks composing our own Lake district, 
 drawn for me with extreme care by the late Professor 
 Phillips, of Oxford. 
 
 I compare, and oppose, these two sections, for the 
 sake of fixing in the reader's mind one essential point 
 of difference among many resemblances ; but that they 
 may not, in this comparison, induce any false impres- 
 sions, the system of colour which I adopt in this plate, 
 and henceforward shall observe, must be accurately un- 
 derstood. 
 
XIV. SCHISMA MONTIUM. 
 
 221 
 
 7. At page 130 above, I gave my reasons for making 
 no endeavour, at the Sheffield Museum, to certify the 
 ages of rocks. For the same reason, in practical sections 
 I concern myself only with their nature and position ; 
 and colour granite pink, slate purple, and sandstone red, 
 without inquiring whether the granite is ancient or 
 modern, the sand trias or pliocene, and the slate Wen- 
 lock or Caradoc ; but with this much only of necessary 
 concession to recognized method, as to colour with the 
 same tint all rocks which unquestionably belong to the 
 same great geological formation, and vary their minera- 
 logical characters within narrow limits. Thus, since, in 
 characteristic English sections, chalk may most con- 
 veniently be expressed by leaving it white, and some of 
 the upper beds of the Alps unquestionably are of the 
 same period, I leave them white also, though their gen- 
 eral colour may be brown or grey, so long as they retain 
 cretaceous or marly consistence ; but if they become 
 metamorphic, and change into clay slate or gneiss, I 
 colour them purple, whatever their historical relations 
 may be. 
 
 8. And in all geological maps and sections given in 
 * Deucalion,' I shall limit myself to the definition of the 
 twelve following formations by the twelve following 
 colours. It is enough for any young student at first to 
 learn the relations of these great orders of rock and 
 earth: once master of these, in any locality,* he may 
 split his beds into any complexity of finely laminated 
 
222 DEUCALION. 
 
 chronology he likes; and if I have occasion to split 
 them for him myself, I can easily express their minor 
 differences by methods* of engraving. But, primarily, 
 let him be content in the recognition of these twelve 
 territories of Demeter, by this following colour her- 
 aldry : 
 9. 
 
 1. Granite will bear in the field, Rose-red. 
 
 2. Gneiss and mica-slate Rose-purple. 
 
 3. Clay-slate Violet-purple. 
 
 4. Mountain limestone Blue. 
 
 5. Coal measures and millstone 
 
 grit Grey. 
 
 6. Jura limestone Yellow. 
 
 7. Chalk White. 
 
 8. Tertiaries forming hard rock Scarlet. 
 
 9. Tertiary sands and clays Tawny 
 
 10. Eruptive rocks not definitely 
 
 volcanic Green. 
 
 11. Eruptive rocks, definitely vol- 
 
 canic, but at rest Green, spotted red. 
 
 12. Volcanic rocks, active Black, spotted red. 
 
 10. It will at once be seen by readers of some geo- 
 logical experience, that approximately, and to the degree 
 possible, these colours are really characteristic of the 
 several formations ; and they may be rendered more so 
 by a little care in modifying the tints. Thus the 
 scarlet' used for the tertiaries may be subdued as much 
 as we please, to what will be as near a sober brown as 
 we can venture without confusing it with the darker 
 
XIV. SCHISMA MOKTIUM. 
 
 shades of yellow ; and it may be used more pure to 
 represent definitely red sandstones or conglomerates : 
 while, again, the old red sands of the coal measures may 
 be extricated from the general grey by a tint of ver- 
 milion which will associate them, as mineral substances, 
 with more recent sand. Thus in the midmost section 
 of Plate VII. this colour is used for the old red con- 
 glomerates of Kirby Lonsdale. And again, keeping pure 
 light blue for the dated mountain limestones, which are 
 indeed, in their emergence from the crisp turf of their 
 pastures, grey, or even blue in shade, to the eye, a 
 deeper blue may be kept for the dateless limestones 
 which are associated with the metamorphic beds of the 
 Alps ; as for my own Coniston Silurian limestone, which 
 may be nearly as old as Skiddaw. 
 
 11. The colour called ' tawny,' I mean to be as nearly 
 that of ripe wheat as may be, indicating arable land, or 
 hot prairie; while, in maps of northern countries, 
 touched with points of green, it may pass for moorland 
 and pasture : or, kept in the hue of pale vermilion, it 
 may equally well represent desert alluvial sand. Finally, 
 the avoidance of the large masses of fierce and frightful 
 scarlet which render modern geological maps intolerable 
 to a painter's sight, (besides involving such geographical 
 incongruities as the showing Iceland in the colour of a 
 red-hot coal ;) and the substitution over all volcanic dis- 
 tricts, of the colour of real greenstone, or serpentine, for 
 one which resembles neither these, nor the general tones 
 
224 DEUCALION. 
 
 of dark colour either in lava or cinders, will certainly 
 render all geological study less injurious to the eye- 
 sight, and less harmful 4o the taste. 
 
 12. Of the two sections in Plate VIL, the upper one 
 is arranged from Studer, so as to exhibit in one view the 
 principal phenomena of Alpine structure according to 
 that geologist. The cleavages in the central granite 
 mass are given, however, on my own responsibility, not 
 his. The lower section was, as aforesaid, drawn for me 
 by my kind old friend Professor Phillips, and is, I doubt 
 not, entirely authoritative. In all great respects, the sec- 
 tions given by Studer are no less so ; but they are much 
 ruder in drawing, and can be received only as imperfect 
 summaries perhaps, in their abstraction, occasionally in- 
 volving some misrepresentation of the complex facts. 
 For my present purposes, however, they give me all the 
 data required. 
 
 13. It will instantly be seen, on comparing the two 
 groups of rocks, that although nearly similar in succes- 
 sion, and both suggesting the eruptive and elevatory 
 force of the granitic central masses, there is a wide dif- 
 ference in the manner of the action of these on the strata 
 lifted by them. In the Swiss section, the softer rocks 
 seem to have been crushed aside, like the ripples of 
 water round any submersed object rising to the surface. 
 In the English section, they seem to have undergone no 
 such torsion, but to be lifted straight, as they lay, like the 
 timbers of a gabled roof. It is true that, on the larger 
 
XIY. SCHISMA MONTITJM. 
 
 scale of the Geological Survey, contortions are shown at 
 most of the faults in the Skiddaw slate ; but, for the rea- 
 sons already stated, I believe these contortions to be 
 more or less conventionally represented ; and until I 
 have myself examined them, will not' modify Professor 
 Phillips' drawing by their introduction. 
 
 Some acknowledgment of such a structure is indeed 
 given by him observably in the dark slates on the left in 
 the lowermost section ; but he has written under these 
 undulatory lines " quartz veins," and certainly means 
 them, so far as they are structural, to stand only for or- 
 dinary gneissitic contortion in the laminated mass, and 
 not for undulating strata. 
 
 14. Farther. No authority is given me by Studer for 
 dividing the undulatory masses of the outer Alps by any 
 kind of cleavage-lines. Nor do I myself know examples 
 of fissile structure in any of these mountain masses, un- 
 less where they are affected by distinctly metamorphic 
 action, in the neighbourhood of the central gneiss or 
 mica-schist. On the contrary, the entire courses of the 
 Cumberland rock, from Kirby Lonsdale to Carlisle, are 
 represented by Professor Phillips as traversed by a per- 
 fectly definite and consistent cleavage throughout, dip- 
 ping steeply south, in accurately straight parallel lines, 
 and modified only, in the eruptive masses, by a vertical 
 cleavage, characterizing the pure granite centres. 
 
 15. I wish the reader to note this with especial care, 
 
 because the cleavage of secondary rock has been lately 
 15 
 
226 DEUCALION. 
 
 attributed, with more appearance of reason than modern 
 scientific theories usually possess, to lateral pressure, act- 
 ing in a direction perpendicular to the lamination. It 
 seems, however, little calculated to strengthen our confi- 
 dence in such an explanation, to find the Swiss rocks, 
 which appear to have been subjected to a force capable 
 of doubling up leagues of them backwards and forwards 
 like a folded map, wholly without any resultant schistose 
 structure ; and the English rocks, which seem onlv to 
 have been lifted as a raft is raised on a wave, split across, 
 for fifty miles in succession, by foliate structures of the 
 most perfect smoothness and precision. 
 
 16. It might indeed be alleged, in deprecation of this 
 objection, that the dough or batter of which the Alps 
 were composed, mostly calcareous, did not lend itself 
 kindly to lamination, while the mud and volcanic ashes of 
 Cumberland were of a slippery and unctuous character, 
 easily susceptible of rearrangement under pressure. And 
 this view receives strong support from the dextrous ex- 
 periment performed by Professor Tyndall in 1856, and 
 recorded, as conclusive, in 1872,* wherein, first warming 
 some wax, then pressing it between two pieces of glass, 
 and finally freezing it, he finds the congealed mass deli- 
 cately laminated ; and attributes its lamination to the 
 " lateral sliding of the particles over each other." * But 
 with his usual, and quite unrivalled, incapacity of follow- 
 
 * ' Forms of Water/ King and Co., 1872, p. 190. 
 
XIV. SCHISMA MOKTIUM. 
 
 ing out any subject on the two sides of it, lie never tells 
 us, and never seems to have asked himself, how far the 
 wax was flattened, and how far, therefore, its particles 
 had been forced to slide ; nor, during the sixteen years 
 between his first and final record of the experiment, does 
 he seem ever to have used any means of ascertaining 
 whether, under the observed conditions, real compression 
 of the substance of the wax had taken place at all ! For 
 if not, and the form of the mass was only altered from a 
 lump to a plate, without any increase of its density, a less 
 period for reflection than sixteen years might surely have 
 suggested to Professor Tyndall the necessity, in applying 
 his result to geological matters, of providing mountains 
 which were to be squeezed in one direction, with room 
 for expansion in another. 
 
 17. For once, however, Professor Tyndall is not with- 
 out fellowship in his hesitation to follow the full circum- 
 ference of this question. Among the thousands of pas- 
 sages I have read in the works even of the most careful 
 and logical geologists, even such as Humboldt and De 
 Saussure, I remember not one distinct statement * of 
 
 * As these sheets are passing through the press, I received the fol- 
 lowing most important note from Mr. Clifton Ward: " With regard 
 to the question whether cleavage is necessarily followed by a reduc- 
 tion in bulk of the body cleaved, the following cases may help us to 
 form an opinion. Crystalline volcanic rocks (commonly called trap), 
 as a rule, are not cleaved, though the beds, uncrystalline in character, 
 above and below them, may be. When, however, a trap is highly 
 
228 DEUCALION". 
 
 the degree in which they supposed the lamination of any 
 given rock to imply real increase of its density, or only 
 the lateral extension ol its mass. 
 
 18. And the student must observe that in many cases 
 lateral extension of mass is precisely avoided by the very 
 positions of rocks which are supposed to indicate the 
 pressure sustained. In Mr. Woodward's experiment 
 with sheets of paper, for instance, (above quoted, p. 17,*) 
 there is neither increase of density nor extension of mass, 
 in the sheets of paper. They remain just as thick as 
 they were, just as long and broad as they were. They 
 are only altered in direction, and no more compressed, as 
 they bend, than a flag is compressed by the wind that 
 
 vesicular, it is sometimes well cleaved. May we not, therefore, sup- 
 pose that in a rock, wholly crystalline, the particles are too much in- 
 terlocked to take up new positions? In a purely fragmentary rock, 
 however, the particles seem to have more freedom of motion; their 
 motion under pressure leads to a new and more parallel arrangement 
 of particles, each being slightly flattened or pulled out along the 
 planes of new arrangement. This, then, points to a diminution of 
 bulk at any rate in a direction at right angles to the planes of cleav- 
 age. The tendency to new arrangement of particles under pressure 
 points to accommodation under altered circumstances of space. In rocks 
 composed of fragments, the interspaces, being for the most part 
 larger than the intercrystalline spaces of a trap rock, more freely al- 
 low of movement and new arrangement." 
 
 * There is a double mistake in the fourth line from the top in that 
 page. I meant to have written, " from a length of four inches into 
 the length of one inch," but I believe the real dimensions should 
 have been " a foot crushed into three inches." 
 
XIY. SCHISMA MONTIUM. 
 
 waves it. In my own experiments with dough, of 
 course the dough was no more compressible than so 
 much water would have been. Yet the language of the 
 geologists who attribute cleavage to pressure might usu- 
 ally leave their readers in the notion that clay can be 
 reduced like steam ; and that we could squeeze the sea 
 down to half its depth by first mixing mud with it! 
 Else, if they^ really comprehended the changes of form 
 rendered necessary by proved directions of pressure, and 
 did indeed mean that the paste of primitive slate had 
 been i flattened out' (in Professor Tyiidall's words) as a 
 cook flattens out her pastry-crust with a rolling-pin, they 
 would surely sometimes have asked themselves, and oc- 
 casionally taken the pains to tell their scholars, where 
 the rocks in question had been flattened to. Yet in the 
 entire series of Swiss sections (upwards of a hundred) 
 given by Studer in his Alpine Geology, there is no hint 
 of such a difficulty having occurred to him; none, of 
 his having observed any actual balance between diminu- 
 tion of bulk and alteration of form in contorted beds ; 
 and none, showing any attempt to distinguish mechani- 
 cal from crystalline foliation. The cleavages are given 
 rarely in any section, and always imperfectly. 
 
 19. In the more limited, but steadier and closer, work 
 of Professor Phillips on the geology of Yorkshire, the 
 solitary notice of " that very obscure subject, the cleav- 
 age of slate" is contained in three pages, (5 to 8 of the 
 first chapter,) describing the structure of a, single quarry, 
 
230 DEUCALION. 
 
 in which the author does not know, and cannot event- 
 ually discover, whether the rock is stratified or not! I 
 respect, and admire, the frankness of the confession ; 
 but it is evident that before any affirmation of value, 
 respecting cleavages, can be made by good geologists, they 
 must both ascertain many laws of pressure in viscous 
 substances at present unknown; and describe a great 
 many quarries with no less attention than was given by 
 Professor Phillips to this single one. 
 
 20. The experiment in wax, however, above referred 
 to as ingeniously performed by Professor Tyndall, is not 
 adduced in the " Forms of water" for elucidation of 
 cleavage in rocks, but of riband structure in ice (of 
 which more presently). His first display of it, however, 
 was I believe in the lecture delivered in 1856 at the 
 Royal Institution, this, and the other similar experi- 
 ments recorded in the Appendix to the ' Glaciers of the 
 Alps,' being then directed mainly to the confusion of 
 Professor Sedgwick, in that the Cambridge geologist had 
 with caution expressed an opinion that cleavage was 
 a result of crystallization under polar forces. 
 
 21. Of that suggestion Professor Tyndall compliment- 
 arily observed that " it was a bold stretch of analogies," 
 and condescendingly that "it had its value, it has 
 drawn attention to the subject." Presently, translating 
 this too vulgarly intelligible statement into his own sub- 
 lime language, he declares of the theory in debate that 
 it, and the like of it, are " a dynamic power which oper- 
 
XIV. SCHISMA MOtfTIUM. 
 
 ates against intellectual stagnation." How a dynamic 
 power differs from an undynamic one, and, presum- 
 ably, also, a potestatib dynamis from an unpotestatic 
 one;) and how much more scientific it is to say, in- 
 stead of that our spoon stirs our porridge, that it 
 " operates against the stagnation" of our porridge, Pro- 
 fessor Tyndall trusts the reader to recognize with admi- 
 ration. But if any stirring or skimming, or other opera- 
 tion of a duly dynamic character, could have clarified 
 from its scum of vanity the pease-porridge of his own 
 wits, Professor Tyndall would have felt that men like 
 the Cambridge veteran, one of the very few modern 
 men of science who possessed real genius, stretch no 
 analogies farther than they will hold ; and, in this par- 
 ticular case, there were two facts, familiar to Sedgwick, 
 and with which Professor Tyndall manifests no acquaint- 
 ance, materially affecting every question relating to cleav- 
 age structure. 
 
 22. The first, that all slates whatever, among the older 
 rocks, are more or less metamorphic; and that all meta- 
 morphisrn implies the development of crystalline force. 
 Neither the chiastolite in the slate of Skiddaw, nor the 
 kyanite in that of St. Gothard, could have been formed 
 without the exertion, through the whole body of the 
 rock, of crystalline force, which, extracting some of its 
 elements, necessarily modifies the structure of the rest. 
 The second, that slate-quarries of commercial value, for- 
 tunately rare among beautiful mountains, owe their 
 
232 DEUCALION. 
 
 utility to the unusual circumstance of cleaving, over the 
 quarryable space, practically in one direction only. But 
 such quarryable spaces "extend only across a few fathoms 
 of crag, and the entire mass of the slate mountains of the 
 world is cloven, not in one, but in half a dozen direc- 
 tions, each separate and explicit ; and requiring, for their 
 production on the pressure theory, the application of half 
 a dozen distinct pressures, of which none shall neutralize 
 the effect of any other ! That six applications of various 
 pressures at various epochs, might produce six cross 
 cleavages, may be conceived without unpardonable rash- 
 ness, and conceded without perilous courtesy ; but before 
 pursuing the investigation of this hexfoiled subject, it 
 would be well to ascertain whether the cleavage of any 
 rock whatever does indeed accommodate itself to the cal- 
 culable variations of a single pressure, applied at a single 
 time. 
 
 23. Whenever a bed of rock is bent, the substance 
 of it on the concave side must be compressed, and the 
 substance of it on the convex side, expanded. The de- 
 gree in which such change of structure must take place 
 may be studied at ease in one's arm-chair with no more 
 apparatus than a stick of sealing-wax and a candle ; and 
 as soon as I am shown a bent bed of any rock with dis- 
 tinct lamination on its concave side, traceably gradated 
 into distinct crevassing on its convex one, I will admit 
 without farther debate the connection of foliation with 
 pressure. 
 
XIV. SCHISMA MONTITJM. 233 
 
 24. In the meantime, the delicate experiments by the 
 conduct of which Professor Tyndall brought his audi- 
 ences into what he is pleased to call "contact with facts" 
 (in older times we used to say 'grasp of facts' ; modern 
 science, for its own part, prefers, not unreasonably, the 
 term ' contact,' expressive merely of occasional collision 
 with them.) must remain inconclusive. But if in the 
 course of his own various ; contact with facts' Professor 
 Tyndall has ever come across a bed of slate squeezed 
 between two pieces of glass or anything like them I 
 will thank him for a description of the locality. All 
 metamorphic slates have been subjected assuredly to heat 
 probably to pressure; but (unless they were merely 
 the shaly portions of a stratified group) the pressure 
 to which they have been subjected was that of an ir- 
 regular mass of rock ejected in the midst of them, or 
 driven fiercely against them ; and their cleavage so far 
 as it is indeed produced by that pressure, must be such 
 as the iron of a target shows round a shell ; and not at 
 all representable by a film of candle-droppings. 
 
 25. It is further to be observed, and not without in- 
 creasing surprise and increasing doubt, that the experi- 
 ment was shown, on the first occasion, to explain the 
 lamination of slate, and on the second, to explain the 
 riband structure of ice. But there are no ribands in 
 slate, and there is no lamination in ice. There are no 
 regulated alternations of porous with solid substance in 
 the one ; and there are no constancies of fracture by 
 
234 DEUCALION. 
 
 plane surfaces in the other ; moreover and this is to be 
 chiefly noted, slate lamination is always straight ; gla- 
 cier banding always bent. The structure of the pressed 
 wax might possibly explain one or other of these phe- 
 nomena ; but could not possibly explain both, and does 
 actually explain neither. 
 
 26. That the arrangement of rock substance into fissile 
 folia does indeed take place in metamorphic aluminous 
 masses under some manner of pressure, has, I believe, 
 been established by the investigations both of Mr. Sorby 
 and of Mr. Clifton Ward. But the reasons for conti- 
 nuity of parallel cleavage through great extents of vari- 
 ously contorted beds; for its almost uniform assumption 
 of a high angle; for its as uniform non-occurrence in 
 horizontal laminae under vertical pressure, however vast ; 
 for its total disregard of the forces causing upheaval 
 of the beds ; and its mysteriously deceptive harmonies 
 with the stratification, if only steep enough, of neigh- 
 bouring sedimentary rocks, remain to this hour, not only 
 unassigned, but unsought. 
 
 27. And it is difficult for me to understand either the 
 contentment of geologists witlrthis state of things, or the 
 results on the mind of ingenuous learners, of the partial 
 and more or less contradictory information hitherto ob- 
 tainable on the subject. The section given in the two 
 lower figures of Plate VII. was drawn for me, as I have 
 already said, by my most affectionately and reverently 
 remembered friend, Professor Phillips, of Oxford. It 
 
XIV. SCHISMA MONTIUM. 235 
 
 goes through the entire crest of the Lake district from 
 Lancaster to Carlisle, the first emergent rock-beds being 
 those of mountain limestone, A to B, not steeply in- 
 clined, but lying unconformably on the steeply inclined 
 flags and grit of Furness Fells, B to C. In the depres- 
 sion at C lies Coniston Lake ; then follow the masses of 
 Coniston Old Man and Scawfell, C to D, sinking to the 
 basin of Derwentwater just after the junction, at Grange, 
 of their volcanic ashes with the Skiddaw slate. Skiddaw 
 himself, and Carrock Fell, rise between D and E ; and 
 above E, at Caldbeck, again the mountain limestone 
 appears in nnconformable bedding, declining under the 
 Trias of the plain of Carlisle, at the northern extremity 
 of which a few rippled lines do service for the waves of 
 Solway. 
 
 28. The entire ranges of the greater mountains, it will 
 be seen, are thus represented by Professor Phillips as 
 consisting of more or less steeply inclined beds, parallel 
 to those of the Furness shales ; and traversed by occa- 
 sional cleavages at an opposite angle. But in the section 
 of the Geological Survey, already referred to, the beds 
 parallel to the Furness shales reach only as far as Wether- 
 lam, and the central mountains are represented as laid in 
 horizontal or slightly basin-shaped swirls of ashes, trav- 
 ersed by ejected trap, and divided by no cleavages at 
 all, except a few vertical ones indicative of the Tilber- 
 thwaite slate quarries. 
 
 29. I think it somewhat hard upon me, now that I am 
 
236 DEUCALION. 
 
 sixty years old, and short of breath in going Tip hills, to 
 have to compare, verify for myself, and reconcile as I 
 may, these entirely adverse representations of the classical 
 mountains of England : no less than that I am left to 
 carry forward, in my broken leisure, the experiments on 
 viscous motion instituted by James Forbes thirty years 
 ago. For the present, however, I choose Professor Phil- 
 lips' section as far the most accurately representative of 
 the general aspect of matters, to my present judgment ; 
 and hope, with Mr. Clifton Ward's good help, to give 
 more detailed drawings of separate parts in the next vol- 
 ume of Deucalion. 
 
 30. I am prepared also to find Professor Phillips' draw- 
 ing in many respects justifiable, by my own former studies 
 of the cleavage structure of the central Alps, which, in 
 all the cases I have examined, I found to be a distinctly 
 crystalline lamination, sometimes contorted according to 
 the rock's own humour, fantastically as Damascus steel ; 
 but presently afterwards assuming inconceivable consist- 
 ency with the untroubled repose of the sedimentary 
 masses into whose company it had been thrust. The 
 junction of the contorted gneiss through which the gorge 
 of Trient is cleft, with the micaceous marble on which 
 the tower of Martigny is built, is a transition of this kind 
 within reach of the least adventurous traveller ; and the 
 junction of the gneiss of the Montanvert with the porous 
 limestone which underlies it, is certainly the most inter- 
 esting, and the most easily explored, piece of rock- fellow- 
 
XIY. SCHISMA MOKTIUM. 
 
 ship in Europe. Yet the gneissitic lamination of the 
 Montanvert has been attributed to stratification by one 
 group of geologists, and to cleavage by another, ever since 
 the valley of Chamouni was first heard of : and the only 
 accurate drawings of the beds hitherto given are those 
 published thirty years ago in ' Modern Painters.' I had 
 hoped at the same time to contribute some mite of direct 
 evidence to their elucidation, by sinking a gallery in the 
 soft limestone under the gneiss, supposing the upper rock 
 hard enough to form a safe roof ; but a decomposing frag- 
 ment fell, and so nearly ended the troubles, with the toil, 
 of the old miner who was driving the tunnel, that I at- 
 tempted no farther inquiries in that practical manner. 
 
 31. The narrow bed, curved like a sickle, and coloured 
 vermilion, among the purple slate, in the uppermost sec- 
 tion of Plate VII., is intended to represent the position 
 of the singular band of qnartzite and mottled schists, 
 (" bunte schiefer,") which, on the authority of Studer's 
 section at page 178 of his second volume, underlies, at 
 least for some thousands of feet, the granite of the Jung- 
 frau ; and corresponds, in its relation to the uppermost 
 cliff of that mountain, with the subjacence of the lime- 
 stone of Les Tines to the aiguilles of Chamouni. I have 
 coloured it vermilion in order to connect it in the student's 
 mind with the notable conglomerates of the Black Forest, 
 through which their underlying granites -pass into the 
 Trias ; but the reversed position which it here assumes, 
 . and the relative dominance of the central mass of the 
 
238 DEUCALION. 
 
 Bernese Alps, if given by Studer with fidelity, are cer- 
 tainly the first structural phenomena which the geologists 
 of Germany should benevolently qualify themselves to 
 explain to the summer society of Interlachen. The view 
 of the Jungfrau from the Castle of Manfred is probably 
 the most beautiful natural vision in Europe ; but, for all 
 that modern science can hitherto tell us, the construction 
 of it is supernatural, and explicable only by the Witch of 
 the Alps. 
 
 32. In the meantime I close this volume of Deucalion 
 by noting firmly one or two letters of the cuneiform 
 language in which the history of that scene has been 
 written. 
 
 There are five conditions of rock cleavage which the 
 student must accustom himself to recognize, and hold 
 apart in his mind with perfect clearness, in all study of 
 mountain form. 
 
 I. The Wave cleavage : that is to say, the condition of 
 structure on a vast scale which has regulated the succes- 
 sion of summits. In almost all chains of mountains not 
 volcanic, if seen from a rightly chosen point, some law of 
 sequence will manifest itself in the arrangement of their 
 eminences. On a small scale, the declining surges of 
 pastoral mountain, from the summit of Helvellyn to the 
 hills above Rendal, seen from any point giving a clear 
 profile of them, on Wetherlarn or the Old Man of Con- 
 iston, show a quite rhythmic, almost formal, order of 
 ridged waves, with their steepest sides to the lowlands ; 
 
XIV. SCHISMA MONTIUM. 
 
 239^ 
 
 for which the cause must be sought in some internal 
 structure of the rocks, utterly untraceable in close section. 
 On vaster scale, the succession of the aiguilles .of Cha- 
 mouni, and of the great central aiguilles themselves, from 
 the dome of Mont Blanc through the Jorasses, to the low 
 peak of the aiguille de Trient, is again regulated by a 
 harmonious law of alternate cleft and crest, which can be 
 studied rightly only from the far-distant Jura. 
 
 The main directions of this vast mountain tendency 
 might always be shown in a moderately good model of 
 any given district, by merely colouring all slopes of 
 ground inclined at a greater angle than thirty degrees, of 
 some darker colour than the rest. No slope of talus can 
 maintain itself at a higher angle than this, (compare 
 ' Modern Painters,' vol. iv., p. 318 ;) and therefore, while 
 the mathematical laws of curvature by aqueous denuda- 
 tion, which were first ascertained and systematized by 
 Mr. Alfred Tylor, will be found assuredly to regulate or 
 modify the disposition of masses reaching no steeper angle, 
 the cliffs and banks which exceed it, brought into one 
 abstracted group, will always display the action of the 
 wave cleavage on the body of the yet resisting rocks. 
 
 33. II. The Structural cleavage. 
 
 This is essentially determined by the arrangement of 
 the plates of mica in crystalline rocks, or where the 
 mica is obscurely formed, or replaced by other minerals 
 by the sinuosities of their quartz veins. Next to the 
 actual bedding, it is the most important element of form 
 

 240 DEUCALION. 
 
 in minor masses of crag ; but in its influence on large 
 contours, subordinate always to the two next following 
 orders of cleavage. 
 
 34. III. The Asphodeline cleavage ; the detachment, 
 that is to say, of curved masses of crag more or less con- 
 centric, like the coats of an onion. It is for the most 
 part transverse to the structural cleavage, and forms 
 rounded domes and bending billows of smooth contour, 
 on the flanks of the great foliated mountains, which look 
 exactly as if they had been worn for ages under some 
 river of colossal strength. It is far and away the most 
 important element of mountain form in granitic and 
 metamorphic districts. 
 
 35. IY. The Frontal cleavage. This shows itself only 
 on the steep escarpments of sedimentary rock, when the 
 cliff has been produced in all probability by rending 
 elevatory force. It occurs on the faces of nearly all the 
 great precipices in Savoy, formed of Jura limestone, and 
 has been in many cases mistaken for real bedding. I 
 hold it one of the most fortunate chances attending the 
 acquisition of Brantwood, that I have within three 
 hundred yards of me, as I write, jutting from beneath 
 my garden wall, a piece of crag knit out of the Furness 
 shales, showing frontal cleavage of the most definite 
 kind, and enabling me to examine the conditions of it as 
 perfectly as I could at Bonneville or Annecy. 
 
 36. Y. The Atomic cleavage. 
 
 This is the mechanical fracture of the rock under the 
 
XIV. SCHISMA MONTIUM. 
 
 hammer, indicating the mode of coherence between its 
 particles, irrespectively of their crystalline arrangements. 
 The conchoidal fractures of flint and calcite, the raggedly 
 vitreous fractures of quartz and corundum, and the 
 earthy transverse fracture of clay slate, come under this 
 general head. And supposing it proved that slaty lami- 
 nation is indeed owing either to the lateral expansion of 
 the mass under pressure, or to the filling of vacant pores 
 in it by the flattening of particles, such a formation ought 
 to be considered, logically, as the ultimate degree of fine- 
 ness in the coherence of crushed substance ; and not 
 properly a ' structure.' I should call this, therefore, also 
 an ' atomic ' cleavage. 
 
 37. The more or less rectilinear divisions, known as 
 c joints,' and apparently owing merely to the desiccation 
 or contraction of the rock, are not included in the above 
 list of cleavages, which is limited strictly to the char- 
 acters of separation induced either by arrangements of 
 the crystalline elements, or by violence in the methods of 
 rock elevation or sculpture. 
 
 38. If my life is spared, and my purposes hold, the 
 second volume of Deucalion will contain such an account 
 of the hills surrounding me in this district, as shall be, so 
 far as it is carried, trustworthy down to the minutest de- 
 tails in the exposition of their first elements of mountain 
 form. And I am even fond enough to hope that some 
 of the youths of Oxford educated in its now established 
 schools of Natural History and Art, may so securely and 
 
242 DEUCALION". 
 
 consistently follow out sucli a piece of home study by the 
 delineation of the greater mountains they are proud to 
 climb, as to redeem, at last, the ingenious nineteenth cen- 
 tury from the reproach of having fostered a mountaineer- 
 ing club, which was content to approve itself in competi- 
 tive agilities, without knowing either how an aiguille 
 stood, or how a glacier flowed ; and a Geological Society, 
 which discoursed with confidence on the catastrophes of 
 chaos, and the processes of creation, without being able 
 to tell a builder how a slate split, or a lapidary how a 
 pebble was coloured. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 WHEN I began Deucalion, one of the hopes chiefly connected with 
 it was that of giving some account of the work done by the real mas- 
 ters and fathers of Geology. I must not conclude this first volume 
 without making some reference, (more especially in relation to the 
 subjects of inquiry touched upon in its last chapter,) to the modest 
 life and intelligent labour of a most true pioneer in geological science, 
 Jonathan Otley. Mr. Clifton Ward's sketch of the good guide's life, 
 drawn up in 1877 for the Cumberland Association for the Advance- 
 ment of Literature and Science, supplies me with the following par- 
 ticulars of it, deeply as it seems to me instructive and impressive. 
 
 He was born near Ambleside, at Nook House, in Loughrigg, 
 January 19th, 1766. His father was a basket-maker ; and it is espec- 
 ially interesting to me, in connection with the resolved retention of 
 Latin as one of the chief elements of education in the system I am 
 arranging for St. George's schools, to find that the Westmoreland 
 basket-maker was a good Latin scholar ; and united Oxford and 
 Cambridge discipline for his son with one nobler than either, by 
 making him study Latin and mathematics, while, till he was twenty 
 five, he worked as his father's journeyman at his father's handicraft. 
 " He also cleaned all the clocks and watches in the neighbourhood 
 and showed himself very skilful in engraving upon copper-plates, 
 seals and coin." In 1791 he moved to Keswick, and there lived 
 sixty- five years, and died, ninety years old and upwards. 
 
 I find no notice in Mr. Ward's paper of the death of the father, to 
 whose good sense and firmness the boy owed so much. There was 
 yet a more woful reason for his leaving his birthplace. He was in 
 love with a young woman named Anne Youdale, and had engraved 
 their names together on a silver coin. But the village blacksmith, 
 Mr. Bowness, was also a suitor for the maiden's hand ; and some 
 years after, Jonathan's niece, Mrs. Wilson, asking him how it was 
 that his name and Anne Youdale 's were engraved together on the 
 
244 APPENDIX. 
 
 same coin, he replied, " Oh, the blacksmith beat me." * He never 
 married, but took to mineralogy, watchmaking, and other consolatory 
 pursuits, with mountain rabbling alike discursive and attentive. 
 Let me not omit what thanks for friendly help and healthy stimulus 
 to the earnest youth may be due to another honest Cumberland soul, 
 Mr. Crosthwaite. Otley was standing one day (before he removed 
 to Keswick) outside the Crosthwaite Museum, f when he was accosted 
 by its founder, and asked if he would sell a curious stick he held in 
 his hand. Otley asked a shilling for it, the proprietor of the Museum 
 stipulating to show him the collection over the bargain. From this 
 time congenial tastes drew the two together as firm and staunch 
 friends. 
 
 He lived all his life at Keswick, in lodgings, recognized as "Jona- 
 than Otley's, up the steps," paying from five shillings a week at first, 
 to ten, in uttermost luxury ; and being able to give account of his 
 keep to a guinea, up to October 18, 1852, namely, board and lodging 
 for sixty-one years and one week, 1325 ; rent of room extra, fifty-six 
 years, 164 10*. Total keep and roof overhead, for the sixty useful- 
 lest of his ninety years, 1489 10s. 
 
 Thus housed and fed, he became the friend, and often the teacher, 
 of the leading scientific men of his day, Dr. Dalton the chemist, Dr. 
 Henry the chemist, Mr. Farey the engineer, Airy the Astronomer 
 Royal, Professor Phillips of Oxford, and Professor Sedgwick of Cam- 
 bridge. He was the first accurate describer and accurate map-maker 
 of the Lake district ; the founder of the geological divisions of its 
 rocks, which were accepted from him by Sedgwick, and are now 
 finally confirmed ; and the first who clearly defined the separation 
 between bedding, cleavage, and joint in rock, hence my enforced 
 notice of him, in this place. Mr. Ward's memoir gives examples of 
 
 * I doubt the orthography of the fickle maid's name, but all authority of anti- 
 quaries obliges me to distinguish it from that of the valley. I do so, however, 
 still under protest as if I were compelled to write Lord Lonsdale, ' Lownsdale,' 
 or the Marquis of Tweeddale, 'Twaddle,' or the victorious blacksmith, 'Beau- 
 ness.' The latter's family still retain the forge by Elter Water an entirely dis- 
 tinct branch, I am told, from our blacksmiths of the Dale : see above, pp. 189, 190. 
 
 tin that same museum, my first collection of minerals fifty specimens total 
 price, if I remember rightly, five shillings was bought for me, by my father, of 
 Mr. Crosthwaite. No subsequent possession has had so much influence on my 
 life. I studied Turner at his own gallery, and in Mr. Windus's portfolios ; but 
 the little yellow bit of " copper ore from Coniston," and the " Garnets " (I never 
 could see more than one !) from Borrowdale, were the beginning of science to mo 
 which never could have been otherwise acquired. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 245 
 
 his correspondence with the men of science above named : both 
 Phillips and Sedgwick referring always to him in any question touch- 
 ing Cumberland rocks, and becoming gradually his sincere and affec- 
 tionate friends. Sedgwick sate by his death-bed. 
 
 I shall have frequent occasion to refer to his letters, and to avail 
 myself of his work. But that work was chiefly crowned in the ex- 
 ample he left not of what is vulgarly praised as self-Jielp, (for every 
 noble spirit's watchword is " God us ayde") but of the rarest of 
 mortal virtues, self-possession. "In your patience, possess ye your 
 souls." 
 
 I should have dwelt at greater length on the worthiness both of the 
 tenure and the treasure, but for the bitterness of my conviction that 
 the rage of modern vanity must destroy in our scientific schoolmen, 
 alike the casket, and the possession. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 AGATE, 99, 100. See CHALCEDONY ; also, if possible, the papers on 
 this subject in the Geological Magazine, vol. iv., Nos. 8 and 11 ; 
 v., Nos. 1, 4, 5 ; vi., No. 12 ; and vii., No. 1 ; and PEBBLES. 
 
 AGES OF BOCKS, not to be defined in the catalogue of a practical 
 Museum, 130. 
 
 ALABASTER, sacred uses of, 93. 
 
 ALABASTRON, the Greek vase so called, 93, 106. 
 
 ALPS, general structure of, 8, 220 ; are not best seen from their high- 
 est points, 10 ; general section of, 11 ; violence of former energies 
 in sculpture of, 20 ; Bernese chain of, seen from the Simplon, 
 158 ; sections of given by Studer examined, 225, 226. 
 
 ANATOMY, study of, hurtful to the finest art-perceptions, 8 ; of min- 
 erals, distinct from their history, 178. 
 
 AMETHYST, 109 ; and Bee HYACINTH. 
 
 ANGELO, Monte St., near Naples, 33. 
 
 ANGELS, and fiends, contention of, for souls of children, 204. 
 
 ANGER, and vanity, depressing influence of, on vital energies, 1, 2. 
 
 ARGENT, the Heraldic metal, meaning of, 109. 
 
 ARRANGEMENT, permanence of, how necessary in Museums, 131. 
 
 ARTIST, distinction between, and man of science, 25 ; how to make 
 one, 94. 
 
 ATHENA, her eyes of the colour of sunset sky, 108. 
 
 BANDED STRUCTURE, in rocks, 143. 
 
 BAPTISM, chimes in rejoicing for, at Maglans, 68. 
 
 BDELLIUM, meaning of the word, 90. 
 
 BELL- ALP, hotel lately built on, its relation to ancient hospice of 
 
 Simplon, 159. 
 
 BELLS, sweetness of their sound among mountains, 68. 
 BEAUTY, more at hand than can ever be seen, 85. 
 BENEDICT, St. , laments decline of his order, 156. 
 
248 INDEX. 
 
 BERNARD, St., labours of, 106 ; sermons of, 114 ; his coming to help 
 
 Dante, 157. 
 
 BERNE, town of, scenery in tys canton, 10. 
 BIONNASSAY, aiguille of, its beauty, 21. In the 24th line of that page, 
 
 for 'buttresses,' read ' buttress.' 
 BLUE, how represented in Heraldry, 106. 
 BISCHOF, GUSTAV, facts of mineral formation collected by, as yet 
 
 insufficient, 136. 
 
 BOWERBANK, Mr., exhaustive examination of flint fossils by, 137. 
 BRECCIA, (but for ' breccia,' in these pages, read ' conglomerate ') of 
 
 the outmost Bernese Alps, 14, 15 
 BRIENTZ, lake and valley of, 12. 
 BRUNIG, pass of, 12. 
 
 , Mr. J., drawing in Venice by, 117. 
 
 CARBUNCLE, meaning of the stone in Heraldry, 109. 
 CHALCEDONY, formation of, 133 ; general account of, 173. 
 CHALK, formation of, in the Alps, 11. 
 
 CHAMOUNI, valley of, its relation to the valley-system of the Alps, 12. 
 CHANNELS of rivers, formation of, 61, 193 ; and compare with p. 61, 
 
 Mr. Clifton Ward's account of the denudation of the Lake dis- 
 
 trict, Geological Magazine, vol. vii., p. 16. 
 CHEDE, lake of, its destruction, 33. 
 CLEAVAGE, general discussion of subject opens, 225 ; definition of the 
 
 several kinds of, 238. 
 CLIFFS of the Bay of Uri, 72. 
 CLIFTON WARD, Rev. Mr., justice of his observations on glaciation 
 
 of Lake district, 35 ; examination of agate structure by, 137 ; 
 
 continued, 177, 209 ; completed, 214 ; note on cleavage by, 227. 
 CLUSE, valley of, in Savoy, described, 69. 
 COLOUR, perception of, its relation to health and temper, 101, 116 ; 
 
 divisions and order of, 104 ; Heraldic, antiquity of, 105. 
 COMO, lake and valley of, 13. 
 CONGLOMERATE of the Alps, 15 ; and in the 25th line of that page, for 
 
 ' breccia,' read ' conglomerate.' 
 CONISTON, rocks and lake of, 193. 
 CONTORTION OF STRATA, 15, 18 ; observations on by Mr. Henry Wil- 
 
 lett, 147 ; assumptions respecting the "Plissement de la croute 
 
 terrestre," by M. Viollet-le-Duc, 155 ; general question of, 197 
 
 199; practical experiments in imitation of, 201, 228. Compare 
 
 Saussure, Voyages, 35, 1801, 1802. 
 
INDEX. 49 
 
 CONTROVERSY, fatal consequences of, 1. 
 
 CRYSTAL, Scriptural references to, 91 ; construction of, 97. 
 
 CRYSTALLIZATION, mystery of, 97 ; terms of its description, 177. 
 
 Compare ' Ethics of the Dust/ passim ; but especially chap. iii. 
 CURVE of ice- velocities, 61. 
 
 DANTE, use of, the Divina Commedia in mental purification, 156. 
 
 DEBATE, mischievousness of, to young people, 85. 
 
 DEFILES, transverse, of Alps, 12. 
 
 DENUDATION, first opening of discussion upon, 184 ; obscurity of the 
 geological expression, 186 ; appparent violence of its indiscrimi- 
 nate action, 197. See above, CHANNELS ; and compare ' Modern 
 Painters,' vol. iv., p. 155. 
 
 DESIGN of ornament, how obtainable, 119. 
 
 'DEUCALION ' and ' Proserpina,' reasons for choice of these names for 
 the author's final works, 4. 
 
 DEVIL, influence of the, in modern education, 205. 
 
 DEW, Arabian delight in, 90. 
 
 DIAMOND, its meaning in Heraldry, 110 ; story of diamond necklace, 
 moral of, 118. 
 
 DILATATION, theory of, in glaciers, its absurdity, 163 ; the bed of the 
 Mer de Glace, considered as a thermometer tube, 164. 
 
 DOVER, cliffs of, operations which would be needful to construct 
 Alps with them, 21 ; imagined results of their softness, 197. 
 
 EDINBURGH CASTLE, geology of its rock, 29. 
 
 EMERALD, meaning of, in Heraldry, 108. 
 
 ENGLISH, how to write it best, 201. 
 
 EROSION, how far the idea of it is exaggerated, 34. 
 
 ESDRAS, second book of, curious verse in its 5th chapter, probable 
 
 interpretation of, 5. 
 
 ESSENCE (real being) of things, is in what they can do and suffer, 87. 
 'EVENINGS AT HOME,' quoted, 23. 
 EXCESS in quantity, harm of, in Museum collections for educational 
 
 purposes, 130. 
 
 EXPANSION. See DILATATION. 
 EYES, their use, a nobler art than that of using microscopes, 23 ; colour 
 
 of Athena's, 108. 
 
 TACTS, how few, generally trustworthy, yet ascertained respecting 
 mineral formation, 134. 
 
250 INDEX. 
 
 FARADAY, Professor, discovery of regelation by, 38. 
 
 FISSURES, in chalk containing flints, and traversing the flints, de- 
 scribed by Mr. Henry Willett, 147, 149. 
 
 FLINT, essential characters of, 87 ; account of, carefully instituted by 
 Mr. H. Willett, 135 ; no one knows yet how secreted, 137 ; dis- 
 placed veins of, 145, 147. 
 
 FORBES, Professor James, of Edinburgh, discovers the law of glacier 
 motion, 47 ; his survey of the Mer de Glace, 79 ; general notices 
 of, 37, 76 ; the Author's meeting with, 152. 
 
 FLOWING, difficulty of defining the word, 50. 
 
 FLUIDS, the laws of their motion not yet known, 83. 
 
 FRACTURES of flint, difficulties in explaining, 147 149. 
 
 GEOLOGY, the Author's early attachment to, 3 ; not needful to artists, 
 but rather injurious, 8 ; modern errors in developing, 71. 
 
 GLACIERS, are fluent bodies, 36 ; do not cut their beds deeper, but fill 
 them up, 37, 63 ; original deposition of, 39 ; summary of laws of 
 motion in, 48 ; rate of motion in, how little conceivable in slow- 
 ness, 49 ; drainage of higher valleys by, 49 ; rising of their sur- 
 face in winter, how accounted for, 82 ; false theories respecting, 
 Illustrated, 162 164. Compare also * Fors Clavigera,' Letters 
 XXXIV., pp. 175181, and XXXV., p. 200. 
 
 GOLD, special mechanical qualities of, 74 ; need for instruction in its 
 use, 95 ; mystery of its origin, 96 ; nomenclature of its forms, 128. 
 
 GONDO, defile of, in the Simplon pass, 12. 
 
 GOOD AND EVIL in spiritual natures, how discernible, 25, 205. 
 
 GREEK-ENGLISH words, barbarism of, 202. 
 
 GREEN, how represented in Heraldry, 108. 
 
 GREY, meaning of, in Heraldry, 110. 
 
 GULA, mediaeval use of the word, 114. 
 
 GULES, meaning of the colour so called, in Heraldry, 112. 
 
 HONEY, use of, in experiments on glacier motion, 81, 199. 
 HYACINTH, the precious stone so called, meaning of, in Heraldry, 109. 
 HERALDRY, nobleness of, as a language, 115 ; order of colours in, 105 ; 
 
 of the sky, 121. 
 HYALITE, transition of, into chalcedony, 171 174. 
 
 ICE, (of glaciers) will stretch, 56 ; is both plastic and viscous, 75. See 
 
 GLACIER. 
 INTERLACHEN, village of, stands on the soil deposited by the stream 
 
 from Lauterbrunnen, 21 ; duty of geologists at, 237. 
 
INDEX. 23 
 
 IRIS OF THE EARTH, 84 ; the Messenger, 104. 
 IMPS, not to be bottled by modern chemists, 204. 
 IACINTH. See HYACINTH. 
 
 JASPER, Heraldic meaning of, 107. 
 
 JEWELS, holiness of, 95, 101 ; delighted in by religious painters, 119 ; 
 
 duty of distributing, 119. 
 
 JONES, Mr. Rupert, summary of mineralogical work by, 137. 
 JUDD, Mr. J. W., notice of geology of Edinburgh by, 29. 
 JUNGFRAU, view of , from Castle of Manfred, 287. 
 JURA mountains, view of the Alps from, 10 ; section of, in relation to 
 
 Alps, 11, 235 ; limestone formation of, 14. 
 
 KENDAL, town of, scenery near, 179, 180. 
 KINNOULL, hill of, near Perth, agates in, 98. 
 KNIGHTHOOD, Christian, its faithfulness to Peace, 101. 
 KNOTS of siliceous rock, nature of, 138. 
 
 KNOWLEDGE, how shortened by impatience, and blighted by debate, 
 85. 
 
 LAKES, level of, among Alps, 13 ; evacuation of, 192 ; English district 
 
 of, section through, 224. 
 LANDSCAPE, the study of, little recommended by the Author at 
 
 Oxford, 7. 
 LANGUAGE, scientific, how to be mended, 202 ; dependence of, for its 
 
 beauty, on moral powers, 115. 
 LAUTERBRUNNEN, valley of, 21, 237. 
 LAVA, definition of, 167 ; depth of, 168. 
 LENTICULAR CURIOSITY, vileness of, 24. 
 LESLIE, Mr. Stephen, reference to unadvised statements by, respecting 
 
 the achievements of Alpine Club, 9. 
 
 LIMESTONE, Jura and Mountain, general notes on, 14, 235, 236. 
 LUCERNE, lake of, reason of its cruciform plan, 12. 
 LUNGREN, lake of, its unusual elevation, 13. 
 LYELL, Sir Charles, final result of his work, 27, 31. 
 
 MAGGIORE, lake and valley of, 13. 
 
 MAGLANS, village of, in Savoy, scenery near, 69. 
 
 MALLESON, the Rev. F. A., discovers rare form of Coniston slate, 195. 
 
 MANNA, (food of the Israelites,) reasons for its resemblance to crystal, 
 
 90. 
 MENTAL PERCEPTION, how dependent on moral character, 116. 
 
252 INDEX. 
 
 MENTAL- WORK, history of, proposal for its illustration, 86. 
 
 MICROSCOPE, mistaken use of the, opposed to use of eyes, 23. 
 
 MINERALOGY, principles of arrangement in, adapted to popular intel- 
 ligence, 124 ; present state of the science, 134. 
 
 MODERNISM, the degradation of England by it, 116. 
 
 'MODERN PAINTERS,' (the Author's book, so called,) contained the 
 first truthful delineations of the Alps, 154 ; the Author's designs 
 for its republication, 4, 8 ; mistake in it, caused by thinking in- 
 stead of observing, 41. 
 
 MOTION, proportionate, how to study, 54 ; rate of, in glaciers, 47. 
 
 MOUNTAINS, how to see, and whence, 9. 
 
 MUSEUMS, arrangement of, general principles respecting, 130 ; special 
 plan of that at Sheffield, 86, 123. 
 
 MUSCULAR ENERGY, not an all-sufficient source of happiness, or cri- 
 terion of taste, 9. 
 
 NATIONS, lower types of, without language or conscience, 116. 
 NIAGARA, misleading observations upon, by the school of Sir Charles 
 
 Lyell, 31. 
 
 NOISES in modern travelling, 67. 
 NOVELTY the worst enemy of knowledge, 84. 
 NUTS of silica, and almonds, why so called, 138. 
 
 ONYX, importance of, in the history of the Jews, 92, 93; general ac- 
 count of, 93, 100. 
 OR, the Heraldic metal, meaning of, 105. 
 
 PARADISE, treasures of its first river, 91. 
 
 PASSION, evil effects of, on bodily health, 1. The reader would do 
 
 well to study on this subject, with extreme care, the introductory 
 
 clauses of Sir Henry Thompson's paper on Food, in the 28th 
 
 number of the ' Nineteenth Century.' 
 PASTE, experiments in, on compression of strata, 197. 
 PEARLS, of great and little price, relative estimate of by English 
 
 ladies, 119; Heraldic meaning of, 110. 
 PEBBLES, Scotch, nature of, unknown, 72. See AGATE. 
 PERIODS, the three great, of the Earth's construction, 27. 
 PHILLIPS, Professor, of Oxford, 72; section of Lake district by, 224. 
 PLAIN of Switzerland, north of the Alps, its structure, 11. 
 PLANS, the Author's, of future work, 2. (I observe many readers have 
 
 passed this sentence without recognizing its irony.) 
 
INDEX. %06 
 
 PLANTAGENET, Geoffrey, shield of, 110. 
 
 PLASTICITY, the term defined, 74. 
 
 POOLS, how kept deep in streams, dubitable, 187. 
 
 POVERTY, how to be honourably mitigated, 131. 
 
 PRESTWICH, Professor, of Oxford, 72. 
 
 PRIORITY in discovery, never cared for by the Author, 3. 
 
 PROGRESS, certainty of, to be secured in science only by modesty, 
 133. 
 
 PROTEUS, the seal-herdsman, 113. 
 
 PURPLE, modern errors respecting the colour, 114. Compare HYA- 
 CINTH. 
 
 PURPURE, the Heraldic colour, meaning of, 109. 
 
 RAM'S SKINS, for covering of Jewish Tabernacle, 114. 
 RED, how represented in Heraldry, 106. 
 
 REGELATION, theory of, as causing the motion of glaciers, its ab- 
 surdity, 164. 
 
 RENDU, Bishop of Amiens, his keenness of sense, 45. 
 RHINE, upper valley of, 13. 
 RHONE, upper valley of, 13. 
 ROCKS, wet and dry formation of, 135. 
 ROOD, Professor, Author receives assistance from, 83. 
 ROSA, Monte, the chain of Alps to the north of it, 151. 
 ROSE, the origin of the Persian word for red, 106. 
 ROSSBERG, fall of, how illustrating its form, 15. 
 
 SABLE, the Heraldic colour, meaning of, 110. 
 
 SCARLET, the Heraldic colour, meaning of, 107. 
 
 SCIENCE, modern, duties of, 26, 180; modern vileness and falseness 
 
 of, 204; true, how beginning and ending, 208. (In that page, 
 
 line 13, for ' science,' read ' morals.') 
 SCIENTIFIC PERSONS, how different from artists, 25. 
 SEAL-SKINS, use of, in the Jewish Tabernacle, 113. 
 SELFISHNESS, the Author's, 171. 
 SENSE, in morals, evil of substituting analysis for, 25. 
 SENSES, the meaning of being in or out of them, 25. 
 SENSIBILITY, few persons have any worth appealing to, 8. 
 SENTIS, Hoche, of Appenzell, structure of, 11, 16. 
 SILICA in lavas, 167; varieties of, defined, 169. 
 SINAI, desert of, coldness of occasional climate in, 90. 
 SIMPLON, village of, 150; Hospice of, 160. 
 
254 INDEX. 
 
 SLATE, cleavage of, generally discussed, 225. Compare 'Modern 
 
 Painters,' Part v., chapters viii. x. 
 SLOTH, (the nocturnal animal^ misery of, 205. 
 SNOW, Alpine, structure of, 41, 45, 47. 
 SORBY, Mr., value of his work, 136. 
 SOVEREIGN, (the coin,) imagery on, 88. * 
 SQUIRREL, beauty of, and relation to man, 207. 
 STALAGMITE, incrustation of, 134. 
 STANDING of aiguilles, method of, to be learned, 21. 
 STOCKHORN, of Thun, structure of, 11. 
 STONES, loose in the Park, one made use of, 87; precious, their real 
 
 meaning, 118. 
 STREAMS, action of, 187. See CHANNELS ; and compare ' Modern 
 
 Painters,' vol. x., pp. 91, 95. 
 
 STUDER, Professor, reference to his work on the Alps, 17, 224. 
 SUN, Heraldic type of Justice, 105, 106. 
 
 TABERNACLE, the Jewish fur-coverings of, 113 ; the spiritual, of God, 
 in man, 120. 
 
 TEMERAIRE, the fighting, at Trafalgar, 104. 
 
 TENNY, the Heraldic colour, meaning of, 107. 
 
 THEORY, mischief of, in scientific study, 134 ; the work of ' Deuca- 
 lion' exclusive of it, 21. 
 
 THINKING, not to be trusted, when seeing is possible, 42. 
 
 THOUGHTS, worth having, come to us ; we cannot come at tJiem, 67. 
 
 THUN, lake and vale of, 12 ; passage of the lake by modern tourists, 
 18 ; old-fashioned manners of its navigation, 19. 
 
 TIME, respect clue to, in forming collections of objects for study, 181. 
 
 TOPAZ, Heraldic meaning of, 105. 
 
 TORRENTS, action of; in forming their beds, debated, 81. 
 
 TOWN LIFE, misery of, 208. 
 
 TRUTH, ultimate and mediate, differing character of, 111. 
 
 TURNER, J. M. W., Alpine drawings by, 9. 
 
 TYLOR, Mr. Alfred, exhaustive analysis of hill curves by, 239. 
 
 TYNDALL, Professor, experiments by, 42 ; various reference to his 
 works, 53, 58, 80, 160, 226, 233. 
 
 TYRRWHITT, the Rev. St. John, sketches in Arabia by, 90. 
 
 VALLEYS, lateral and transverse, of Alps, 12 ; names descriptive of, 
 
 in England how various, 180. 
 VALTELLINE, relation of, to Alps, 13. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 VANITY of prematurely systematic science, 123. 
 
 VERT, the Heraldic colour, meaning of, 108. 
 
 VIA MALA, defile of, 12, 20. 
 
 VIOLLET-LE-DUC, unwary geology by, 154. 
 
 VISCOSITY, definition of, 55, 74 ; first experiments on viscous motion 
 
 of viscous fluids by Professor Forbes, 52. 
 VOLCANOS, our personal interest in the phenomena of, in this world, 
 
 aos. 
 
 WOMAN, supremely inexplicable, 99. 
 
 WILLETT, Mr. Henry, investigations of flint undertaken by, 135 ; pro- 
 ceeded with, 141. 
 
 WAVES of glacier ice, contours of, in melting, 165. 
 
 WOOD, the Rev. Mr., method of his teaching, 206; and compare 
 1 Fors Clavigera,' Letter LI. 
 
 WOODWARD, Mr. Henry, experiment by, on contorted strata, 17. 
 
 WOODS, free growth of, in Savoy, 70. 
 
 WEATHERING of Coniston slate, 195. 
 
 YELLOW, how represented in Heraldry, 105. 
 YEWDALE, near Coniston, scenery of, 184, 191, 194. 
 YEWDALE CRAG, structure of, 195 ; a better subject of study thai 
 crags in the moon, 203. 
 
AN INITIAL PINE OP 25 CENTS 
 
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