106 NOTES FROM THE ROCKS. ^ 



expect to meet with kindred associates; nor did we, who indulged in these 

 habits from year to year, ever meet with any who would countenance our 

 pursuits. To some minds of a more sociable disposition, this might have been 

 a serious obstacle to the accomplishment of such a design as we attempted 

 to execute; but we must own, (and that without charging ourselves with being 

 non-gregarian,-) that our happiest hours, while studying Nature, have been 

 spent alone. Yet not so, 



"To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell:" 

 "This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold 

 Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled." 



And there are many students who would live content with the signs of life 

 around them there; — the lowly Actinia in the pools, contrasting in its yet 

 brighter hues with the painted corallines spreading their branches around it; 

 the gliding Gobies, and the almost motionless Cottus, basking on the sand 

 streaks here and there visible; and various Blennies peeping from under the 

 broad-leaved Fuci, which protect them from their foes. Birds on every side 

 make known their presence; the cries of the Totani and Curlews, the laughing 

 of the Gulls overhead, and the wailing of the Lapwing and the Plover, are 

 their best known sounds; and even should these be wanting, there is the 

 broad-breasted ocean before them; 



"And thou majestic main, 

 A secret world of wonders in thyself." 



Before oflfering to our readers the Notes on our favourite pursuits, whieh 

 we had accumulated in several Journals, it was our intention to describe the 

 geological features of the spot which gave them birth; but this we could not 

 have so successfully accomplished as has been already done by our friend, 

 Mr. W. Ferguson, whose monography we cordially recommend for its correct- 

 ness and excellence. Indeed, to speak the truth, our knowledge of geological 

 science was, in the locality we speak of, almost entirely confined to those 

 points which affected our convenience. We knew of the existence of the flat 

 shelves of fossil-covered Sandstone, with their deep intersecting pools; of the 

 upright ledges of ^old Bed,' and the porphyritic dyke of Basaltic Greenstone; 

 and of the large boulders deposited on the flats, which are visible at a mile's 

 distance. 



They afforded us excellent shelter when out shooting wild- fowl, and we 

 gratefully acknowledge their services as screens, passing by all speculation 

 about their origin. Often have we crouched under covert of their Hsroad bare 

 backs,' and arrested the course of the busy Tringje, and the Plovers as they 

 skimmed past, while now and then some unlucky 'whaup' would increase our 'head 

 of game.' And this, we are sorry to confess, is all we could have said in 

 their favour; for, though we had set foot on almost every stone in the district, 

 we could, previous to our last visit with our friend, have almost been brought 

 to believe that there existed in our old haunts. 



