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point, reverentially, to multitudinous " Kelpie rings" on the surface of the rock. He 

 will tell you, how once on a time, a naughty woman (the chroniclers declare it was 

 Satan in the shape of a woman), wishing to lead St. Anthony astray, on a certain dark 

 night stole a favourite mare and colt of his, expecting he would follow in pursuit. 

 The good Saint, however, was too old a bird to be caught with such chaff. He wisely 

 kept within doors, and simply prayed that the mare, the foal, and the woman (who 

 foolishly wore pattens), might leave clear footprints on the rock, by which his servants 

 might track them in the morning. It was done ; and there they are to this day as 

 distinct and fresh as ever I 



Meanwhile, sub rosa, what says the geologist about them ? He has the credit of 

 being able to believe very strange and abnormal things, when they happen to " fall in" 

 with his philosophy ; but that is confessedly too much for him. Whatever his opinion of 

 human nature in general, he cannot be persuaded there were ever enough of naughty 

 women in the world to make all such marks with which he is familiar. In the escarp- 

 ment of the Skyrrid, and all along the precipices of the Daren and the Holy Mountain, 

 and the dependent ranges stretching up through the Black Mountains into Montgomery- 

 shire, he sees these depressions by tens of thousands. Wherever, in fact, a rock of 

 such varied composition as the Cornstone is exposed to atmospheric agencies, the result 

 must be a wearing away of all blotches or concretions, which are softer than the 

 enclosing rock. Some one compares them to pits left on the fair face of Nature, by an 

 attack of smallpox, on a large scale. 



Next to the cornstone, comes the great conglomerate which fills up by far the 

 greater part of our field of vision. It consists in the main of a chocolate brown, coarse- 

 grained sandstone, deposited in a troubled sea; and is beautifully exposed at not a 

 few points along the old coach road from Hereford to Brecon. For its type in this 

 district, let those who have passed through it, recall, and those who have it yet to come, 

 look out, for the splendid sections along the favoiuite honey-moon excursion down the 

 Wye from Ross to Monmouth. Nowhere else can It be studied to such advantage, 

 excepting perhaps on the many-headed cloud-capped sierras of the glorious old 

 Beacons of Brecon and Carmarthenshire ! In the last, we have, according to Murchison, 

 a mass of red rocks not less than 9000 feet thick, though the mountain itself is only 2800 

 feet above the sea ! The Blorenge is another capital study, where the old red plunges 

 suddenly under the carboniferous limestone. 



I fear there is no sjsot of any very special interest in the Conglomerate within reach 

 this morning. The nearest must be five or six miles off, N.E. by E., within a few 

 hundred feet of Maesyberllan chapel. It is an old copper mine, described at some 

 length by Sir Roderick Murchison. The vein stuff thrown out from the trial shafts 

 (the works having been long ago abandoned) contains much crystalised carbonate of lime, 

 chiefly of the primary rhomb, with sulphurets of copper and iron, partially diffused 

 through a mass, the remainder of which is made up of scales of green earth and 

 crystalised blende, known by miners under the euphonious name of " Black Jack." 

 The rock sections in the neighbourhood are nothing particular to boast of, but the 

 scenery around will amply repay a good long walk. A little beyond is the celebrated 

 Brecon Anticlinal. He who could go so near that, and yet be able to resist the tempta- 

 tion of a visit, would, in verity, be a Goth of the first water ! I would not, for a trifle, 

 " put him on my list of friends !" But before leaving this part of my subject there are 

 two remarks I should like to make, which perhaps the company wUl be good enough 

 to carry with them in their rambles for the next hour. They relate to the chemistry of 

 the system, and furnish a key to the explanation of not a few of its most colnmon 

 superficial phenomena. 



