A Study in Geology 273 
is more hurtful to ultimate success than undue hurry. So we went 
first to a crag some hundred yards or more from the face of the 
cliff, whence with field-glasses and subsequently with a telescope, 
we carefully examined the face of it, so as to grasp its salient 
features as well as its weakest points. 
It required but a very cursory glance to note that a considerable 
colony of Griffon Vultures were in possession of the caverns and 
fissures on the face of the cliff, several of the great birds were 
soaring around in front of it as can be seen in the accompanying 
picture. A pair of Egyptian Vultures, with snowy white plumage 
and black-tipped wings, sailed round the lower crags where they 
were nesting, whilst the warning croak of Ravens showed that 
they also had an establishment somewhere in the neighbourhood. 
No Eagles were however to be seen and at this I was not surprised, 
as Eagles particularly dislike any cliff affected by their big relations, 
the Griffon Vultures. Possibly they are not proud of the relation- 
ship and so avoid them! 
The cliff was of a formation very commonly seen in south-west 
Andalucia and consisted of enormous slabs (originally beds) of 
sandstone tilted up at a considerable angle, about seventy degrees 
in this case. Ages of denudation had worn away the overlying soil 
and loosened the strata from the front and these now formed a steep 
slope or talus below, densely overgrown with scrub, amid which huge 
rocks lay scattered. The back of the cliff was likewise denuded 
for some 30 to 50 ft., the great slabs of solid rock slanting backwards 
over it and forming in places a sort of pent-roof. The rocky ground 
here was held up by the natural revetment formed by the mass of 
the cliff in front of it and extended for some 20 yards or more to 
the foot of a second cliff, parallel with and of like formation to the 
first, only on a reduced scale. It is these series of parallel masses 
of rock, upturned by some great earth movement that gives the 
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