1-55 



aud eels of the present day — not in mud, but in the newly severed 

 sharp angular rocks, both strewn and protruded over the seas they 

 inhabited ? I must own I cannot see why we require, to account for 

 their forms, seas of boiling water, or a high temperature, when everyday 

 experience aud observation, and the admitted state of the medium they 

 frequented, called forth exactly the same requisites for their safety and 

 means of existence. 



Taking up the course of our ramble from the point at which we emeroed 

 from the ravine, and pursuing a by-way for about a mile, you come to a 

 style path, following which you are led to a farm-shed, the name of which 

 I cannot give. In a field adjoining it, you enter on the limestone forma- 

 tion, as it were from the south-east side, which rises in the open field, 

 in a ridgelike form of about ten feet elevation, close and compact in its 

 formation, and fit for burning for agricultural purposes. Here you 

 have a beautiful view of the silurian of Moel Fama range, and see 



The hills, 

 Eock ribb'd and ancient as the sun ; the vales 

 Stretching in pensive quietness between: 

 The venerable woods — rivers that move 

 In majesty, and the complaining brooks 

 That make the meadows green. 

 Passing onward, still continuing the field path, you come to the farm- 

 stead, Pen-y-Graig. Standing on a mound outside the farm-yard, you 

 have, stretched at'your feet, the centre part of the vale of Clwyd, with 

 its silurian background ; a right line drawn from your position, <Mittiug 

 the centre of Moel Fama, continued, would strike the centre of Liver- 

 pool, shewing how the sea of the new red has nearly encircled it. One 

 end of this imaginary line terminates in the midst of the haunts of men 

 toiling in mercantile operations, the other where they are following the 

 more even tenor of their pastoral pursuits. Both teem with life : the 

 centre is dark and silent as eternity ; it stanjls isolated, the image of 

 the past ; yet that lofty point once occupied the lower position of our 

 view, and the day may coine when these terminal points may take a 

 comparatively elevated position, encircled with a desolation and silence 

 as profound and lasting. Immediately under this mound you come 

 upon the base of the limestone, where are worked the quarries of Pen-y- 

 Graig. 



It here again appears in one bold reef-like mass, rising on the face 

 some hundred feet, largely charged with the exuvite of corals, encrinites, 

 and shells. It rests in tubular masses rather than in any apparent 

 order of stratification, and here aud there you see it intersected by 

 Joints or divisional planes, which frequently, more particularly at a 

 distance, give it a terrace-like appearance. The texture varies con- 



