352 British Volcanic Rocks. _ [Jduly, 
of the way both of trampling horses and marching men. And if 
he can only be persuaded that there are nooks, nay, whole leagues 
of ground, within his own country which will furnish him with 
ample recreation, both bodily and mental, he may, in the end, be 
brought to believe that, after all, it would not do his island country- 
men a. mortal injury were the Continent closed against them 
periodically, if they could thereby be driven to look a little more 
narrowly at their own land. One who has taken the trouble to 
make himself master of the elements of geological observation 
carries with him an immensely augmented source of enjoyment. 
Even on the ordinary tourist “routes,” he can note by the way 
features which serve at once to heighten and to perpetuate the 
impressions produced by natural scenery. And when he chooses to 
strike away from the beaten track, and to discover for himself new 
wonders in scenery and new facts in science, he enjoys a succession 
of pleasures of which there are, perhaps, few purer or more 
lasting. To such an one, it may not perchance be unseasonable to 
suggest a field of research where the reapers have not been so 
numerous as in some others adjoining, and where, in consequence, 
there still remain a good many sheaves to be gathered—viz. the 
history of our old British voleanoes. Whether he chooses to settle 
down at some pleasant centre for excursions, or to make a leisurely 
tour through some selected parts of the country, he may still be 
able to carry his task with him. He will find this history legibly 
graven on many a hill-side in Wales, in Derbyshire, and the north 
of England. It is told with a strange impressiveness by hundreds 
of hills and valleys in the centre and south of Scotland, and 
throughout the chain of the Inner Hebrides; while it may be 
learned, too, in not a few districts of Ireland, from the clifts of 
Antrim to the coasts of Waterford. 
According to a vague popular belief, most of our more promi- 
nent and rugged hills owe their origin to primeval “ volcanic erup- 
tions.” Thus a serrated ridge, a cluster of craggy heights, a 
narrow gorge, a deep half-enclosed corry or cwm,—these and other 
like features are readily seized upon by the imagination as evidence 
of earthquakes and volcanoes. ‘The fanciful explanations that used 
to be given of them have faded away, only, however, to be replaced 
by others in which the fancy is hardly less rampant. The “ Devil’s 
Punch-Bowls,” and “ Giants’ Basins” are now dimly thought of 
even by schoolboys as so many “ craters;” and the familiar peaks 
and clefts in which the superstition of an older time saw the handi- 
work of witches and warlocks, are now popularly made to tell of 
vast terrestrial convulsions. So far, therefore, the spread of 
scientific knowledge has been able to dispel the old notions ; but it 
has not yet advanced far enough to put the true ideas in their stead. 
In this, as in so many other matters, we seem to be passing through 
