THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 247 
of perspective which give to the cottage in front more than 
the bulk and altitude of the mountain behind, would assign to 
the present scene of things its thousands of years, but to all 
the extinct periods united merely their few centuries ; while 
with their opponents, the remoter periods stretch out far into 
the bygone eternity, and the present scene seems but a nar- 
row strip running along the foreground. Both classes appeal 
to facts ; and, leaving them to their disputes, I have gone out 
to examine and judge for myself. The better to compare the 
present with the past, I have regarded the existing scene 
merely as a formation — not as superficies, but as depth; 
and have sought to ascertain the extent to which, in different 
localities, and under different circumstances, it has overlaid 
the surface. 
The slopes of an ancient forest incline towards a river that 
flows sluggishly onwards through a deep alluvial plain, once 
an extensive lake. A recent landslip has opened. up one of 
the hanging thickets. Uprooted trees, mingled with bushes, 
lie at the foot of the slope, half buried in broken masses of 
turf; and we see above a section of the soil, from the line of 
vegetation to the bare rock. There is an under belt of clay, 
and an upper belt of gravel, neither of which contains any 
thing organic ; and overtopping the whole we may see a dark- 
colored bar of mould, barely a foot in thickness, studded 
with stumps and interlaced with roots. Mark that narrow 
bar: it is the geological representative of six thousand years, 
A stony bar of similar appearance runs through the strata of 
the Wealden: it, too, has its dingy color, its stumps, and its 
interlacing roots; but it forms only a very inconsiderable 
portion of one of the least considerable of all the formations - 
and yet who shall venture to say that it does not represent a 
period as extended as that represented by the dark bar in the 
