328 ON THE ANCIENT GRAUWACKE 
Dudley, and the Upper Ludlow and Armistry deposits of 
Sedgley and its neighborhood; and I was now desirous to de- 
cipher, under his guidance, the characters of those added pages 
to the geologic history of our country, from which his paper 
had led me to expect so much. And, availing myself of a 
pause in my professional labors, towards the close of last May, 
when the two General Assemblies were sitting, and when all 
our abler clergy were speaking articles in the form of speeches, 
and so rendering it unnecessary that I should write any, I set 
out, in the middle of a tract of very delightful weather, for 
Girvan. 
PART SECOND — DESCRIPTIVE. 
As the traveller passes downward along the valley of the Gir- 
van, the scenery, which had been. hitherto of a pleasing but 
purely Lowland character, begins to assume somewhat bolder 
features. ‘The hills on either side heighten into heath-covered 
mountain ranges ; and we remember that Scotland has its south- 
ern as certainly as its northern Highlands. “The mountain- 
ous country in the south-western borders of Scotland,” says 
Sir Walter Scott, in one of his novels, “is called Wieland, 
though totally different from the much more mountainous and 
more extensive district of the north, usually accented Highland.” 
The bottom of the valley, however, which these hills overlook, 
is of a soft and pastoral character, with perhaps more of wood 
than is common in a Lowland valley, but laid out into rich fields 
that recline along the lower slopes, and occupied by a quiet 
stream,—the Girvan. Within a few miles of where it opens 
into the sea, we see on its northern side, high over field and 
meadow, a steep prominent range of gray crags, that at once 
remind us of those pale-tinted mural rocks of Silurian Lime- 
stone which form so striking a feature in the scenery of Dudley 
