314 The Logan Rock. 



after this sort. " It is with a great degree of pleasure that we 

 are enabled to inform the curious and the lovers of antiquity, 

 that an attempt is at last being made to restore this celebrated 

 stone to its former pinnacle of wonder and surprise. We are 

 aware of there being a diversity of opinion respecting it, but 

 we hope the majority of our readers will be gratified to hear 

 that Lieut. Goldsmith, with a zeal truly characteristic of a 

 British tar in redeeming past errors, and ever anxious to please, 

 commenced his operations on Tuesday last, with about thirty 

 able seamen, by landing the requisite apparatus from boats be- 

 neath the cliff." As this officer is pronounced " ever anxious 

 to please," we must presume that he threw down the rocking- 

 stone to please himself (for we are persuaded that so wanton a 

 piece of mischief pleased no one else), and that he restores it 

 to its " former pinnacle of wonder and surprise," as the Exeter 

 journalist sublimely expresses it, to please the rest of the world. 

 Whether when it regains its " pinnacle of wonder and sur- 

 prise" it will resume its wonderful and surprising custom of 

 rocking, would seem, however, rather problematical ; and we 

 conceive that Lieut. Goldsmith cannot set himself right with 

 the lovers of rocking -stones till he sets the rock once more 

 rocking. — Morning Chron. 



In a very excellent and unpretending little work, entitled 

 " A Guide to the Mount's Bay, and the Land's End," pub- 

 lished by W. Phillips, we find the following account of this 

 celebrated wonder, now, we fear, no more: — " The celebrated 

 Logan-stone is an immense block of granite, weighing above 

 60 tons. The surface in contact with the under rock is of 

 very small extent, and the whole mass is so nicely balanced, 

 that notwithstanding its magnitude, the strength of a single man 

 applied to its under edge, is sufficient to change its centre 

 of gravity, and though at first in a degree scarcely perceptible, 

 yet the repetition of such impulses, at each return of the stone, 

 produces at length a very sensible oscillation. As soon as the 

 astonishment which this phaenomenon excites has, in some 

 measure, subsided, the stranger anxiously inquires how, and 

 whence the stone originated. Was it elevated by human 

 means, or was it produced by the agency of natural causes ? 

 Those who are in the habit of viewing mountain masses with 

 geological eyes will readily discover that the only chisel ever 

 employed has been the tooth of time — the only artists engaged, 

 the elements. Granite usually disintegrates into rhomboidal 

 and tabular masses, which, by the further operation of air and 

 moisture, gradually lose their solid angles, and approach the 

 spheroidal form. De Luc observed in the Giant Mountains 



of 



