SCENERY OF EDINBURGH 195 



for us broadened and brightened by that play of the 

 imagination which science can so vividly excite and 

 prolong. 



Admirable illustrations of this modern interpretation 

 of scenery are supplied by the district wherein we are 

 now assembled. On every side of us rise the most 

 convincing proofs of the reality and potency of that 

 ceaseless sculpture by which the elements of landscape 

 have been carved into their present shapes. Turn 

 where we may, our eyes rest on hills, that project 

 above the lowland, not because they have been up- 

 heaved into these positions, but because their stubborn 

 materials have enabled them better to withstand the 

 degradation which has worn down the softer strata 

 into the plains around them. Inch by inch the 

 surface of the land has been lowered, and each hard 

 rock successively laid bare has communicated its own 

 characteristics of form and colour to the scenery. 



If, standing on the Castle Rock, the central and 

 oldest site in Edinburgh, we allow the bodily eye to 

 wander over the fair landscape, and the mental vision 

 to range through the long vista of earlier landscapes 

 which science here reveals to us, what a strange series 

 of pictures passes before our gaze! The busy streets 

 of to-day seem to fade away into the mingled copse- 

 wood and forest of prehistoric time. Lakes that have 

 long since vanished gleam through the woodlands, 

 and a rude canoe pushing from the shore startles the 

 red deer that had come to drink. While we look, 

 the picture changes to a polar scene, with bushes of 

 stunted Arctic willow and birch, among which herds 

 of reindeer browse and the huge mammoth makes his 



