136 In Touch with Nature. 



giddy heights, should have passed with but a 

 glance. There was such suggestiveness in each 

 overhanging shelf and gloomy crevice, indelible 

 footprints of Time, the day might well have been 

 spent in contemplation at any point. There was 

 food for thought in abundance, but, alas ! there 

 was food also in various hampers, and the day was 

 devoted to a picnic in its broadest sense. 



Let us return to Stormonth : he says, Pick, to 

 eat by morsels ; Nick, the former familiar name of 

 the tankard for liquor. Strictly, then, we were to 

 Pic, and the nicking was to be omitted. At least, 

 I have nothing to say of the latter. The rocks 

 whereon we halted for the feast afforded ample 

 room not only to recline while eating, but to 

 dance and make merry should one be inclined, 

 while the more staid and geologically inclined 

 found the flat layers of slaty rock an absorbing 

 object-lesson. There was but a mere rivulet trick- 

 ling over one edge of the exposure at the time, 

 but every evidence that at no distant day, geologi- 

 cally speaking, a torrent had rushed through the 

 glen and leaped with majestic force over the brink 

 of a precipice hard by. How much more readily 



