THE LAKE OP STENNIS. 1 1 



to the naturalist, and not without its use to the geological 

 student. 



I know not ho\^ it may be with others ; but the special 

 phenomena connected with Orkney that most decidedly bore 

 fruit in my mind, and to which my thoughts have most fre- 

 quently reverted, were those exhibited in the neighbourhood 

 of Stromness. I would more particularly refer to the charac- 

 teristic fragment of Asterolepis which I detected in its flag- 

 stones, and to the curiously mixed, semi-marine, semi-lacus- 

 trine vegetation of the Loch of Stennis. Both seem to bear 

 very directly on that development hypothesis, — fast spread- 

 ing among an active and ingenious order of minds, both in 

 Briton and America, and which has been long known on 

 the Continent, — that would fain transfer the work of crea- 

 tion from the department of miracle to the province of natu- 

 ral law, and would strike down, in the process of removal, 

 all the old landmarks, ethical and religious. 



