AS RELATED TO RELIGION. 149 



and their noses lengthened and hardened into beaks, 

 so that it should be more convenient for them to fly 

 away and light on trees than to return to their na- 

 tive element. But in the hands of the able natu- 

 ralists Oken and Lamark, it assumed a more scien- 

 tific and more dangerous form. But their argu- 

 ments, like boomerangs thrown by unskillful hands, 

 have returned against themselves. The last blow 

 was given by the stone-mason of Scotland. He 

 thus describes the discovery that was to him the 

 grand weapon of defence, and of carrying the war 

 into the enemy's camp. 



" The day was far spent when I reached Strom- 

 ness ; but as I had a fine, bright evening before me, 

 longer, by some three or four degrees of north lati- 

 tude, than the midsummer evenings of the south of 

 Scotland, I set out, hammer in hand, to examine the 

 junction of the granite and the Great Conglomerate, 

 where it has been laid bare by the sea along the 

 low promontory which forms the western boundary 

 of the harbor I traced the formation up- 

 ward, this evening, along the edges of the upturned 



strata, from where the Great Conglomerate leans 



13* 



