CHAP. xni. HISTORY OF A BOULDER. 189 



' fine braw troggin frae the banks o' Dee,' or from the 

 plains of Sweden, in the shape of chalk and flint. 

 There, detached fragments of Morven, and the moun- 

 tains of Sutherland ! Yonder, broken Belemnites from 

 the Hebrides ! There, red sandstone fragments from 

 Dunnet Head or Duncansby ! Shells raked up from 

 the bottom of the ocean ! Lime encrusted with pebbles 

 from sea caves! Boiled corallines and fresh water 

 marl! In fact, a hundred years of scrutiny will not 

 exhaust its wonders. These are the facts, which tell of 

 some great catastrophe in the illusory world's history ! 



" What is that History ? What is the History of even 

 one of its rolled pebbles ?* or of its white or blue stones ? 

 No one can tell. And yet, if we glance at them for a 

 moment, one or two little truths can be learnt : 



" First ; those white or blue stones were once soft, 

 and formed part of a much larger mass. 



" Second; they were detached from their parent beds, 

 and tossed to and fro, and thus became irregularly rounded, 



" Third ; they then enjoyed a period of repose, during 

 which some of them became tinged with oxide of iron. 



* Hugh Miller, referring to Dick's observations among the boulder 

 clay, says "Would that they could write their own histories ! The 

 autobiography of a single boulder, with notes on the various floras 

 which had sprung up around it, and the various classes of birds, beasts, 

 and insects, by which it had been visited, would be worth nine-tenths 

 of all the autobiographies ever published, and a moiety of the remainder 

 to boot." Since the appearance of Hugh Miller's works, Mr. Archibald 

 Geikie, of. the Geological Survey, has, to a certain extent, carried out 

 his views, and published a very interesting book, entitled The Story of 

 a Boulder. London, 1858. 



