CHAP. xv. A NEW MAP WANTED. 22\ 



sheer up to the root of Morven, in defiance of every inter- 

 vening obstacle. Outbursts of granite are nothing. No ! 

 Their iron-pointed crests (stubborn facts) standing up 

 here and there are only trifles, yet they riddle in rotten 

 holes your pretty pictures ! . . . For on such things men 

 now-a-days found their Deep Philosophy. 



" Seriously, if any junction of Old Red with the 

 granitic rocks be as irregular and complicated as that 

 in Caithness, it will be no easy task to delineate it cor- 

 rectly ; and unless it be correctly done it will be of no 

 value. It would require such an amount of time and 

 patience, such a crossing and re-crossing of the county, 

 as few private individuals could venture on. 



" For my own part, though I grumble at toil as little 

 as any man, I have, so far as regards any serious inten- 

 tion of doing such a thing, given it up. At the same 

 time, as I ramble now and then, I will have an eye to 

 it, and that is all. Let the Government do it; they 

 only can order it to be done properly." 



Then, about the new-fashioned ideas about geology 

 he said : " ' Since the fashions,' to use your own words, 

 ' have not passed away,' how provokingly strange will 

 you deem it, if you and the rest of your scientific 

 brethren settle down at last to the conviction that this 

 earth never saw a creation but ONE. . . . Though diffi- 

 culties and doubts innumerable stand in the way, they 

 may yet be brushed aside like morning mists, and the 

 simple truth shine forth clear and luminous as the sun. 

 . . . See ! says some observer, the dreams of our wise 



men ! They tell us that the dead animals entombed in 

 11 



