244 EXTERNAL CHARACTERS. 



The animals, the plants, the mud, the broken 

 stones, the water of the springs and rills, and 

 some of the wearing of the rocks, and the forma- 

 tion of little patches of meadow in the turns of 

 the mountain galleys, and larger ones in the val- 

 leys at its base, are all explainable by causes that 

 can perform their action in the present state of 

 the mountain, and at the present elevation. But, 

 though all these were removed, the substantial 

 character of the mountain would be very little 

 altered ; and the taking of them away would, in 

 fact, be nothing but digging and clearing away 

 those ruins which, in the course of ages, have con- 

 cealed and disfigured a little, and but a little, of 

 the mountain itself. 



Even the dells and galleys, to say nothing of 

 the larger valleys, and the basins and hollows of 

 large dimensions, all of them with only a small 

 portion of water in them, and many of them with 

 none, cannot have been formed by water above 

 the sea mark, any more than the ocean can, by 

 its tides and currents, have formed its own bed. 

 Nobody will contend that there is any natural ac- 

 tion at the surface of the earth that can build up 

 solid inorganic matter, whatever there may be to 

 cast it down. But, although the casting down 

 may have a done a good deal (though much less 

 than is supposed), it is just as impossible to ima- 

 gine a surface power capable of scooping out all 

 the hollows, as it is to imagine one capable of 

 elevating all the hills and mountains. 



Let any one take the map or the model, or, bet- 

 ter still, go to the place of any of the considerable 

 rivers in Britain, that have wide valleys, with 

 mountains, or even hills of rock, at the sides ; 



