246 RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 



of a more thoroughly ground-down conglomerate than the 

 great conglomerate on which it reposes. The underlying bed 

 is composed of broken fragments of the rocks below, crushed, 

 as if by some imperfect rudimentary process, like that which 

 in a mill merely breaks the grain ; whereas, in the bed above, 

 a portion of the previously-crushed materials seems to have 

 been subjected to some further attritive process, like that 

 through which, in the mill, the broken grain is ground down 

 into meal or flour. 



As I passed onwards, I saw, amid a heap of drift-weed 

 stranded high on the beach by the previous tide, a defunct 

 father-lasher, with the two defensive spines which project 

 from its opercles stuck fast into little cubes of cork, that had 

 floated its head above water, as the tyro-swimmer floats him- 

 self upon bladders ; and my previous acquaintance with the 

 habits of a fishing village enabled me at once to determine 

 why and how it had perished. Though almost never used 

 as food on the eastern coast of Scotland, it had been inconsi- 

 derate enough to take the fisherman's bait, as if it had been 

 worthy of being eaten ; and he had avenged himself for the 

 trouble it had cost him, by mounting it on cork, and sending 

 it off, to wander between wind and water, like the Flying 

 Dutchman, until it died. Was there ever on earth a crea- 

 ture save man that could have played a fellow-mortal a trick 

 at once so ingeniously and gratuitously cruel ? Or what 

 would be the proper inference, were I to find one of the 

 many-thorned ichthyolites of the Lower Old Bed Sandstone 

 with the spines of its pectorals similarly fixed on cubes 

 of lignite ? that there had existed in these early ages not 

 merely physical death, but also moral evil ; and that the being 

 who perpetrated the evil could not only inflict it simply for 

 the sake of the pleasure he found in it, and without prospect 

 of advantage to himself, but also by so adroitly reversing, 

 fiend-like, the purposes of the benevolent Designer, that the 



