RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 267 



frequently repeated, nay, as in some of the lines of the Lap- 

 land inscription, may succeed each other, as in the sums L 

 II. III. IIIL or X. XX. XXX, and yet very distinct and 

 definite ideas attach to them all. Still, however, he could 

 not, he says, venture on authoritatively deciding whether the 

 inscription was a work of man or a sport of nature. He 

 stood between his two conclusions, like our Edinburgh anti- 

 quarians between the two fossil Maries of Gueldres; and, 

 richer in eloquence than most of the philosophers his con- 

 temporaries, was quite prepared, in his uncertainty, to give 

 gilded mounting and a purple pall to both. 



" Should it be no other than a sport of nature," he con- 

 cludes, " the reputation which the stone bears in this country 

 deserves that we should have given a description of it. Ifj 

 on the other hand, what is on it be an inscription, though it 

 certainly does not possess the beauty of the sculpture of 

 Greece or Rome, it very possibly has the advantage of being 

 the oldest in the universe. The country in which it is found 

 is inhabited only by a race of men who live like beasts in the 

 forests. We cannot imagine that they can have ever had any 

 memorable event to transmit to posterity, nor, if ever they 

 had had, that they could have invented the means. Nor can 

 it be conceived that this country, with its present aspect, ever 

 possessed more civilized inhabitants. The rigour of the cli- 

 mate and the barrenness of the land have destined it for the 

 retreat of a few miserable wretches, who know no other. It 

 seems, therefore, that the inscription must have been cut at 

 a period when the country was situated in a different climate, 

 and before some one of those great revolutions which, we can- 

 not doubt, have taken place on our globe. The position that 

 the earth's axis holds at present with respect to the ecliptic, 

 occasions Lapland to receive the sun's rays very obliquely : 

 it is therefore condemned to a long winter, adverse to man, 

 as well as to all the product'.ons of nature. No great move- 



