342 RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 



to six times every twelvemonth, no one has ever succeeded in 

 walking dry-shod round it. I have seen a strong breeze from 

 the west, prolonged for a few days, prevent its drying, when 

 the Lammas stream was at its point of lowest ebb, by from 

 a foot to eighteen inches, an indication, apparently, that to 

 that height the waters of the Atlantic may be heaped up 

 against our shores by the impulsion of the wind. And the 

 recurrence, during at least the last century, of certain ebbs 

 each season, which, when no disturbing atmospheric pheno- 

 mena interfere with their operation, are sure to lay it dry, de- 

 monstrate, that during that period no change, even the most 

 minute, has taken place on our coasts, in the relative levels 

 of sea and shore. The waves have considerably encroached, 

 during even the last half-century, on the shores immediately 

 opposite ; but it must have been, as the stone shows, simply 

 by the attrition of the waves, and the consequent lowering 

 of the beach, not through any rise in the ocean, or any de- 

 pression of the land. The huge boulder here has been known 

 for ages as the Clack Malloch, or accursed stone, from the 

 circumstance, says tradition, that a boat was once wrecked 

 upon it during a storm, and the boatmen drowned. Though 

 little more than seven feet in height, by about twelve in 

 length, and some eight or nine in breadth, its situation on 

 the extreme line of ebb imparts a peculiar character to the 

 various productions, animal and vegetable, which we find ad- 

 hering to it. They occur in zones, just as on lofty hills the 

 botanist finds his agricultural, moorland, and alpine zones 

 rising in succession as he ascends, the one over the other. 

 At its base, where the tide rarely falls, we find two varieties 

 of Lobularia digitata, dead-man's hand, the orange-coloured 

 and the pale, with a species of sertularia and the character- 

 istic vegetable is the rough-stemmed tangle, or cuvy. In the 

 zone immediately above the lowest, these productions dis- 

 appear : the characteristic animal, if animal it be, is a fiat 



