RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 383 



been the builder, and adverted to the peculiarity of his style 

 of building. " You have given a vertical tilt to your strata," 

 I said : " most men would have preferred the horizontal po- 

 sition. It used to be regarded as one of the standing rules 

 of my old profession, that the 'broad bed of a stone' is the 

 best, and should be always laid ' below.' " " A good rule 

 for the land," replied Mr Bremner, " but no good rule for 

 the sea. The greatest blunders are almost always perpetrated 

 through the misapplication of good rules. On a coast like 

 ours, where boulders of a ton weight are rolled about with 

 every storm like pebbles, these stones, if placed on what a 

 workman would term their best beds, would be scattered along 

 the shore like sea-wrack, by the gales of a single winter. In 

 setting aside the prejudice," continued Mr Bremner, "that 

 what is indisputably the best bed for a stone on dry land is 

 also the best bed in the water on an exposed coast, I reasoned 

 thus : The surf that dashes along the beach in times of tem- 

 pest, and that forms the enemy with which I have to contend, 

 is not simply water, with an onward impetus communicated 

 to it by the wind and tide, and a re-active impetus in the op- 

 posite direction, the effect of the backward rebound, and of 

 its own weight, when raised by these propelling forces above 

 its average level of surface. True, it is all this ; biit it is 

 also something more. As its white breadth of foam indicates, 

 it is a subtile mixture of water and air, with a powerful up- 

 ward action, a consequence of the air struggling to effect its 

 escape ; and this upward action must be taken into account 

 in oui' calculations, as certainly as the other and more gene- 

 rally recognised actions. In striking against a piece of build- 

 ing, this subtile mixture dashes through the interstices into 

 the interior of the masonry, and, filling up all its cavities, 

 has, by its upward action, a tendency to set the work afloat. 

 And the broader the beds of the stones, of course the more 

 extensive are the surfaces which it has to act upon. One of 



