384 RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 



these flat flags, ten feet by four, and a foot in thickness, would 

 present to this upheaving force, if placed on end, a superficies 

 of but four square feet ; whereas, if placed on its broader 

 base, it would present to it a superficies of forty square feet. 

 Obviously, then, with regard to this aerial upheaving force, 

 that acts upon the masonry in a direction in which no pre- 

 cautions are usually adopted to bind it fast, for the exist- 

 ence of the force itself is not taken into account, the greater 

 bed of the stone must be just ten times over a worse bed 

 than its lesser one ; and on a tempestuous foam-encircled 

 coast such as ours, this aerial upheaving force is in reality, 

 though the builder may not know it, one of the most formid- 

 able forces with which he has to deal. And so, on these 

 principles, I ventured to set my stones on end, on what was 

 deemed their worst, not their best beds, wedging them all 

 fast together, like staves in an anker ; and there, to the scan- 

 dal of all the old rules, are they fast wedged still, firm as 

 a rock." It was no ordinary man that could have originated 

 such reasonings on such a subject, or that could have thrown 

 himself so boldly, and to such practical effect, on the conclu- 

 sions to which they led. 



Mr Bremner adverted, in the course of our conversation, 

 to a singular appearance among the rocks a little to the east 

 and south of the town of Wick, that had not, he said, attracted 

 the notice it deserved. The solid rock had been fractured by 

 some tremendous blow, dealt to it externally at a considerable 

 height over the sea-level, and its detached masses scattered 

 about like the stones of an ill-built harbour broken up by a 

 storm. The force, whatever its nature, had been enormously 

 great. Blocks of some thirty or forty tons weight had been 

 torn from out the solid strata, and piled up in ruinous heaps, 

 as if the compact precipice had been a piece of loose brick- 

 work, or had been driven into each other, as if, instead of 

 being composed of perhaps the hardest and toughest sedi- 



