RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 397 



stones those characteristic toothed and zig-zag ornaments that 

 are of not unfamiliar occiirrence on the round squat door- 

 ways of the older parish churches of England ; but by much 

 the greater number exhibit merely a few rude mouldings, 

 that bend over ponderous columns and massive capitals, un- 

 fretted by the tool of the carver. Though of colossal mag- 

 nificence, the exterior of the edifice yields in effect, as in all 

 true Gothic buildings, for the Gothic is greatest in what 

 the Grecian is least, to the sombre sublimity of the interior. 

 The nave, flanked by the dim deep aisles, and by a double 

 row of smooth-stemmed gigantic columns, supporting each a 

 double tier of ponderous arches, and the transepts, with their 

 three tiers of small Norman windows, and their bold semi- 

 circular arcs, demurely gay with toothed or angular carvings, 

 that speak of the days of Rolf and Torfeinar, are singularly 

 fine, far superior to aught else of the kind in Scotland; 

 and a happy accident has added greatly to their effect. A 

 rare Byssus, the Byssus aeruginosa of Linnaeus, the Lepra- 

 sia aeruginosa of modern botanists, one of those gloomy ve 

 getables of the damp cave and dark mine whose true habitat 

 is rather under than upon the earth, has crept over arch, and 

 column, and broad bare wall, and given to well nigh the en- 

 tire interior of the building a close-fitted lining of dark vel- 

 vety green, which, like the Attic rust of an ancient medal, 

 forms an appropriate covering to the sculpturings which it en- 

 wraps without concealing, and harmonizes with at once the 

 dim light and the antique architecture. Where the sun 

 streamed upon it, high over head, through the narrow win- 

 dows above, it reminded me of a pall of rich green velvet. 

 It seems subject, on some of the lower mouldings and damper 

 recesses, especially amid the tombs and in the aisles, to a de- 

 composing mildew, which eats into it in fantastic map-like 

 lines of mingled black and gray, so resembling Runic fret- 

 work, that I had some difficulty in convincing myself that the 



