KAMBLES OP A GEOLOGIST. 437 



which present, for the original covering of peaty mould, a con- 

 tinuous surface of pale boulder-clay, here and there mottled 

 by detached tufts of scraggy heath, and here and there rough- 

 ened by projections of the underlying rock. All is unre- 

 deemable barrenness. On the other hand, wherever a bit of 

 private property appears, though in the immediate neighbour- 

 hood of these ruined wastes, the surface is swarded over, and 

 the soil is the better, not the worse, for the services which it 

 has rendered to man in the past. Whatever the Chartist and 

 the Leveller may think of the matter, it is, I find, virtually 

 on behalf of the many that the soil has been appropriated by 

 the few. After passing from off the tract of moor which 

 overlies the granitic axis of the district, to a tract equally 

 moory which spreads over the gray flagstones, I marked, more 

 especially in the hollows and ravines, where minute springs 

 oose from the rock, vast quantities of bog-iron embedded in 

 the soil, and presenting greatly the appearance of the scoria 

 of a smith's forge. The apparent scoria here is simply a re- 

 production of the iron of the underlying flagstones, transfer- 

 red, through the agency of water, to that stratum of vegetable 

 mould and boulder-clay which represents the recent period. 



I found the stack which I had been brought to see form- 

 ing the picturesque centre of a bold tract of rock scenery. It 

 stands out from the land as a tall insulated tower, about two 

 hundred feet in height, sorely worn at its base by the breakers 

 that ceaselessly fret against its sides, but considerably broader 

 atop, where it bears a flat cover of sward on the same level 

 with the tops of the precipices which in the lapse of ages have 

 receded from around it. Like the sward-crested hummock 

 left by a party of labourers, to mark the depth to which they 

 have cut in removing a bank or digging a pond, it remains 

 to indicate how the attrition of the surf has told upon the 

 iron-bound coast ; demonstrating that lines of precipices hard 

 as iron, and of giddy elevation, are in full retreat before the 



