476 RAMBLES OP A GEOLOGIST. 



the rock has well-nigh yielded up its charge, will decipher the 

 name for the last time, and inquire, mayhap, regarding the 

 individual whom it now designates, as I did this morning, 

 when I asked, " Who was this H. Ross, and who this P. Fol- 

 ster ?" I remember when it would have saddened me to think 

 that there would in all probability be as little response in the 

 one case as in the other ; but as men rise in years they be- 

 come more indifferent than in early youth to " that life which 

 wits inherit after death," and are content to labour on and 

 be obscure. They learn, too, if I may judge from experience, 

 to pursue science more exclusively for its own sake, with less, 

 mayhap, of enthusiasm to carry them on, but with what is at 

 least as strong to take its place as a moving force, that wind 

 and bottom of formed habit through which what were at 

 first acts of the will pass into easy half-instinctive prompt- 

 ings of the disposition. In order to acquaint myself with the 

 fossiliferous deposits of Scotland, I have travelled, hammer 

 in hand, during the last nine years, over fully ten thousand 

 miles ; nor has the work been in the least one of dry labour, 

 not more so than that of the angler, or grouse-shooter, or 

 deer-stalker : it has occupied the mere leisure insterstices of 

 a somewhat busy life, and has served to relieve its toils. I 

 have succeeded, however, in accomplishing but little : besides, 

 what is discovery to-day will be but rudimentary fact to the 

 tyro-geologists of the future. But if much has not been done, 

 I have at least the consolation of George Buchanan, when, 

 according to Melvill, " fand sitting in his chair, teiching his 

 young man that servit him in his chalmer to spell a, b, ab ; 

 e, b, eb. 'Better this,' quoth he, 'nor stelling sheipe.'" 



The sun broke out in great beauty after the shower, glist- 

 ening on a thousand minute runnels that came streaming down 

 the precipices, and revealing, through the thin vapoury haze, 

 the horizontal lines of strata that bar the hill-sides, like courses 

 of ashlar in a building. I failed, however, to detect, amid 



