286 
NATURE 
[ Fan. 25, 1883 
ing the darkness of the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science, at its meeting in Montreal in 
August Jast. A few weeks later he proclaimed the great 
discovery to the Academy of Sciences of New Yorx. 
But these were limited audiences, though composed, 
no doubt, mainly of scientific men on whom as yet 
the true light had never shone. It was absolutely 
necessary to appeal to a wider, and possibly more sympa- 
thetic public. Accordingly he published his views in the 
December number of the Popular Science Monthly. But 
he was still unsatisfied, till at last he conceived the noble 
idea of combining the spread of truth with promoting the 
erection of the Statue of Liberty enlightening the World. 
He hired a theatre in New York, gave an account of his 
astonishing observations, charging a dollar a head for 
admission, and stated that the proceeds of his ‘‘matinée ” 
were ‘to be devoted to the pedestal of the colossal 
statue.” Let us hope that the sum realised was worthy 
at once of the great truths proclaimed by the lecturer, 
and of the national object to which it was to be given. 
Future pilgrims to the colossal Statue of Liberty wil] 
piously scan the pedestal, searching for the stone that 
shall hand down to the far future the name of the illus- 
trious seer who could brush away the tangled cobwebs 
spun by a century of scientific babblers, and pierce into 
the true meaning of the Cave of Fingal. 
Mr. Whitehouse has published so far only an abstract of 
his address, but he has had it well printed with good illus- 
trations, and seems to have generously scattered copies of 
it broadcast over this country. It was not of course at 
all necessary that he should communicate the steps of the 
reasoning by which he was led up to his great disco- 
very. And he has considerately refrained from troubling 
the world with such unprofitable details. Still one 
cannot help trying to follow the mental process by which 
an epoch-making deduction has been reached. We vet 
from the abstract glimpses of the way in which the re- 
ceived explanation of the caves of Staffa collapsed at the 
touch of Mr. Whitehouse’s genius. He visited the 
scenery in calm summer weather. From Staffa he could 
see the great sweep of the Mull cliffs to the east and the 
broken rampart of islands all round the rest of the 
horizon. As the smooth sea mildly heaved along the 
base of the basaltic colonnade, he could easily persuade 
himself that Staffa must be a ‘‘ singularly sheltered,’’ 
“Jand-locked” island, and that “the force of the 
breakers is inconsiderable.” How absurd then must it 
have appeared to him to attribute to that placid lake-like 
water the power of hollowing out caves in a rock so 
obdurately stubborn as basalt! Moreover, he could see 
no reason why the sea, supposing it gifted with such 
power of erosion, should have chosen the places where 
the caves actually occur. And his inability to find this 
reason satisfactorily disposed of any possible action of 
the waves. Not only so, but from his stand-point at 
Stiffa his clear vision could take in the whole coast-line 
of Scotland, and he made the further important announce- 
ment, which will doubtless for ever silence our northern 
geologists, who believe in the geological power of the 
waves, that “there are very few hollows worn by the sea 
in the Scotch coast!” Having cleared away the fictions 
of so-called scientific observation, he could apply the 
much more reliable conjecture which his glance at the 
Giant’s Causeway had evoked in his own mind. To his 
trained eye the caves of Staffa were obviously artificial. 
Oracularly he tells us that they are “strikingly Phoenician.” 
““No such Gothic arch was ever formed by nature. No 
natural cave has an entrance higher than the interior.” (!) 
Lastly, from the end of Fingal’s Cave you can see the 
Hill of Iona rising against the sky, consequently the cave 
must have been excavated by men who lived on Iona. 
This final argument must be regarded as a crushing 
answer to those who have recklessly talked of the power 
of the waves in these regions. On what conceivable 
grounds can we suppose that the sea would make a 
tunnel, from the end of which the Dun of Iona would be 
visible ? 
Perhaps some unconvinced outsider may be tempted 
impertinently to ask for what object such stupendous ex- 
cavations could have been devised by any civilisation, 
whether ancient or modern—excavations always swilled 
with the surge, often unapproachable for weeks together, 
and in which, even in calm weather, unless care be taken, 
a boat is liable to have its bottom knocked in. Of such 
questions Mr. Whitehouse very properly takes no notice. 
Again, we were in the belief that the religious community 
of Iona had been an eminently peaceable folk, liable to 
invasion by pirates from the sea or marauders from the 
mainland, but with little more to oppose in the way of 
defence than the prestige of their sanctity. But this 
conception also is now found to be false. We learn, on 
the same reliable authority, that they were a warlike race, 
quite able to look after themselves. It appears that Mr. 
Whitehouse has shown “the strategic importance of 
Staffa, and the probability that the wealth and refinement 
of Iona were due to the protection it afforded.” He will 
have no difficulty in further proving that the traditional 
picture of the saintly Columba is a mere myth, and that 
the abbots of Iona possessed an army and navy, made 
war on heathen Pict and savage Scot, curbed the fury of 
fiery Norseman, and employed their gangs of prisoners in 
tunnelling the caves of Staffa! 
There is a hollow among the rocky knobs that rise inland 
from the summit of the cliffs above Fingal’s Cave. We 
would fain place Mr. Whitehouse there on a day when the 
gathering clouds have blotted out Ben More, when thick 
mists are driving along the opposite precipices of Gribon, 
when the Treshnish Isles grow fainter every moment in 
the western sky, when even Iona, that lies so near, is 
fading into the general gloom, and when the wild moan 
of the rising south-western gale among the crags around 
is answered by the hoarse clamour of the surge below. 
We should like to keep him there while the gale rapidly 
increases, breaker after breaker careering madly forwards 
with foaming crest from under the pall of driving rain 
that hides the sea, dashing into every creek and cave, 
rushing in sheets of green water up the face of the crags, 
and pouring back in hundreds of yeasty torrents into the 
boiling flood. We would ask him still to stay till the 
storm has reached its height, that he might feel the solid 
island shake under his feet, that he might see the sheets 
of water, foam, and spray thrown far up into the air, that 
he might hear the cannon-like thunder of the shock as 
each billow bursts into the Cave of Fingal. He would 
return a wiser (and a wetter) man, and would regret that 
in a rash moment he had published some childish nonsense 
