Machintosh—Brimham Rocks. Laz 
cliff* The joints in the rocks must have given a direction to, and 
facilitated the progress of decay. In many places immense blocks 
of grit have fallen down, or seem ready to fall, having been under- 
mined. That the ocean has been here, appears as certain as it is 
that the ocean is elsewhere now carrying on a similar work of 
destruction on sea-cliffs still washed by the waves ; but these moor- 
land precipices have lost that name, for they have long since been 
deserted by the sea. On a stormy night, the geologist, as he peers 
through the opening called the Lover’s Leap (near the top of one of 
the cliffs), on the scattered blocks nearly a hundred feet below, 
requires little to make him fancy that he can still hear the lashing 
of the billows, where now all is really silent except the moaning of 
the winds. 
Atmospheric Action.—The traces of atmospheric action are here 
comparatively trifling. At the bottom of several of the crevices and 
gaping fractures, a very thin coating of powdered grit may be seen ; 
but, as in some places it could have had no escape, it must be 
regarded as the measure of denudation effected by the rains during 
centuries, if not thousands of years. ‘The rock-basins on the upper 
surfaces of the rocks may have been deepened and widened, some of 
them perhaps formed, by rain-water, aided by the small loosened quartz 
pebbles of the grit; but there are instances of similar basins (such 
as the so-called Kissing Chair) beneath the rocks, in situations to 
which no gyratory action excepting that of the waves could have 
reached. But the most striking proofs of the resistance offered by 
the Brimham Rocks to the action of the atmosphere are found in 
crevices which apparently have been occasioned by the undermining, 
and consequent displacement, of the rock on one side of a joint, after 
the upper part of the cliff had risen above high-water mark. One 
of these, not far from the Lover’s Leap, is a fissure of considerable 
depth, but only afew feet in width. ‘The walls on both sides corre- 
spond in shape to such an extent that the minutest pit on one side 
appears opposite to a similar-sized prominence on the other. Though 
open to the atmosphere, not a particle of the grit on either side of 
this fissure would appear to have been disintegrated since its forma- 
tion; and, judging from the general character of the rocks, we have 
no reason to suppose that any great fractures have occurred among 
them since the time they were undermined by the sea, which was 
probably towards the close of the Second Glacial, or Ice-floe Period. 
* Capt. Spratt, R.N., has described and figured a remarkable group of pillars of 
Nummulitic Limestone at Varna, associated with cromlech-like masses, and with 
vertical rents gradually widening in a neighbouring cliff-like bank, showing the 
passage-conditions between the fissured rock and isolated columns. Similar peaks 
and pillars stand beneath the sea on the floor of Varna Bay. Though inclined to 
believe in these columnar rocks having been shaped by atmospheric action, Capt. 
Spratt leaves the question open. See Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. xii, p. 74, &e. 
The difference-of limestone and sandstone must be borne in mind, when contrast- 
ing these shaped rock-masses of Varna with those of Brimham. 
{ In several parts of the Lake District (Great Langdale, for instance), and I 
have no doubt elsewhere, rocks smoothed and rounded by ancient glaciers have not 
been visibly roughened by atmospheric agency, though different parts of these 
