Reviews— Geology and Scenery of Scotland. 177 



into dry land. Imperceptibly as the rains and frosts may wear away 

 the mountain-cliff, slowly as the river may deepen its channel, 

 gradually as the delta may advance upon the estuary, and little by 

 little as the volcano may pile up its scoriae and lava, yet after the 

 lapse of ages the mountain will be worn down, the river-channel 

 will be eroded into a valley, the estuary converted into an alluvial 

 plain, and the volcano rear its cold and silent dome into the higher 

 atmosphere. All that is necessary is time, and this is an element to 

 which we can see no limit in the future any more than we can 

 discover a beginning to it in the past." 



In a closing sentence we would note for use in a second edition 

 the following slips in the scheme of vegetable classification, which 

 have escaped the author. If the terms employed were more precise, 

 the scheme would not be less popular, and the information would be 

 more accurate. Cryptogams have no flowers, perfect or imperfect ; 

 Water-lilies are generally placed among Dicotyledons ; Cycads are not 

 pine-apples ; Palms and Tree-ferns have true woody tissue in their 

 structure; Perns are as true "spore-growths" as club-mosses, and 

 liverworts are more " leaf-growths " than horse-tails. 



n. — The Gteologt and Scenery of the North of Scotland ; 

 BEING Two Lectures given at the Philosophical Institution, 

 Edinburgh, with Notes and Appendix. By Prof. James 

 NicoL, F.K.S.E., etc. Edinburgh, 1866, pp 96. 



THE first of these lectures, and the appendix, are devoted to an 

 exposition of Prof. Nicol's views regarding the structure of the 

 highly altered rocks of the north of Scotland, and the second to a 

 description of the newer strata found north of the Grampians. It is 

 scarcely possible to popularise a subject which depends for its eluci- 

 dation on the minutest details of sections and rock characters. It 

 speaks greatly to the credit of the members of the Edinburgh Philo- 

 sophical Institution, that for two nights they listened to the learned 

 Professor. It is true the flights of fancy with which the lecturer 

 winds up his account of some interesting section, or remarkable 

 natural phenomenon, must have given a fresh starting point to his 

 audience, as when he asks, " Is not the thought of the nation — its 

 intellectual life — born of the soil, fed and nourished by the land in 

 which we live ? Is not the free exuberant poetry of Burns the 

 genuine product of the banks and braes of bonnjr Doon ? Does not 

 the romantic chivalry of Scott ever reflect Tweed's silver streams, 

 and Yarrow's dowie dens?" or, after describing the deposition of 

 the Lewis hills on the " low gneiss platform," he says, " When we 

 try to fathom the innumerable ages involved in these two steps 

 in the history of the earth — and they are only two — the mind feels 

 crushed with the interminable lapse of time, and is glad to seek 

 repose in the view of the quiet ocean, with a few ships peacefully 

 floating on its bosom." 



The reader will find in the two lectures a connected resume of 

 VOL. m. — so. XXII. 12 



