666 THE UNIVERSE. 



It is also to volcanic efforts that we must i^efer those 

 gigantic crystals of basalt wliich seem to have been pushed 

 out of the earth by a prodigious force, in order to form at 

 the surface, in one place, those remarkable "giants' cause- 

 ways," which are a favourite haunt with the inquiring; in 

 another, those islands and grottoes which, rising from the 

 bosom of the waves, astonish us by their mass or the 

 arrangement of their prismatic columns ; such as the rocks 

 of the Cyclops near the coast of Sicily, and especially the 

 grotto of Fingal in the island of .StafFa. 



