258 



ON THE TRAVELLED STOKE 



February 1799, is still called in the language of 

 the country, " The Blowing Saturday." 



By the circumstances just detailed, we are fur- 

 nished with a comparatively recent and perfectly 

 well attested example of one mode by which large 

 masses of detached rock may be carried to consi- 

 derable distances. For, although the waters of the 

 tide which fill the bay in question were, on account 

 of their shallowness, incapable of buoying up the 

 extensive float of ice supporting the stone, so per- 

 fectly as to prevent the keel of it from ploughing 

 the sand in the course of its progress over it ; yet 

 there is no reason to doubt, that if it had been 

 once fairly carried into deeper water, it might have 

 been ultimately transported to a much greater dis- 

 tance. And if we can suppose the float of ice to 

 have been sufficiently tough and tenacious, we may 

 even conceive it possible that the stone might have 

 been deposited upon some remote shore, where no 

 rock of the same nature was to be found, and 

 where it might have furnished future geologists 

 with subject for most interesting speculations. These 

 would have been naturally the more puzzling, that 

 its peculiar mode of transportation would have to- 

 tally precluded all chance of its acute angular pro- 

 jections being destroyed by attrition, and so would 

 have prevented the possibility of its exhibiting 

 those appearances of having been rounded and po- 

 lished, so manifestly displayed by most of those 

 stones denominated Boulders. How far the causes 



