REVIEWS. 



nected with its Geology as the drawing. The traveller 

 passes through a mountainous region of gneiss, the hills, 

 which, though bulky are shapeless, raise their huge backs 

 so high over the brown dreary moors, which, unvaried by 

 precipice or ravine, stretch away for miles from their feet, 

 that even amid the heats of midsummer the snow gleams in 

 streaks and patches from their summits. And yet so vast 

 is their extent of base, and their tops so truncated, that they 

 seem but half finished hills notwithstanding — hills inter- 

 dicted somehow in their forming, and the work stopped ere 

 the upper stories had been added. ^' In this same graphic 

 manner does he lead his reader through the varieties of 

 scene presented by the geological features of a district, for 

 the purpose of presenting to his mind^s eye, those of the 

 Old Red Sandstone district. 



The Old Red Sandstone has also its peculiarities of pros- 

 pect, which vary according to its formations, and the 

 amount and character of the disturbing and denuding agen- 

 cies to which these have been exposed. The great antiquity 

 of this deposit is unequivocally indicated by the manner in 

 which we find it capping, far in the interior, in insulated beds 

 and patches, some of the loftiest hills, or, in some instan- 

 ces, wrapping them round, as with a caul, from base to 

 summit. It mixes largely, in the northern districts, with 

 the mountain scenery of the country, and imparts strength 

 and boldness to the outline to every landscape in which it 

 occurs. Its island like patches affect generally a bluff pa- 

 rabolic or conical outline ; its loftier hills present rounded 

 dome-like summits, which sink to the placid on the one 

 hand in steep, slightly concave lines, and on the other in 

 lines decidedly convex, and a little less steep. On the sea- 

 coast of Scotland this deposit presents striking peculiarities 

 of outline. The bluff and rounded precipices stand out in 

 vast masses, that affect the mural form, and present few of 



