HOW SCENERY IS MADE 
3 
by the award of the arbitrator under the Epping Forest Act, 
is open to all. We wish Mrs. Martino success in her scheme. 
Hampstead Astronomical and Scientific Society. — We 
welcome the advent of a promising society, already endowed 
with a loj inch reflecting telescope, in close proximity to our 
Northern Heights Branch, with a tried Selbornian, Mr. Basil 
Martin, of 7, Holly Place, Hampstead, as Secretary. 
HOW SCENERY IS MADE. 
I. — Alluvial Plains. 
ARTH, air, water and fire were called the four elements 
by the ancients ; and though we no longer regard them 
as such, it is the second and third which do nearly 
all the work to carve and chisel the first ; whilst the 
fourth has also aided, by putting the rocks* into Nature’s melting 
pots, and then pouring out the contents to harden and form 
curious features, such as the Giant’s Causeway in Antrim, 
Arthur’s seat at Edinburgh, Mount Sorrel near Leicester, and the 
rounded “ tors ” in Cornwall. 
The first thing to know is what are the different kinds of 
rocks of which the surface of the earth is composed. We must 
in imagination strip off the earth used as arable or pasture lands, 
and lay Nature’s skeleton bare. We cannot do this, but we can 
generally find out what is underneath by exposures in sea-cliffs, 
quarries, river-valleys, railway-cuttings, &c. 
As the readers of Nature Notes travel about, what I want 
them to do is to observe the nature of the rocks wherever they 
go, and their relationship to the scenery ; and to see how the latter 
has been produced, and what are the causes always at work 
which modify the face of the country, from county to county, 
as they travel by any of our great railways across England. 
There are three chief classes of rocks, as follows : — 
(1) Arenaceous : — consisting of sand, gravel, sandstone and 
gritstone. After being subjected to great heat these form a 
solid quartz-rock. 
(2) Aluminous : — commencing as clay-mud, this dries and 
forms shale : then, by pressure and heat, it can become slate. 
(3) Calcareous : — rocks of this nature are composed almost 
always of carbonate of lime, and are known as chalk, limestone 
and marble, which is a limestone hard enough to be polished. 
If it has been subjected to heat, its particles become crystalline ; 
and it then forms statuary marble. 
* Geologists give the general name “rock” to any continuous mass, soft or 
hard. 
