110 
THE BASALT OF KOWLEY REGIS. 
rule, we see them exactly as they have been found, that is, 
they are not stones from the quarry, but have, each one and 
all, been got from the surface, or just below the surface, in 
the ordinary agricultural operations of the last few centuries, 
and they are still being picked from the land year by year in 
very large quantities. 
These stones are not boulders. You could not find a 
rounded stone among them if you were to search the whole 
year through. There is not a foreign stone among them, 
therefore they are not erratic blocks, but are all natives of 
the hills on which they are found. They are all angular and 
subangular, some indeed with the angles as sharp as when 
they were first detached from the parent rock; but all are 
somewhat weathered, not in the sense of becoming disinte¬ 
grated or rotten, but in the same way that joints in the actual 
mass of rock in the quarry are weathered—that is, the surface 
is discoloured for a depth of about the twentieth or sixteenth 
of an inch by the contact of air and moisture. Indeed, this 
surface colour completely enveloping our native blocks is the ‘ 
chief difference between these stones and any similar heap of 
stones in the quarry resulting from a recent fall or the usual 
quarrying operations. 
The largest of these stones are usually found on the tops, 
for a very little, if at all, below the shoulders of the hills. 
Lower down we get stones of less size ; near the base of the 
hills we get the smallest stones, while around the base on 
almost every side we get the famous blue brick marl, being 
the final stage of the debris of the hill tops. 
I say around the base on almost every side advisedly, 
because in at least one locality we get a production entirely 
different to the marl, to which I shall refer hereafter. Now 
let us examine any of the walls about us; and we soon 
remark a grooved stone, and close by another, and if we were 
to go on with our examination for a day we should find that 
we had noted hundreds of the stones similarly grooved and 
scratched as we went along the walls. And now we come to 
a field where a man is ploughing, and we follow the plough 
with him for a while, observing while we talk with him. 
We see that occasionally the plough turns up a stone of 
three or five or seven pounds’ weight, and we ask him what 
would happen if the plough struck a larger stone a fair 
blow. He will tell you that it would knock the plough out of 
his hands and perhaps break it. At last, however, you hear 
the plough grating along a stone, and the ploughman may tell 
you that he knew of a big stone being about there and he eased 
the plough up a little so as to go over the stone instead of 
