ROC 
ROCHFORD, a village of England, in Worcestershire A 
3 miles east of Tenbury. 
ROCHLAND, a parish of England, in Norfolk; 7 miles 
south-east of Norwich* 
ROCHLAND, All Saints, St. Andrew’s, St. 
Peter’s, and St. Mary’s, four parishes of England, in 
Norfolk, near Attlebury. 
ROCHLIFFE CASTLE, a village of England, in Cumber¬ 
land ; 6 miles north-west of Carlisle. 
ROCHLIFFE CHURCH, a village of England, half a 
mile distant from the foregoing. 
ROCHLITZ, a town of Bohemia, in a valley among the 
Sudetic mountains, in the upper circle of Biczow. It is divi¬ 
ded into Upper and Lower, and contains 2900 inhabitants, 
employed partly in weaving cambric, partly in bleaching. 
ROCHLITZ, a town of Germany, in Saxony; 28 miles 
south-south-east of Leipsic, ontheMulda, with 2100 inha¬ 
bitants. Prepious stones are occasionally found in the neigh¬ 
bourhood, but they are of inferior quality. 
ROCK, s. [rocca , Ital.from the Gr. oa£, a crag or cliff.] 
A vast mass of stone, fixed in the earth. 
The splitting rocks cower’d in the sinking sands, 
And would not dash me with their ragged sides. 
Shakspeare. 
Ye darksome pines, that o’er yon rocks reclin’d, 
Wave high, and murmur to the hollow wind. Pope. 
Protection; defence. A scriptural sense. — Though the 
reeds of Egypt break under the hand of him that leans on 
them, yet the rock of Israel will be an everlasting stay. 
K. Charles. — [Rock, Danish; rocca, Italian ; rucca, Spa¬ 
nish; spin-roch , Dutch.] A distaff held in the hand, from 
which the wool was spun by twirling a ball below. 
On the rock a scanty measure place 
Of vital flax, and turn the wheel apace. Dryden. 
Flow from the rock my flax, and swiftly flow, 
Pursue thy thread, the spindle runs below. Parncl. 
The composition and structure of rocks comprise a most 
important part of the natural history of the earth, whether 
considered with reference to geological hypothesis or to the 
more useful purpose of improving our knowledge of durable 
architecture. 
Rocks, besides furnishing the metallic ores, and materials 
for architecture, have the most important uses in the physical 
constitution of the globe, not only as forming the solid bases 
or skeletons on which islands and continents are constructed, 
but these elevations and inequalities are absolutely necessary 
to supply the dry land with pure and running streams, and 
to drain the superfluity of moisture in rainy seasons, which 
would otherwise form stagnant and putrid pools, infecting 
the air with death: without these rocky elevatious the earth 
must remain a solitary desert, fitted only for the abode of 
reptiles and amphibious animals. Thus, by the very irregu¬ 
larity and confusion which seem to prevail in the disposition 
of the fractured surface of the globe, it is rendered salubrious 
and productive, and prepared to satisfy the wants, and gratify 
the various inclinations and instincts, of its numerous in¬ 
habitants. 
In the knowledge of the qualities which ensure durability 
to the labours of the architect, the ancients appear to have 
greatly exceeded the moderns ; but they did not extend their 
inquiries respecting rocks to any other objects than those of 
immediate utility. 
Lehman, a German mineralogist, was the first who made 
a good classification of rocks. He observed that certain 
rocks occupy the lowest relative position in mountainous 
districts, and that these contain no remains of animals or 
vegetables; but in the upper rocks, numerous impressions 
and petrified relics of animals and vegetables abound. 
Hence he inferred, that the first were consolidated before 
the existence of organized life; and on this account, they 
> ROC 159 
-were called primitive or primary. The latter were called 
secondary rocks, because they not only contained these 
organic reliquiae, but also fragments of the farmer rocks, 
and hence were supposed to be of later formation. 
This division into two classes was continued by geologists 
until the close of the last century, when M. Werner, the 
celebrated professor of mineralogy at Frey burg, first pointed 
out another class of rocks, which he named Transition , as 
they exhibit such characters as show the transition from 
those of the secondary classes. These are interposed between 
the primitive and secondary classes, and are the first or 
earliest rocks of which the crust of the earth is composed, 
that afford fossil organic remains. The same illustrious 
naturalist examined with great care the various characters of 
those loosely cohering rocks of clay, marl, loam, &c. which 
rest on the more solid and older rocks of the secondary 
transition, and primitive classes, and which form a fourth 
class, under the title Alluvial. The various mineral masses 
formed by the agency of volcanoes form a fifth class, under 
the title of Volcanic. 
Dr. Jamieson observes, that “ these different classes of 
rocks are met with in most extensive tracts of country, and 
every where exhibit the same general relations. Thus the 
primitive rocks of Scotland, on a general view, do not differ 
from those of New Holland, and the rocks of the secondary 
class, although at first sight presenting much of a local cha¬ 
racter, are the same in all parts of the world where they 
have been hitherto met with.” 
This observation has, however, met with a contradiction 
from several French writers, who found their objections to 
its accuracy on the discovery of various deep-seated rocks not 
accounted primitive by Werner. But this species of objec¬ 
tion does not appear to us to apply very closely, and, upon 
the whole Wernerian theory, seems far more consonant with 
extensive experiments than any other that has been attempted. 
Primitive rocks lie under those of the succeeding classes, 
and frequently, owing to the inequalities of their original 
surface, rise through them, and often to a great height, in the 
form of mountains and mountain chains. Countries com¬ 
posed of primitive rocks are in general more rugged and 
lofty than those of the other classes; further, their cliffs are 
more extensive, their valleys narrower and deeper, and more 
uneven than those in secondary countries. The primitive 
strata in many countries maintain a wonderful uniformity of 
direction; thus, in Scotland, the general direction of the 
strata of the primitive mountains is from north-east to south¬ 
west, and the same is the case nearly in the vast alpine 
regions of Norway, and in many of the lofty and widely 
extended primitive lands of other parts in Europe. In Scot¬ 
land the direction is so invariable, not only in the primitive 
but also in the transition strata, that travellers may use it in 
place of a compass in guiding themselves through the moun¬ 
tain wilds of the Highland regions. The rocks of which pri¬ 
mitive mountains and plains are composed are, throughout, 
of a crystalline nature, and present such characters as in¬ 
timate their formation from a state of solution. These cha¬ 
racters are the intermixture of the concretions of which these 
are composed at their line of junction, their mutual pene¬ 
tration of each other, their considerable lustre, pure colours, 
and considerable translucency. Thus, in granite, the con¬ 
cretions of felspar, quartz, and mica, are joined together 
without any basis or ground, and at their line of junction are 
either simply very closely attached together, or are inter¬ 
mixed, and frequently branches of the one concretion shoot 
into the other, thus occasioning a mutual interlacement, as 
-is observed in bodies that have been formed simultaneously, 
and from a state of solution. These characters show that 
the concretions of granite, and the same applies to the con¬ 
cretions in limestone, gneiss, mica-slate, and other rocks of 
the primitive class, are of a crystalline nature, and have been 
formed at the same time. 
The strata themselves are so arranged in mountains, that is, 
one set of strata including another, as to render it probable, 
that the seams of the strata are not a mechanical effect, but 
have 
