THE STORY OF A BOULDER.
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THE STORY OF A BOULDER
OR
GLEANINGS FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A
FIELD GEOLOGIST
BY
ARCHIBALD GEIKIE
OF THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF GREAT BRITAIN.
Illustrated with Woodcuts.
EDINBURGH: THOMAS CONSTABLE AND CO.
HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO., LONDON.
MDCCCLVIII.
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EDINBURGH: T. CONSTABLE, PRINTER TO HER MAJESTY.
- v -
TO
GEORGE WILSON, M.D., F.R.S.E.
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF TECHNOLOGY IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH,
THESE PAGES
ARE
AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.
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PREFACE
The present Volume has been written among the rocks whichit seeks to describe, during the intervals of leisure of a field-geologist.Its composition has been carried on by snatches,often short and far apart, some of the descriptions having beenjotted down on the spot by streamlet and hill-side, or in thequiet of old quarries; others, again, in railway-carriage or stage-coach.By much the larger portion, however, has been writtenby the village fireside, after the field-work of the day wasover—a season not the most favourable to any mental exercise,for weariness of body is apt to beget lassitude of mind. Inshort, were I to say that these Chapters have been as oftenthrown aside and resumed again as they contain paragraphs,the statement would probably not exceed the truth. But theerratic life of an itinerant student of science is attended withyet greater disadvantages. It entails an absence from alllibraries, more especially scientific ones, and the number ofworks of reference admissible into his parva supellex must everbe few indeed. With these hindrances, can the writer ventureto hope that what has thus been so disjointed and unconnectedto him, will not seem equally so to his readers? Yet if hisdescriptions, written, as it were, face to face with Nature,- viii -are found to have caught some tinge of Nature's freshness, andplease the reader well enough to set him in the way of becominga geologist, he shall have accomplished all his design.
It cannot be too widely known, or too often pressed on theattention, especially of the young, that a true acquaintancewith science, so delightful to its possessors, is not to be acquiredat second-hand. Text-books and manuals are valuableonly so far as they supplement and direct our own observations.A man whose knowledge of Nature is derived solelyfrom these sources, differs about as much from one who betakeshimself to Nature herself, as a dusty, desiccated mummydoes from a living man. You have the same bones and sinewsin both; but in the one they are hard