No man is right at all times, says the common proverb, and Geologists are not always exceptions to the rule. Granite has been looked upon as the “back-bone” of the earth's crust, and fire or deeply-seated internal heat has been supposed to have fused an ancient unknown kind of rock into its present compact and crystalline state, while although now scarcely anything more than, at most, hot water will be allowed as an agent in the structural change. The older geologists invoked on all occasions when great effects were to be produced most terrible commotions and catastrophes, just as melodramatists bring in blue fire and demons. Nature is, however, a most methodical business personage. Sedate and steady, she takes quietly and methodically everything with which she has to do, and keeps her accounts properly by double entry. If you draw on her on the one hand, immediately she pays into her bankers on the other. Nothing goes down on the one side of her accounts but instantly she makes some entry on the other.

There are, perhaps, few spots richer in the “time-hallowed memories of the past” than the old town of Woodstock, near Oxford. In its immediate neighbourhood once stood a royal palace, where, as the readers of Scott will doubtless remember, many of the scenes in one of his novels are laid. The site of this ancient fabric is now occupied by the more stately pile of Blenheim, the princely residence of the Duke of Marlborough. In the park there is a spring still termed, in allusion to the legend more or less familiar to all students of English history, Rosamond's well. At the distance of a few miles only, memorials of our Celtic ancestors exist in the form of tumuli, embowered among the venerable oaks of Wychwood Forest. It is not, however, our present intention to linger amid the many historical associations of Woodstock, deeply fraught with interest as they are, but proceeding at once to our object, we invite our readers to accompany us in a geological ramble to the village of Stonesfield, situated in its vicinity, at a distance of between three and four miles. By far the most agreeable portion of our road traverses the picturesque slopes and luxuriantly wooded glades of Blenheim Park: leaving these behind, we soon arrive within sight of our destination.

“This group in Northumberland is seen, westward of Alnwick at Garmitage-bank and Crawley Dean, and on the flanks of the porphyry of the Cheviot in Biddleston Burn, and in the Coquet below Linn Brig; it occupies a considerable area in the south part of Berwickshire, and is largely developed on the Tweed at Carham, Coldstream, Norham, etc.; it is seen underlying the mountain-limestone on the sea-coast from near Lammerton Shiel to Burnmouth; on the north side of Lammermuirs it is intercalated between the Old Red Sandstone, and the mountain-limestone from the Pees mouth to the Cove harbour.”

Mr. Tate observes also that the Campsie and Fifeshire beds resemble those of Northumberland.