with a large portion of all the straths and dales and vales of our island. Most of the low and level areas are but the sites of extinct lakes; and could we expose their clays and silts and marls, layer after layer, we would find abundant evidence of the process by which the waters were extinguished, and of the events which accompanied that extinction. The reader can have no want of examples; and in these days, when, hand in hand, archæology and geology are giving us clearer and deeper insight into the earlier history of mankind, it were worse than indifference to allow any draining or other excavations to pass unobserved. We have seen instances in almost every part of these islands, and especially in Fife and Forfar, which lay more immediately in the way of our observation. One of the finest examples we know is that of Lochore, in Fife, drained towards the end of last century, and which has yielded almost every kind of remains to which we have alluded. Lying at the southern foot of Benartie, it stretches away, level as a bowling-green and intersected by deep open drains, a wide expanse of cultivated farm-land. Years ago on its eastern borders, at "Temple," were early Christian remains; on its northern slopes were the unobliterated trenches of a Roman encampment at "Campfield ;" on a peninsular projection on the north stands the farm of "Chapel," where bronzes, altar-stones, and baths of the Roman period have been found; on its eastern margin are several standing stones and cairns ("Pitcairn") of Celtic origin; and near its eastern edge stands the "Castle," an old rent and ruined keep built upon an artificial island—the "crannoge" of the still carlier and pre-Celtic period. Skulls of oxen, antlers of gigantic red-deer, Roman coins and bronzes, stone hatchets and tree-canoes, have all been taken from this single area, marking a succession of occupancy and progress as clear and sequential as if one had lived by the lake from the

time of its earliest gathering up to its final obliteration in seventeen hundred and ninety-two.

the

year

As with lochlands, so to a great extent with marshes and peat-mosses. All are alike accumulations of slow and gradual growth, and entomb, as they grow, remains of plants and animals, as well as the remains of man and his works; and when cut through and drained for agricultural purposes, reveal in a similar way the secrets they have kept so long and so well. Within the present century thousands of acres of such peat and bog growths have been converted into arable fields, and most of the objects that were discovered have been lost to science through ignorance and neglect. But thousands of acres have still to be reclaimed; and, through the more intelligent interest and finer spirit that is now abroad, it is fondly to be hoped that every object exhumed will find its way to the proper quarter, and that geologists in particular will keep watchful care over every local excavation, not only for the sake of their own study, but for the advancement of the kindred sciences of Archæology and Ethnology. Where history is silentand silent because but a thing of yesterday—these lakelands and marshes and peat-mosses may throw some glimmer of light on the pre-historic men of these islands, indicating in some degree who they were, whence they were, and what they were, in the doings and dealings of their everyday existence.

SPRINGS IN THEIR GEOLOGICAL ASPECTS.

No wonder that the ancients, and especially those of hot and arid countries, celebrated their springs in song, and believed the more remarkable, each to be under the special care of some presiding divinity. There are few things so gladdening, nothing more refreshing, than "wells of water in a thirsty land;" few things so lifelike and mysterious as a cool and copious spring, whether gushing from the cleft of a rock or noiselessly boiling up from its sandy fountain. Men and animals crowd to its source, trees

greenest of verdure marks Death and the stillness of

overshadow its banks, and the its track through the desert. death may reign for leagues, but around the bubbling spring and its sparkling runnel life instinctively appears, and flourishes under its genial influence. Even in temperate countries man builds his house by the spring and the water-brook-health, cleanliness, cultivation, and all the necessities of existence depending so intimately and directly on the beneficent element they supply. But springs are not all of the same character, some being pure, others impregnated with mineral and gaseous matters; some cold, others hot; some permanent, others temporary and intermittent; some simple, and others invested with thera

peutic qualities which have rendered them famous for ages. No wonder, then, that they should have become the themes of song and adoration, that shrines have been reared over their sources, offerings paid to their virtues, and festive processions and well-deckings practised alike in all countries where their waters arose in copious supplies to meet alike the personal necessities and the industrial requirements of man. But while thus indispensable to the animal and vegetable worlds, they are not less important to the mineral -permeating and percolating the rocky crust; dissolving, diffusing, transporting, and reconstructing its ingredients; and, on the whole, discharging geological functions which no other agent could perform. It is to these functions that we would now direct the attention of the reader, bespeaking his interest in what at first sight seems so insignificant, and yet which, when fully understood, are amongst the most widespread and effective of geological agencies.

And first let us trace the element water in its incessant circulation from the ocean to the atmosphere, from the air to the land, and from the land once more back to the ocean. Nothing seems so marvellous, and yet nothing is so certain, that the water which now issues forth as the gladdening spring has passed times without number from sea to air and from air to land-has been in the atmosphere, now invisible and now visible-has fallen as rain, or lain on the mountain-top in snow and glacier for centuries—has coursed in vivifying currents through the tissues of plants and animals, or been locked up in the mineral crystal for ages. Rising, under the influence of the sun, from the ocean, it mingles invisibly with the air or floats in mists and clouds, till, condensed by cold, it falls in rain or snow on the terrestrial surface. A great portion of this rain- and snow-fall is carried off at once by runnel and stream and river to the ocean; but a large and unknown amount sinks

slowly into the soil, permeates and percolates the rocky crust to unknown depths, and then, when every pore and chink is saturated, is returned again by springs to the surface, once more to be borne back by runnel and stream and river to its parent sea. Distilled from the ocean, water is absolutely pure; floating in the atmosphere, it may absorb nitrogen, carbonic acid, and other gases; sinking into the crust, it begins its geological functions, loses its purity, and carries along with it and out with it a very miscellaneous burden of mineral impurities. Individually, and in the case of any known spring, the amount of geological work performed may be very insignificant; but as springs occur in myriads, and their supply passes through every variety of soil, subsoil, and rock, the amount of waste, change, and reconstruction they occasion is enormous, and, to be appreciated, requires but the slenderest indication.

Water is the great universal solvent in nature. Powerful when cold and pure, more powerful when hot, and most of all when charged with certain gases and gaseous compounds. As the rainfall descends, it generally entangles a certain amount of common air, nitrogen, and carbonic acid; as it percolates the soil, it may part with these gases, or receive an additional supply; but whether or not, its own solvent power, as it descends into the crust, is ever carrying something from stratum to stratum, till it becomes more or less impregnated with mineral matter; and then when it ascends again and issues forth in the form of springs, it bears to the surface some portion of that which it has dissolved from the solid rocks. In this way the effect of spring-water may be said to be fourfold-first, in dissolving something from the rocks through which it passes; second, in producing changes among the strata, by carrying from one set what may be absorbed by another; third, by laying down the matter which it dissolves from the interior, partly