ut with it, breaking into all manner
of stones, with great perseverance and success. I found, in a
large-grained granite, a few sheets of beautiful black mica, that, when
split exceedingly thin, and pasted between slips of mica of the ordinary
kind, made admirably-coloured eye-glasses, that converted the landscapes
around into richly-toned drawings in sepia; and numerous crystals of
garnet embedded in mica-schist, that were, I was sure, identical with
the stones set in a little gold brooch, the property of my mother. To
this last surmise, however, some of the neighbours to whom I showed my
prize demurred. The stones in my mother's brooch were precious stones,
they said; whereas what _I_ had found was merely a "stone upon the
shore." My friend the cabinet-maker went so far as to say that the
specimen was but a mass of plum-pudding stone, and its dark-coloured
enclosures simply the currants; but then, on the other hand, Uncle Sandy
took my view of the matter: the stone was not plum-pudding stone, he
said: he had often seen plum-pudding stone in England, and knew it to be
a sort of rough conglomerate of various components; whereas my stone was
composed of a finely-grained silvery substance, and the crystals which
it contained were, he was sure, gems like those in the brooch, and, so
far as he could judge, real garnets. This was a great decision; and,
much encouraged in consequence, I soon ascertained that garnets are by
no means rare among the pebbles of the Cromarty shore. Nay, so mixed up
are they with its sands even,--a consequence of the abundance of the
mineral among the primary rocks of Ross,--that after a heavy surf has
beaten the exposed beach of the neighbouring hill, there may be found on
it patches of comminuted garnet, from one to three square yards in
extent, that resemble, at a little distance, pieces of crimson
carpeting, and nearer at hand, sheets of crimson bead-work, and of which
almost every point and particle is a gem. From some unexplained
circumstance, connected apparently with the specific gravity of the
substance, it separates in this style from the general mass, on coasts
much beaten by the waves; but the garnets of these curious pavements,
though so exceedingly abundant, are in every instance exceedingly
minute. I never detected in them a fragment greatly larger than a
pin-head; but it was always with much delight that I used to fling
myself down on the shore beside some newly-discovered patch, and