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of thousands on the exposed planes of its sea-washed strata, standing out in bold relief, like sculpturings on ancient tombstones, at once mummies and monuments,--the dead and the carved memorials of the dead. Every rock is a tablet of hieroglyphics, with an ascertained alphabet; every rolled pebble a casket with old pictorial records locked up within. Trap-dykes, beyond comparison finer than those of the Water of Leith, which first suggested to Hutton his theory, stand up like fences over the sedimentary strata, or run out like moles far into the sea. The entire island, too, so green, rich, and level, is itself a specimen illustrative of the effect of geologic formation on scenery. We find its nearest neighbor,--the steep, brown, barren island of Longa, which is composed of the ancient Red Sandstone of the district,--differing as thoroughly from it in aspect as a bit of granite differs from a bit of clay-slate; and the whole prospect around, save the green Liasic strip that lies along the bottom of the Bay of Broadford, exhibits, true to its various components, Plutonic or sedimentary, a character of picturesque roughness or bold sublimity. The only piece of smooth, level England, contained in the entire landscape, is the fossil-mottled island of Pabba. We were first struck, on landing this morning, by the great number of Pinnae embedded in the strata,--shells varying from five to ten inches in length,--one species of the common flat type, exemplified in the existing _Pinna sulcata_, and another nearly quadrangular, in the cross section, like the _Pinna lanceolata_ of the Scarborough limestone. The quadrangular species is more deeply crisped outside than the flat one. Both species bear the longitudinal groove in the centre, and when broken across, are found to contain numerous smaller shells,--Terebratulae of both the smooth and sulcated kinds, and a species of minute smooth Pecten resembling the _Pecten demissus_, but smaller. The Pinnae, ere they became embedded in the original sea-bottom, long since hardened into rock around them, were, we find, dead shells, into which, as into the dead open shells of our existing beaches, smaller shells were washed by the waves. Our recent Pinnae are all sedentary shells, some of them full two feet in length, fastened to their places on their deep-sea floors by flowing silky byssi,--cables of many strands,--of which beautiful pieces of dress, such as gloves and hose, have been manu
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