a forme
de pain de sucre, et qui sont entourees et couronnees jusqu'a leur
sommet, de guirlandes d'arbres assis sur les intervalles des couches, et
qui forment l'effet du monde le plus singulier."-_Voyages_, Sec. 1758.

Another statement, which I made generally, referring, for those
qualifications which it is so difficult to give without confusing the
reader, to this appendix, was that of the usually greater hardness of
the tops of mountains as compared with their flanks. My own experience
among the Alps has furnished me with few exceptions to this law; but
there is a very interesting one, according to Saussure, in the range of
the Furca del Bosco. (Voyages, Sec. 1779.)

Lastly, at page 186 of this volume, I have alluded to the various
cleavages of the aiguilles, out of which one only has been explained and
illustrated. I had not intended to treat the subject so partially; and
had actually prepared a long chapter, explaining the relations of five
different and important systems of cleavage in the Chamouni aiguilles.
When it was written, however, I found it looked so repulsive to readers
in general, and proved so little that was of interest even to readers in
particular, that I cancelled it, leaving only the account of what I
might, perhaps, not unjustifiably (from the first representation of it
in the Liber Studiorum) call Turner's cleavage. The following passage,
which was the introduction to the chapter, may serve to show that I have
not ignored the others, though I found, after long examination, that
Turner's was the principal one:--

"One of the principal distinctions between these crystalline masses and
stratified rocks, with respect to their outwardly apparent structure, is
the subtle complexity and number of _ranks_ in their crystalline
cleavages. The stratified masses have always a simple intelligible
organization; their beds lie in one direction, and certain fissures and
fractures of those beds lie in other clearly ascertainable directions;
seldom more than two or three _distinct_ directions of these fractures
being admitted. But if the traveller will set himself deliberately to
watch the shadows on the aiguilles of Chamouni as the sun moves round
them, he will find that nearly every quarter of an hour a new _set_ of
cleavages becomes visible, not confused and orderless, but a series of
lines inclining in some one definite direction, and that so positively,
that if he had only seen the aiguille at that moment