e "Time and Tide" for
publication, and write the preface on Dec. 14th. On the 19th the book
was out, and immediately bought up. A month later the second edition was
issued.

CHAPTER VIII

AGATES, AND ABBEVILLE (1868)

Of less interest to the general reader, though too important a part of
Ruskin's life and work to be passed over without mention, are his
studies in Mineralogy. We have heard of his early interest in spars and
ores; of his juvenile dictionary in forgotten hieroglyphics; and of his
studies in the field and at the British Museum. He had made a splendid
collection, and knew the various museums of Europe as familiarly as he
knew the picture-galleries. In the "Ethics of the Dust" he had chosen
Crystallography as the subject in which to exemplify his method of
education; and in 1867, after finishing the letters to Thomas Dixon, he
took refuge, as before, among the stones, from the stress of more
agitating problems.

In the lecture on the Savoy Alps in 1863 he had referred to a hint of
Saussure's that the contorted beds of the limestones might possibly be
due to some sort of internal action, resembling on a large scale that
separation into concentric or curved bands which is seen in calcareous
deposits. The contortions of gneiss were similarly analogous, it was
suggested, to those of the various forms of silica. Ruskin did not adopt
the theory, but put it by for examination in contrast with the usual
explanation of these phenomena, as the simple mechanical thrust of the
contracting surface of the earth.

In 1863 and 1866 he had been among the Nagelflueh of Northern
Switzerland, studying the puddingstones and breccias. He saw that the
difference between these formations, in their structural aspect, and the
hand-specimens in his collection of pisolitic and brecciated minerals
was chiefly a matter of size; and that the resemblances in form were
very close. And so he concluded that if the structure of the minerals
could be fully understood a clue might be found to the very puzzling
question of the origin of mountain structure.

Hence his attempt to analyze the structure of agates and similar banded
and brecciated minerals, in the series of papers in the _Geological
Magazine_;[15] an attempt which though it was never properly completed,
and fails to come to any general conclusion, is extremely interesting as
an account of beautiful and curious natural forms till then little
noticed by mineralogists.