rence, the
last drop has obliterated part of the annular margin of a former one;
but in others it has not done so, for the two circles are seen to
intersect each other. Most of the impressions are elliptical, having
their more prominent rims at the deeper end [a consequence of the rain
falling in a slanting direction]. We often see on the under side of
some of these slabs, which are about half an inch thick, casts of the
rain-drops of a previous shower, which had evidently fallen when the
direction of the wind was not the same. Mr Redfield, by carefully
examining the obliquity of the imprints in the Pompton quarries,
ascertained that most of them implied the blowing of a strong westerly
wind in the triassic period at that place.' A certain class of the
impressions at Pompton are thought to be attributable to hail, 'being
deeper and much more angular and jagged than the rain-prints, and
having the wall at the deeper end more perpendicular, and occasionally
overhanging.'[7]

FOOTNOTES:

[4] _Ichnology of Annandale._ Lizars, Edinburgh. 1851.

[5] _Ansted's Introduction to Geology_, i. 303.

[6] _Lyell's Travels in North America_, i. 254.

[7] _Quarterly Journal of Geological Society_, April, 1851.

AITON'S TRAVELS.

A work in any department of general literature rarely appears from the
pen of a clergyman in the Church of Scotland, and therefore that to
which we are about to refer, under the title noted beneath,[8] is in
some respects a curiosity. The writer, a minister settled in a
mountainous parish in Lanarkshire, may be said to have made a
remarkable escapade for one in his obscure situation and reverend
calling. With an immense and unclerical flow of animal spirits,
evidently as fond of travelling as old William Lithgow, and as
garrulous as Rae Wilson, of whose class he is a surviving type, Dr
Aiton is quite the man to take a journey to the Holy Land; for no
difficulty in the way of toil, heat, hunger, creeping or winged
insects, wild beasts, or still wilder savages, disturbs his
equanimity. He also never hesitates to use any expression that comes
uppermost. He explicitly observes, that 'no man with the capacity of a
hen,' should fail to contribute such information as he possesses on
the sacred regions he has traversed. Alluding to some circumstances in
the voyage of St Paul, he says he has 'no desire to cook the facts.'
He talks of a supposition being 'checkmated.' And in going along the
coast of S