is Apollo pursuing Daphne; where the mist is
protected from his rays by the rock shadows, the laurel and other
richest vegetation spring by the river-sides, so that the laurel-leaf
becomes the type, in the Greek mind, of the beneficent ministry and
vitality of the rivers and the earth, under the beams of sunshine; and
therefore it is chosen to form the signet-crown of highest honor for
gods or men, honor for work born of the strength and dew of the earth
and informed by the central light of heaven; work living, perennial, and
beneficent.

J. R.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 34: Read by Mr. Ruskin at the weekly evening meeting of the
Royal Institution (see _Proceedings_, vol. iii., pp. 358-60), April 19,
1861.--ED.]

ON THE FORMS OF THE STRATIFIED ALPS OF SAVOY.[35]

290. The purpose of the discourse was to trace some of the influences
which have produced the present external forms of the stratified
mountains of Savoy, and the probable extent and results of the future
operation of such influences.

The subject was arranged under three heads:--

I. The Materials of the Savoy Alps.
II. The Mode of their Formation.
III. The Mode of their subsequent Sculpture.

291. I. _Their Materials._--The investigation was limited to those Alps
which consist, in whole or in part, either of Jura limestone, of
Neocomian beds, or of the Hippurite limestone, and include no important
masses of other formations. All these rocks are marine deposits; and the
first question to be considered with respect to the development of
mountains out of them is the kind of change they must undergo in being
dried. Whether prolonged through vast periods of time, or hastened by
heat and pressure, the drying and solidification of such rocks involved
their contraction, and usually, in consequence, their being traversed
throughout by minute fissures. Under certain conditions of pressure,
these fissures take the aspect of slaty cleavage; under others, they
become irregular cracks, dividing all the substance of the stone. If
these are not filled, the rock would become a mere heap of debris, and
be incapable of establishing itself in any bold form. This is provided
against by a metamorphic action, which either arranges the particles of
the rock, throughout, in new and more crystalline conditions, or else
causes some of them to separate from the rest, to traverse the body of
the rock, and arrange themselves in its fissures; thus forming a cement,