pect
to the ecliptic, occasions Lapland to receive the sun's rays very
obliquely: it is therefore condemned to a long winter, adverse to man,
as well as to all the productions of nature. No great movement,
possibly, in the heavens was necessary, however, to cause all its
misfortunes. These regions may formerly have been those on which the sun
shone most favorably; the polar circles may have been what now the
tropics are, and the torrid zone have filled the place occupied by the
temperate." Pretty well, Monsieur, for a philosopher! The various
attempts made to unriddle the real history of graphic granite are,
however, scarce less curious than the speculations connected with what
may be termed its romance. It seems to be generally held, since the days
of old Hutton, who, in his "Theory of the Earth," discussed the subject
with his usual ingenuity, that the feldspathic basis of the stone first
crystallized, leaving interstices between the crystals, partaking of a
certain regularity of form,--a consequence of the regularity of the
crystals themselves,--and of a certain irregularity from the eccentric
dispositions which these manifest in their position and relations to
each other; and that these interstices, being afterwards filled up with
quartz, form the characters of the rock,--characters partaking enough of
the first element of _regularity_ to present their peculiar graphic
appearance, and enough of the second element of _irregularity_ to
exhibit forms of an alphabet-like variety of outline. The chemist,
however, in cross-questioning the explanation, has his puzzle to
propound regarding it. Quartz, he says, being considerably less fusible
than feldspar, would naturally consolidate first, and so would give form
to the more fusible substance, instead of deriving form from it. On what
principle, then, is it that, reversing its ordinary character, it should
have been the last of the two substances to consolidate in the graphic
granite?--a query to which there seems to be no direct reply, but which
as little affects the fact that it _was_ the substance which last
consolidated, and which took form from the other, as the decision of the
learned Strasburgers, which determined the impossibility of the long
nose in Slawkenbergius's Tale, affected the actual existence of that
remarkable feature. "It happens _to be_, notwithstanding your
objection," said the controversialists on the pro-nose side of the
question. "But it _ought not_,