MAY. But it must crush the rocks all to dust!

L. No; for there is no room for dust. The pressure is too great;
probably the heat developed also so great that the rock is made partly
ductile; but the worst of it is, that we never can see these parts of
mountains in the state they were left in at the time of their elevation;
for it is precisely in these rents and dislocations that the crystalline
power principally exerts itself. It is essentially a styptic power, and
wherever the earth is torn, it heals and binds; nay, the torture and
grieving of the earth seem necessary to bring out its full energy; for
you only find the crystalline living power fully in action, where the
rents and faults are deep and many.

DORA. If you please, sir,--would you tell us--what are 'faults'?

L. You never heard of such things?

DORA. Never in all our lives.

L. When a vein of rock which is going on smoothly, is interrupted by
another troublesome little vein, which stops it, and puts it out, so
that it has to begin again in another place--that is called a fault. _I_
always think it ought to be called the fault of the vein that interrupts
it; but the miners always call it the fault of the vein that is
interrupted.

DORA. So it is, if it does not begin again where it left off.

L. Well, that is certainly the gist of the business: but, whatever
good-natured old lecturers may do, the rocks have a bad habit, when they
are once interrupted, of never asking 'Where was I?'

DORA. When the two halves of the dining table came separate, yesterday,
was that a 'fault'?

L. Yes; but not the table's. However, it is not a bad illustration,
Dora. When beds of rock are only interrupted by a fissure, but remain at
the same level, like the two halves of the table, it is not called a
fault, but only a fissure; but if one half of the table be either tilted
higher than the other, or pushed to the side, so that the two parts will
not fit, it is a fault. You had better read the chapter on faults in
Jukes's Geology; then you will know all about it. And this rent that I
am telling you of in the Saleve, is one only of myriads, to which are
owing the forms of the Alps, as, I believe, of all great mountain
chains. Wherever you see a precipice on any scale of real magnificence,
you will nearly always find it owing to some dislocation of this kind;
but the point of chief wonder to me, is the delicacy of the touch by
which these gigantic rents have been appar