globe, and without me your scenery would lose its grandeur and its glory. But for me Albert Smith had never climbed Mont Blanc, nor Humboldt Cotopaxi and Chimborazo; nor would the head of the famed Egyptian Memnon[18] have been sculptured. You may see me giving to Cornwall, Wales, and Scotland their most valuable minerals and metals. In Europe ‘I am monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute.’ The Scandinavians, the Hartz mountains, the Alps, and the Pyrenees are mine; nor is my territory less in Asia, Africa, the great Americas, and in the becoming great Australia; and thus, by my deeply rooted foundations and my vast extension, I constitute the framework, solid and immoveable, of this ‘great globe and all that it inherits.’” Thus, at any rate, the granite might speak, nor would there be one word of vain boasting in it. Having beard it, or fancied we heard it, which amounts to the same thing, let us soberize ourselves, and put granite into the third person. There are no fossils in granite and the other Plutonic and volcanic rocks; even supposing any forms of life to have been in existence at the period to which we are referring, the action of fire has annihilated all their remains. We should not therefore expect in Cumberland and Cornwall, nor in those parts of Devonshire where granite prevails, to find the fossils peculiar to other formations with which in time we hope to make familiar acquaintance. But though destitute of interest in this respect, how great is its importance and interest in those economic uses which have the geologist for their guide, and the whole family of man for their beneficent operations! “Many varieties of granite are excellent as building stones, though expensive in working to definite forms. Some of the most important public works of Great Britain and Ireland, France and Russia, are of this material. In selecting granite, those varieties in which the constituent minerals and the scales of mica are superabundant, should be avoided; and, as a practical test, it is wise to notice the country immediately around the quarry, as the sandy varieties rapidly disintegrate,[19] and form accumulations of micaceous sand. The Hayter or Dartmoor granite, the Aberdeen granite, the Kingstown (Dublin) granite, some beds of the Mourne or county of Down granite, and the Guernsey or Channel Island granite, are well known for their excellence. In some of the quarries the bedding of the granite is more defined than in others; and wherever this is the case, or where marked cleavages or joints prevail, the work is much facilitated. Many old Egyptian works and statues were formed of granite, and it is still used for colossal works, as it takes a fine polish. For example, the great fountain shell, or vase, before the Museum at Berlin, and the pedestal of Peter the Great at St. Petersburg, are of the northern granite, being sculptured from erratic blocks.