Let us now pass to the second strip of mountainous country--to the bleak coast-land along the Atlantic edge of Ireland and Scotland; and here let us first visit a district containing some of the chief natural wonders of Britain. You know that in certain parts of the world there are mountains called volcanoes, which have heat within them, and throw up great clouds of steam, to be seen glowing in the brilliant light for a great distance round. At times streams of hot liquid rock flow from them, which may cover a whole countryside, destroying vegetation, houses, and people. In Asia there are such volcanoes, in Japan, in the Philippines, in Sumatra, and in Java, but fortunately there are none in India. In the British Islands also there are to-day no volcanoes, but before history began this region had volcanoes on a magnificent scale. In the West Country beside the ocean--in the north of Ireland and in the West of Scotland--there once welled up from underneath immense quantities of flowing hot stone, which hardened into thick beds of rock. While the stone was cooling it usually cracked, as you may see the silt beside river banks crack in hot sunshine along many lines crossing one another. In the same manner, this liquid rock cracked as it cooled, and because it was of very even consistence the cracks were regular in their distribution. The result was that the rock was split into columns standing side by side. Here, in the North of Ireland, is such columnar rock. The place is known as the Giants’ Causeway, for the people in the North of Ireland who lived centuries ago, and were ignorant, wondered at this beautiful regular rock structure. The tops of the columns are like a pavement, and the Irish said that the pavement must have been made by giants. Therefore it was called the Giants’ Causeway. But each slab, as we see in the next slide, is the top of a column and is separated from its neighbouring columns by the cracks which formed in the cooling rock as it solidified. So we realise how much more wonderful is Nature than man in his ignorance is apt to think. But we realise also how the poetry of a race begins, and we understand the love with which Irishmen and Scotchmen, scattered over the world, look back on the country of their childhood, which is not only beautiful, but wrapped in the legends told them by their nurses. [Sidenote: 39. Staffa.] [Sidenote: 40. Fingal’s Cave.] This is the island of Staffa, where we see the same rough pavement of column tops, and a wall of column sides. In places, where the waves of the ocean beat fiercely upon the exposed parts, some of the columns have been removed, so that the rock above has been undermined and caves have been formed, which resemble, with their vaults above and their chiselled walls on either hand, some great temple made by man. [Sidenote: 41. Killarney.] [Sidenote: 42. Killarney, Old Weir Bridge.]