NATURE AND QUALITIES OF THE ROCKS.—The granite is the most prevailing, as well as the most striking in its appearance and texture, in the whole range. Mineralogically considered, every specimen is a gem. Granite is a compound, aggregate rock, here of a lively flesh or rose color, consisting of perfectly formed crystals of quartz, feldspar, mica, and in some instances hornblende, when it merges into what is termed syenite. The sparkling film is mica. It is not metallic; but it shines with metallic luster; and in some places of the chain, as at Rothes on the Spey side, it is found in plates so large as to become a substitute for glass. The component parts of mica are silex, alumine, potash, iron, manganese, and traces of other substances. The colors of the mineral are various, according to the proportions of some of the ingredients. The laminæ are divisible into plates no thicker than 1/300,000th part of an inch. Entering into the composition of almost every rock from the oldest to the newest, it abounds chiefly in granite and schist, but also occurs in sandstones, and the slaty shales of the coal formation. I never look at a piece of granite, fragments of which are strewed on every heath, without being reminded of Paley’s inaccurate and disparaging comparison betwixt “the stone” and “the watch,” in his celebrated argument for the existence of Deity. Take a specimen fresh and living from the rock, or from any bowlder that meets you on the way. There is not a stain in all that composite mass: how bright every ingredient! No workmanship of man can rival it in its closeness of texture, beauty of color, distinctness and delicacy of shading and outline. What chemistry elaborated these particles as they separated and united? What scales weighed their impalpable elements? What hands constructed their nicely harmonizing proportions? Whence derived their principle of cohesion as they cooled and inosculated in the burning crucible? As that fragment of rock, so is the whole interior of the mighty range—the whole basis of the continents of the world—countless myriads of sparkling gems wrought into symmetry and form; the foundations of our earthly habitation literally “garnished with all manner of precious stones.” Paley, forgetful of every law or purpose so conspicuously developed in the whole of these beautiful arrangements, thus commences his great work on Natural Theology:—“In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a _stone_, and were asked how the stone came to be there, I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But, suppose I had found a _watch_ upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there.”