It will excite no surprise, therefore, should we remark that the various beds of old red sandstone now so disjoined, or appearing only as patches, once covered the greater part of the district traced above, extending from the Ochils across the Sidlaws to the Grampians. Nor can there be difficulty in finding an adequate cause for their up-break, especially in the upper members of the group. Consider not merely the constant waste arising from aqueous abrasion and meteroic influences, but also the tearing effects occasioned by the convulsive throes and elevatory movements of the Grampian, Sidlaw, and Ochil ranges, either singly, or, as it may have happened, in combination, when the overlying rocks must have been shattered and broken in every direction, and rendered capable of easy transportation. Although belonging to a posterior geological epoch, these hillocks of gravel and sand are thus the collected records of primeval times, attesting that mighty agencies have been at work in rending the globe, re-adjusting its materials, and preparing them for future combinations. How speedily, in these first days of creation, does geology make us acquainted with the liability to change and mutation stamped upon all earthly things! The mountains are raised up, and their earliest struggles are to get down again. Nor is it the law of matter, if we may use the expression, to rise. The waters seek the hollows of the earth, because they are material. The rocks, more solid, are subject to the same principle of gravitation, and their course is downward, and their natural place the bottom of the waters. When the rocks were separated from and elevated above the waters, it was not by any virtue or power in themselves to assume these positions. The separation as well as the elevation were the results of direct arrangement; both certainly provided for in the original plan, and yet not the less brought about against their own material tendencies by a special agency. Geology thereby establishes the fact, that the mountains were raised up and the dry land COMMANDED to appear. And now, decomposing and wasting down, we see them seeking back to their old places, to be there re-constructed, and to subserve other purposes.