Another startling fact the section of Snowdonia, and I believe of most mountain chains in these islands, would prove--namely, that the contour of the earth's surface, as we see it now, depends very little, certainly in mountains composed of these elder rocks upon the lie of the strata, or beds, but has been carved out by great forces, long after those beds were not only laid down and hardened, but faulted and tilted on end. Snowdon itself is so remarkable an instance of this fact that, as it is a mountain which every one in these happy days of excursion-trains and steamers either has seen or can see, I must say a few more words about it. Any one who saw that noble peak leaping high into the air, dominating all the country round, at least upon three sides, and was told that its summit consisted of beds much newer, not much older, than the slate-beds fifteen hundred feet down on its north-western flank--any one, I say, would have the right at first sight, on hearing of earthquake faults and upheavals, to say--The peak of Snowdon has been upheaved to its present height above and out of the lower lands around. But when he came to examine sections, he would find his reasonable guess utterly wrong. Snowdon is no swelling up of the earth's crust. The beds do not, as they would in that case, slope up to it. They slope up from it, to the north-west in one direction, and the south-south-west in the other; and Snowdon is a mere insignificant boss, left hanging on one slope of what was once an enormous trough, or valley, of strata far older than itself. By restoring these strata, in the direction of the angles, in which they crop out, and vanish at the surface, it is found that to the north- west--the direction of the Menai Straits--they must once have risen to a height of at least six or seven thousand feet; and more, by restoring them, specially the ash-bed of Snowdon, towards the south- east--which can be done by the guidance of certain patches of it left on other hills--it is found that south of Ffestiniog, where the Cambrian rocks rise again to the surface, the south side of the trough must have sloped upwards to a height of from fifteen to twenty thousand feet, whether at the bottom of the sea, or in the upper air, we cannot tell. But the fact is certain, that off the surface of Wales, south of Ffestiniog a mass of solid rock as high as the Andes has been worn down and carried bodily away; and that a few miles south again, the peak of Arran Mowddy, which is now not two thousand feet high, was once--either under the sea or above it--nearer ten thousand feet. If I am asked whither is all that enormous mass of rock--millions of tons--gone? Where is it now? I know not. But if I dared to hazard a guess, I should say it went to make the New Red sandstones of England.