No man is right at all times, says the common proverb, and Geologists are not always exceptions to the rule. Granite has been looked upon as the “back-bone” of the earth's crust, and fire or deeply-seated internal heat has been supposed to have fused an ancient unknown kind of rock into its present compact and crystalline state, while although now scarcely anything more than, at most, hot water will be allowed as an agent in the structural change. The older geologists invoked on all occasions when great effects were to be produced most terrible commotions and catastrophes, just as melodramatists bring in blue fire and demons. Nature is, however, a most methodical business personage. Sedate and steady, she takes quietly and methodically everything with which she has to do, and keeps her accounts properly by double entry. If you draw on her on the one hand, immediately she pays into her bankers on the other. Nothing goes down on the one side of her accounts but instantly she makes some entry on the other.