But if you go to the Lowlands of Scotland, you may soon see where the
staple of the soil came from there, and that I was right in saying that
there were atoms of lava in every Scotch boy's broth. Not that there
were ever (as far as I know) volcanos in Scotland or in England. Madam
How has more than one string to her bow, or two strings either; so when
she pours out her lavas, she does not always pour them out in the open
air. Sometimes she pours them out at the bottom of the sea, as she did
in the north of Ireland and the south-west of Scotland, when she made the
Giant's Causeway, and Fingal's Cave in Staffa too, at the bottom of the
old chalk ocean, ages and ages since. Sometimes she squirts them out
between the layers of rock, or into cracks which the earthquakes have
made, in what are called trap dykes, of which there are plenty to be seen
in Scotland, and in Wales likewise. And then she lifts the earth up from
the bottom of the sea, and sets the rain to wash away all the soft rocks,
till the hard lava stands out in great hills upon the surface of the
ground. Then the rain begins eating away those lava-hills likewise, and
manuring the earth with them; and wherever those lava-hills stand up,
whether great or small, there is pretty sure to be rich land around them.
If you look at the Geological Map of England and Ireland, and the red
spots upon it, which will show you where those old lavas are, you will
see how much of them there is in England, at the Lizard Point in
Cornwall, and how much more in Scotland and the north of Ireland.
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