The Giant's Causeway itself is a natural mole or quay, jutting out into the sea, and paved with the smooth and flat tops of many-sided columns, whose sharp angles and smooth sides fit so accurately one against the other, that the blade of a knife can hardly be introduced between them. It is as if by some giant power a vast number of enormous piles had been driven into the bed of the sea, their tops levelled, and the whole petrified. The causeway consists of three distinct portions, the lowest of which is only seen at low-water, and is about a thousand feet in length; the others are somewhat shorter. As at Staffa, the columns consist of various regular geometrical figures, having from three to eight sides; but the general form is hexagonal.

The cliffs of all the coasts in these seas are frequented at particular seasons of the year by immense flocks of seabirds; as the gull, the cormorant, the eider-duck, and the puffin. These, and many other species, in countless numbers, frequent the clefts and ledges of the rocks which overhang the sea, and from their giddy height they glide on smooth, extended wing, and skim along the ever-restless surface of the mighty deep, in search of that food which still, as in the dawn of time, "the waters bring forth abundantly." To these retreats the venturous inhabitants

of the coasts follow them, with many devices: sometimes from a boat, at the foot of the cliffs, some bold climber will ascend the rock, and clinging to its face, find dangerous footing in search of his game. At others, he and his confederates will take a rope to the top of the cliff, and let each other down, in the manner shown in the cut, while the sea is tossing at a giddy depth below, and he is dangling in mid air, with the frightened birds screaming around the intruder. The eggs and flesh of the birds serve them for food; the feathers are sold, and some-especially the small, downy feathers from the breast of the eider-duck -are in great request and obtain high prices.

THE LAND'S END, AND THE CORNISH WRECKERS.

"Where England, stretch'd towards the setting sun,

Narrow and long, o'erlooks the western wave."

CORNWALL is the most western county of England, and at the extreme point of Cornwall, "stretched," as the poet says, "towards the setting sun," is the long, rocky promontory, known as the Land's End. Here the billows of the Atlantic, rolling over an abyss, unchecked by rock or shoal, for three thousand miles, first meet a barrier, against which they dash tumultuously; whilst their spray, borne on the wings of the swift western gale, flies far inland, covering all things with its salt rime. The cliffs at the Land's End, like those at Staffa and the Giant's Causeway, abound, though not to the same extent or perfection, with basaltic columns, which are about sixty feet in height. On the Long Ships' Rocks, about a mile from the mainland, is erected a lighthouse, with a fixed light, which is elevated about ninety feet above high-water mark, and gives friendly warning to vessels sailing along these dan