Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/189

 whole northern hemisphere of our globe—the evidences of some vast convulsion beyond human knowledge or conjecture. Whoever has examined this class of stones must have observed that it is almost a characteristic, distinguishing them from fixed ground rock of similar formation, that they are more interspersed with black or greenish veins or marks of a different substance from the component parts of the rock, and, in short, with lines which often assume the appearance of sea-weed or other fossil plant, enclosed in the crystallised matrix of the stone, but which are in reality small veins, or rather lines of chlorite. The Runic inscription at Runamoe, in Bleking in Sweden, which, from the days of Saxo Grammaticus to the present times, was considered to be an inscription of real but unintelligible letters on the ground rock, and which antiquaries but a few years ago supposed they had deciphered, and actually published their explanation of it, is now discovered, and admitted, to be nothing but veins of one substance interspersed in another. Chemistry settled the historical value of this Runic inscription. The Deighton Written Rock would perhaps be the better of a certificate from the mineralogist, as well as the antiquary. Supposing it beyond all doubt a stone with artificial characters, letters, or