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As for the material changes,- those wrought in silence by
Nature are of the same quiet, gradual, inevitable kind that
have been going on ever since the mountains were upreared.
She disintegrates the rocks, and now and then sends down
masses thundering along the ravines, to bridge over a chasm,
or make a new islet in a pool. She sows her seeds in
crevices, or on little projections, so that the bare face of
the precipice becomes feathered with the rowan and the
birch: and thus, ere long, motion is produced by the passing
winds, in a scene where all once appeared rigid as a mine.
She draws her carpet of verdure gradually up the bare
slopes, where she has deposited earth to sustain the
vegetation. She is for ever covering with her exquisite
mosses and ferns every spot which has been left unsightly,
till nothing appears that can offend the human eye, within a
whole circle of hills. She even silently rebukes and repairs
the false taste of uneducated man. If he makes his dwelling
of too glaring a white, she tempers it with weatherstains:
if he indolently leaves the stone walls and blue slates
unrelieved by any neighbouring vegetation, she supplies the
needful screen by bringing out tufts of delicate fern in the
crevices, and springing coppice on the nearest slopes.- The
most significant changes, however, are in the disposition of
the waters of the region. The margins
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