An admirer of Nature may be excused becoming enraptured when he takes a view from any of these noble
terraces [in County Clare, Ireland]. Looking north, or
south, his eyes are riveted on vast surfaces of gray limestone rocks, split up to an extent, and with a regularity
of direction, truly wonderful . . . The observer becomes
so absorbed with the scene that he unconsciously
begins to feel as if the rocks under and around him
were in process of being illimitably cleft from north to
south–as if the earth’s crust were in course of splitting
up from one pole to the other; and he only rids himself
of the feeling to become bewildered with the question,
as to what mysterious agent produced the singular
phenomenon he is contemplating (King, 1875).
Chapter 9
Brittle behavior
Jointed limestone bed at Lilstock Beach on the southern
coast of the Bristol Channel, England. Photograph by D. D.
Pollard.