We shall conclude this note with a few observations upon the celebrated logan, or logging, stone, near the Land’s End, Cornwall, of which we present our readers with a faithful sketch.
The foundation of this part of the coast is a stupendous group of granite rocks, which rise in pyramidal clusters to a great altitude, and overhang the sea. The celebrated logan stone here represented is an immense block weighing above sixty tons. The surface in contact with the under rock is of very small extent, and the whole mass is so nicely balanced, that, notwithstanding its magnitude, the strength of a single man applied to its under edge is sufficient to make it oscillate. It is the nature of granite to disintegrate into rhomboidal and tabular masses, which, by the further operation of air and moisture, gradually lose their solid angles, and approach the spheroidal form. The fact of the upper part of the cliff being more exposed to atmospheric agency than the parts beneath, will sufficiently explain why these rounded masses so frequently rest on blocks which still preserve the tabular form; and since such spheroidal blocks must obviously rest in that position in which their lesser axes are perpendicular to the horizon, it is equally evident that, whenever an adequate force is applied, they must vibrate on their point of support.
Although we are thus led to deny the druidical origin of this stone, for which so many zealous antiquaries have contended, still we by no means intend to deny that the druids employed it as an engine of superstition; it is possible that, having observed so curious a property, they dexterously contrived to make it answer the purposes of an ordeal, and, by regarding it as the touch-stone of truth, acquitted or condemned the accused by its motions. Mason poetically alludes to this supposed property in the following lines:--
“Behold yon huge
And unknown sphere of living adamant,
Which, poised by magic, rests its central weight
On yonder pointed rock; firm as it seems,
Such is its strange and virtuous property,
It moves obsequious to the gentlest touch