ly Mr. John Farey. 445 



any law which I have been able to imagine : besides, to what 

 part of the earth's surface is the abraded matter removed ? 

 The very extensive denudaled district which I am now in, 

 furnishes a quantity of local alluvia inconsiderable indeed; 

 all that I have yet seen, would not, if added together, 

 amount to the thousandth part of the quantity removed from 

 a single mile in length, of each of a hundred different ex- 

 cavated valleys, which I could refer to on my map, and the 

 little that there i?, is almost invariably found so near to thq 

 present currents of the rivers and brooks, as to be naturally 

 enough referred to the torrents which hurry through these 

 valleys in ordinary heavy rains; not to mention the bursting 

 of water-spouts 8tc. which we are at liberty also to suppose 

 may have occurred, on the hills above. The hummocks of 

 gravel in Derbyshire which I have mentioned page 261, as 

 well as the immense tract of sandy gravel on Sherwood 

 Forest in Nottinghamshire, belong to the extraneous al- 

 luvia, and contain no pebble or stone, wherein a high de- v 

 gree of rounding, does not concur, with its chemical qualities, 

 in proving the distance it has travelled, to its present rest- 

 ing-place. . I cannot but entirely dissent from the opinion 

 adopted by Mr. Carr, at the top of the next page, viz., that 

 the terrestrial strata " could only le derived from the de- 

 structive transportation of other strata, equally extensive; 

 and the present elevation of stratified mountains is demon- 

 strative evidence of the countries which, in disappearing, 

 have furnished such vast masses of diversified materials for 

 the formation of other stratified countries in other situa- 

 tions/' because, such ideas have been often promulgated, 

 and found so " utterly incongruous" with the phenomena 

 which the strata themselves present, both in the regularity 

 of their planes, and the lodgment of* perfect and peculiar 

 organized remains in them, respectively, that I cannot but 

 consider it, " at once matter of surprise and regret," that 

 Mr. Carr should have compared this exploded notion, with 

 the principle of gravitation, as elucidated by Newton, Ti 

 Simpson, and La Place, to the entire accounting for, all 

 phenomena, to which it has been legitimately applied. 



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