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GEOLOGY, 



THE EAEN VALLEY. 



(third paper.) 



THE DRON BEDS AND DUNNING BORINGS. 



By F. SMITH. 



IF according to Sir W. Thomson, one hundred millions of 

 years approximately represents the time during which the 

 world has existed under conditions similar to those that now 

 obtain, then the Earn Valley has been conforming to its 

 present configuration for at least half of this period, or for fifty 

 millions of years. 



In a former paper we endeavoured to show by what means 

 certain modifications had been effected in the Earn Valley 

 within comparatively modern times. Our fifty millions of 

 years possibly take us back to the elevation of the Ochils, or 

 to the age of the Old Red Sandstone, when the valley first began 

 to be ; and the other moiety may or may not take us back some- 

 where near to that unapproachable and awful Beginning. What- 

 ever the world's age may be — and he is but an apology for a 

 geologist who is illiberal in his admissions of time — no human 

 being will ever, I trust, attempt to limit its number of years, 

 either by means of profoundly abstruse theory, or by more 

 profoundly abstruse guessing, for Time is labouring, and has 

 ever been labouring, to destroy even the monuments of his 

 own past being, and twenty times our hundred millions is as 

 likely as it to be true. 



Who soars towards infinite things 



From mundane habitations, must 

 Uplift himself on finite wings 



That will not fail to rest in dust. 



There is a probability that the site of the Ochils was a line 

 of volcanic disturbance for a long period. One can learn more 

 of the possibility of this state of things in a scramble up or 

 down any of the Ochil burns, than by any amount of book-shelf 



