Granite of Aberdeenshire. 33 



inferior to gneiss ; and, if in some, clay slate, or even the red 

 sandstone, is found in contact with it, the continuity of these 

 portions with others which are immediately subjacent to gneiss, 

 is easily traced. 



The preceding remarks on the general continuity and common 

 antiquity of all the granite of Aberdeenshire, might have been 

 spared, had this paper been intended for those only, who en- 

 tertain the same opinions as myself respecting the origin and 

 nature of that rock. But as many geologists still maintain, 

 that granite, like the stratified rocks which cover it, is of aqueous 

 origin, and as they have even imagined a succession of deposits 

 of this rock, some of which they have placed in their hypo- 

 thetical division of a transition class, it became necessary to 

 anticipate the objections which might be urged against the 

 facts immediately to be described, by showing that the writer of 

 this paper had investigated the subject as if he himself had 

 maintained, with them, those opinions which all his observations 

 have tau^t him to reject. 



In traversing this country in the summer of 1819, I was 

 surprised to find blocks of greenstone and of basalt scattered 

 over the surface in different places ; particularly, as no indi- 

 cations of trap rocks in situ, or even of veins of that nature, 

 were any where to be discovered. These also were every where 

 accompanied by blocks of the common granite of the country ; 

 as usual, rounded at the angles by the effects of time. No 

 marks of wear, however, were in general to be observed in the 

 basalts and greenstones ; nor did they present those well-known 

 marks of long exposure and distant transportation, which, in 

 the rocks of this family in particular, become very conspicuous 

 after no long period. 



Unable, however, to account for them from any other cause, 

 and finding their mineral characters to coincide very accurately 

 with those of the trap rocks of the Western Islands; and of the 

 central district of Scotland, I, at first, naturally attributed their 

 origin to some veins, or insulated masses, which had escaped 

 my observation. But the same substances recurring again in 



Vol. X. D 



