228 Br Charles Daubeny on the 



of man, have at all times, no doubt, continued the same ; but 

 it does not, therefore, follow, that the former may not have 

 produced different effects in ancient times, by operating upon 

 a different condition of the external v^^orld, and that the 

 series of events which we witness at present must have taken 

 place formerly, or will be repeated hereafter ; any more than 

 we need anticipate the recurrence of the same conditions of 

 civil life which we read of in ancient history ; or deny, that, in 

 the midst of continual alternations of retrocession, as well as 

 of advancement, the general tendency of human society is in 

 the direction of progress. 



Waiving, however, these general considerations, I will just 

 point out certain facts, which seem to demonstrate that these 

 geologists must, in spite of themselves, admit of processes, 

 which, though all included under the general category of ig- 

 neous operations, are, nevertheless, distinguished from those 

 brought about by the influence of subterranean heat at the 

 present time, and of which, therefore, they can have no actual 

 experience. 



Few of us in the present day will question the igneous ori- 

 gin of granite, and least of all those belonging to the school 

 of geology to which I allude ; it is impossible, indeed, to con- 

 ceive in what manner the particles of silex, alumina, and 

 alkali, composing this rock, could have been brought into 

 such close juxtaposition as to be able to exert their mutual 

 af&nities, and to form crystals of felspar and mica, unless the 

 mass had been in a state which admitted of a certain freedom 

 of motion in its constituent elements, for which an approach 

 to a state of fluidity seems absolutely requisite, whilst for this 

 fluidity we know no other probable cause than heat. 



Nevertheless, it is an undoubted fact, that, on the one hand, 

 the igneous operations, whose effects we witness, have never 

 been found to give rise to ejections of granite ; and, on the 

 other, that those extensive rock formations, apparently re- 

 sulting from igneous processes, which, themselves destitute 

 of all traces of organic life, lie at the base of those strata 

 which contain the earlier manifestations of the same, and are, 

 therefore, considered to have preceded them, never present 

 to us the characters either of sub-aereal or of sub-marine 



