302 M. B. Studer 07i the Origin of Granite. 



in the Alps that the internal laboratory appears to have been 

 broken open ? When, in the Grisons and in the Simmen Thai, 

 we see limestones, which, at one extremity, shew themselves 

 in undisturbed stratification, and at the other, split into many 

 layers, or passing into breccias and conglomerates^ and as such 

 swelling into high mountain-masses, or extensive irregular 

 masses, the suggestion arises, that, in consequence of some 

 subterraneous conglomerate formation, there may take place a 

 swelling and upraising of the surface resting upon it, followed 

 by an explosion, and that the pent-up debris is thrown out. 

 In this stoechiological convulsion of rocks, it may well be sup- 

 posed there is a much greater increase of volume than in one 

 which is merely mechanical ; and in this, perhaps, we find the 

 cause of the very marked extent of the mica-slate and gneiss 

 formations, — the great height to which they rise, — their in- 

 cluding the neighbouring limestones, and also the dislocation 

 of these latter over the molasse. It would thus be much more 

 simple to recognise the cause of the outpouring of the lava in 

 the pressure of the walls upon the rocks which had become 

 fluid, than, with Cordier, to suppose, that the whole of the 

 crust of the earth is put into action, for the purpose of forcing 

 out a portion of the still fluid central mass of the globe. Such 

 a tremendous machinery could not fail to produce results, in 

 comparison of which our mightiest lava streams d^vindle into 

 utter insignificance. 



Respecting a theory which, like the one of metamorphosis, 

 promises to assume a conspicuous place in science, it becomes 

 us to inquire into its origin, and to trace its previous develop- 

 ment. 



The principle of metamorphosis was first, it would appear, 

 at the end of the last century, suggested by Hutton, and with 

 the full merit of originality. It is necessarily involved in the 

 proposition that all stratified rocks are not primitive, but have 

 proceeded from the destruction of older rocks; — ^that they 

 have thus become more or less consolidated by the internal 

 heat of the globe, and have thereby been transformed into 

 masses possessing a crystalline and slaty appearance. Hutton, 

 moreover, regarded granite and trap as substances which had 



