1 44- Geological Society. 



is no part of my intention to enter into such considerations as 

 these, or what the bearings of this hypothesis would be on the 

 theory of light and the supposed aether. My desire has been 

 rather to bring certain facts from electrical conduction and 

 chemical combination to bear strongly upon our views regard- 

 ing the nature of atoms and matter, and so to assist in distin- 

 guishing in natural philosophy our real knowledge, i. e. the 

 knowledge of facts and laws, from that, which, though it has 

 the form of knowledge, may, from its including so much that 

 is mere assumption, be the very reverse. 



1 am , my dear Sir, 



Yours, &c, 

 Michael Faraday. 



XXIV. Proceedings of Learned Societies. 



GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



[Continued from p. 76.] 



April 26, 1843 " /^vN changes in the Temperature of the Earth, as 

 (continued). V_/ a mode of accounting for the subsidence of the 

 Ocean, and for the consequent formation of Sea-beaches above its 

 present level." By Robert Harkness, Esq., Ormskirk. 



The formations which are referrible to a period that succeeded the 

 most recent tertiary epoch, and preceded the period when the earth 

 was inhabited by man, and which the author terms the post-tertiary 

 formations, may be divided into the so-called diluvium, the erratic 

 blocks which have been transported by the action of glaciers, and 

 the remains of ancient sea-beaches. 



The so-called diluvium usually consists of clay and erratic boul- 

 ders, of which the latter are often identical in substance with the 

 rock of some more or less distant mountain-chain ; and in such cases 

 may be considered to have been derived from the chains in question. 

 Since deep valleys, of anterior date to the diluvium, often intervene 

 between the rocks in situ and the districts over which the derivative 

 boulders are spread, the transport of these masses has in later times 

 been attributed by geologists to the action of floating icebergs, an 

 action which, according to the observations of Scoresby and others, 

 is fully adequate to remove from the Arctic to more temperate re- 

 gions great masses of earth and rock, and actually operates every 

 year in the manner stated to an incredible extent. Were the bed 

 of the ocean in which these icebergs, on melting, have deposited, 

 and continue to deposit, their rocky freight, to be now elevated above 

 the sea-level, it would present a striking resemblance to the so-called 

 diluvium. What further tends to confirm this theory is, that the 

 diluvium is often found to contain the remains of Mollusca, partly 

 of arctic origin ; and these are frequently in a state of perfect pre- 

 servation ; a fact which renders it probable that these remains have 

 not been removed to any great distance from their native habitat. 



