Si ratification of France and England. ? 3 3 



1 have referred, as well as recollected by Mr. Smith's pupils 

 and acquaintance, that he considers and teaches, that the 

 western edges oF t-he several strata on the south and east- 

 ern parts oF England, are their natural endings, and that 

 such strata never did proceed further towards the north- 

 west than they do at present, and that all the strata are not 

 entire or perhaps ever were, some having large and deep 

 holes or patches wanting within their limits, as well as in 

 their deeply fingered or indented edges; while other strata, 

 particularly about Bath, have detached parts beyond their 

 continuous mass forming hummocks, or capping the adja-^ 

 cent western hi. Is. These facts or appearances of the strata' 

 have accorded, generally speaking, with the several English 

 districts which \ have of laie years examined ; but many of 

 the minuter circumstance? attending the holes or denudated 

 patches in the strata, which have been more particularly 

 the cKbject of my researches, such for instance as the strata 

 around and under these denudations, rising on all sides io» 

 wards some central point or ridue; their edges being so often 

 abrupt and straight, like fractures rather than tht rounded 

 endings of strata: these denudations, as far at least as ob* 

 servations extend, being all elongated in a marked manner 

 from SE. to N\V., or very nearly so; and others, besides 

 thosewhich I have elsewhere mentioned as tiie characters 

 of denudation, and above all^, the vast extent to which I 

 iind these denudations extending, in the southern and \uid- 

 die parts of England, have occasioned me to hesitate consi- 

 derably,- as to the real distinctions, between the natural 

 endings and the denudated edges of our strata: and it should 

 seem, that the idea so natural and general among neptnnists, 

 of the strata having been originally level and concentric^ 

 iTiay, by extending the magnitude of the denudation^" (to 

 which no limits have yet been assigned), account for all the 

 external forms of the English strata, and perhaps for the 

 admirable form of its valleys, although I may again invite 

 the sircastic lash of a certain class of writers, in frankly 

 owning that I am unable to guess, much less to describe 

 the mechanical operations b.y which this has been brought 

 about ; and in referring it to the finishing and all-wise ope- 

 rations of Creative power, on the mass of the earth, or old 

 world, as our authors have denominated it; which had been 

 the theatre of such a long and astonishing series of the 

 creation and extinction of animated beino's, durmg the ac- 

 cumulation of its matter, for purposes which are perhaps 

 to us inscrutable. 

 Whether the isolated hillocks or hummocks of gypsous 



T 3 and 



