Antediluvian Congelation of the Water of Bocks, 43 



jacent strata themselves, to which circumstance allusion has 

 been made in the beginning of the paper ; but their disposition 

 was almost wholly owing to some agencies acting on the sur- 

 faces of the stratified f6cks. From the perfect identity of mi- 

 neralogical and mechanical character between the fragmentary 

 beds and the entire rocks beneath, there is every reason'^to in- 

 fer that they once constituted the compact and continuous 

 members of stratification in their several localities ; and to 

 place the disunited pieces or fragments in their present con- 

 dition,- it appears that they had undergone two consecutive 

 operations. The first was the loosening and separating the 

 affected laminations from each other, according to the lines of 

 the original stratification of the sedimentous deposit, as well 

 as a fracturing up of the planes of stratification in fragments, 

 of more or less regularity of form, but generally assuming the 

 rectangular or rhomboidal. The second operation seemed to 

 be a shifting or commotion of these fractured planes, hither 

 and thither, over the surface of the parent rock ; while some 

 vertical series of these fragments seemed to be tilted or a little 

 inclined to the general plane of the bed, or were merely twisted 

 a few degrees round on the axis of their original situation. 



These appeared to be the two principal operations to which 

 these fragmentary beds seemed to have been subjected pre- 

 vious to their having been covered up by the diluvial deposits. 

 It now remains to consider by what agents these respective 

 effects have been occasioned. The only two natural agents 

 that could probably have acted on the surfaces of these rocks, 

 in the first instance, if they had been exposed to the same at- 

 mospherical circumstances, as exist in modern times, were 

 what is called weathering and the agency of frost. Now, as to 

 weathering, we can only judge of its effects from what we now 

 witness ; and though it obviously has the power of disintegrat- 

 ing, abrading, and pulverizing the exposed surfaces, and even 

 peeling off the thin laminae of some rocks, yet I cannot con- 

 ceive, for I have not witnessed, effects from it, sufficiently 

 powerful and penetrating, as to loosen and dissever the la- 

 minated strata of rocks to such a depth as is observed in many 

 of the rocks under our notice. Weathering, without frost, 

 would simply decompose and pulverize the surface and pre- 



