194 ON THE REVOLUTIONS 



sequent intervening ages, as in the hypothesis alhided to, all 

 this additional mass of elevation and extent had been removed 

 by the perpetual corrosion of diurnal actions. 



This hypothesis might be maintained as within the limits of 

 mere possibility, if all these dressings lay on one side of the 

 hill, as this imaginary additional height might be carried to the 

 opposite side. But as they occur equally on both sides of it, 

 either upon the hill itself, or very near to its base, that hypo- 

 thesis seems to be done away, as applicable to a part only of 

 the phenomena *. 



To 



• It has also been alleged, admitting these dressings to have been the work of 

 flowing water, that the action may have taken place at the bottom of the sea, 

 and that the rock has since been elevated into its present position. Subscribing, 

 as I do most heartily, to the doctrine of elevation, as advanced by Dr Huttox, 

 I am far from denying, that the very case here supposed, may frequently have 

 happened ; I even conceive that it must have occurred occasionally. I should not, 

 therefore, object to this explanation of a dressed rock, that stood single in an ex- 

 tensive district. But that is by no means the case in tl)e present instance : the 

 phenomenon is far from single ; it is surrounded, on the contrary, by facts, and 

 classes of facts, calling for an explanation. This is afforded, if I do not deceive 

 myself, by the hypothesis advanced in this paper. But the explanation just 

 alluded to, would account for the dressed rock alone, and would be altogether 

 inapplicable to the other classes of phenomena ; by such a partial solution, we 

 should therefore lose all the advantage derived in the tlieory proposed, from the 

 mutual li^ht which the large features and the small ones have tlirown upon each 



other. 



This explanation, too, would require no less an effort of imagination than 

 ours ; in fact, the two suppositions do not differ as to the magnitude of the exer- 

 tion employed, but only as to the place of its original action, which we have 

 conceived to lie somewhere to the westward. An elevation such as would carry 

 this district from the bottom of the ocean into its present position, could not fail, 

 (^s we have endeavoured to prove in the first part of this paper), tp lie per- 

 formed by starts, and conseqiieatly to produce waves. If the wliole elevation 

 took place at once, it would be of magnitude amply sufficient to fulfil, in some 

 other quarter, all the conditions of our hypothesis. 



It 



