200 



Aiia/i/sii of Srieiilljic Buohs 



alternate with beds of slate-clay bearing impressions of fernsr 

 and sIicU petrifactions. Now, that all these beds and the 

 masses of green-stone could have been formed simultaneously 

 and in the same mariner, it is impossible to admit. For, if we 

 can conceive that veins formed of the same elements as the 

 rock which they traverse, may be contemporaneous with it, if 

 we should even go the length to allow that the folia of certain 

 schists, and the strata of certain primitive rocks, may be owing 

 to another cause than successive deposits, and thereby to grant 

 that a vein which is at the same time in contact with several 

 of these folia and these s^r«<a, may still be contemporaneous 

 with the whole ; tliis admission cannot surely be made as to a 

 mass composed of beds of coal-sandstone and slate clay, where 

 each bed bears the most manifest characters of a particular 

 deposite. NVhat can be the meaning of a vein contempora- 

 neous with a mass, all of whose parts are not contempora" 

 neous with one another ? Such a system, besides, had it the 

 support of all the probabilities that militate against it, would 

 not be less hurtful to the advancement of geology, since it 

 would invite the geologist to content liimself with vague obser- 

 vations, and would subject him to mistake every instant false 

 appearances for realities. Finally, if those mineralogical dis- 

 tinctions established with so much ease, by so many skilful 

 observers ; if those laws of the succession of formations, verified 

 on the most distant points of the globe ; if all this edifice which 

 has taken the toil and talents of so many eminent men to ele- 

 vate ; if all this science of geognosy ought definitively to lead 

 us to recognise in this globe, but a confused mass of rocks 

 piled up v/ithout any order, and all formed simultaneously ; 

 we must needs abandon a study henceforth unworthy of the 

 name of a science, and banish geognosy among those vain 

 amusements of a steril curiosity little formed to attract the 

 notice of philosophical minds. 



We here quit our intelligent and cheerful guide among 

 the rocks of Scotland, with regret and gratitude ; feelings in 

 which all our geological readers will no doubt sympathize, 

 notwithstanding the unusual length of this analysis. The dis- 

 quisitions on the manners, the civil and political institutions of 

 the country, we have passed over, for obvious reasons ; but 

 they are all written in a just and generous spirit. They will 

 prove at once gratifying to the natives of that romantic region, 

 and instructive to strangers. The style is worthy of the kins- 

 man of Madame de Stael, and of the son of her elegant bio- 

 grapher, Madan'.e Necker de Saussure. 



