ROCKS OF SCOTLAND. 319 
eur,’ said the Professor, “in Transition or Grauwacke slate. 
The waved and concentric circular appearances are the effects 
of crystallization, whereas other curved and angular appear- 
ances seem to be connected with the mode of deposition of 
the strata, and may be traced either to inequalities of the 
fundamental rock, or to irregularities in the deposition of the 
strata themselves.” We do not now expect so much from 
erystallization; nor, when we see fossils spread out on a ver- 
tical plane, do we try to believe that, in defiance of the law 
of gravitation, they had pasted themselves there of old, as 
one pastes prints upon a screen; but as a fossil theory may 
be in some instances scarce less curious than a fossil plant or 
animal, the use of the extract will, I trust, be forgiven me. 
About four years after the publication of Professor Jameson’s 
work, the late Mr. Thomas Allen of this city read a very able 
paper before the Edinburgh Royal Society, on the Transition 
Rocks of Werner, in which we find reference made to their 
fossiliferous character in our southern Highlands. But there 
are no new localities given. Over the one discovery of Sir 
James Hall at Wrae Hill our Scotch geologists seem to have 
hybernated for more than forty years. In truth, the ereat 
controversy which then divided them into Plutonists and 
Neptunians seems to have operated unfavorably on the pro- 
gress of general discovery. In looking over our book-shelves 
for some wanted volume, we soon come to find that we have 
eyes for only it, and that all the other volumes fail to attract 
notice or attention. And such seems to have been the case 
with not a few of our Scotch geologists; they went out to 
search among the shelves of that great geologic library in 
which the early histories of the globe are stored up, for what- 
ever could be made to tell in favor of their own hypothesis, 
or to militate against that of their neighbors ; and, engrossed 
by this one object, they seem to have been indifferently suited 
