358 Mr. Farey's Statemeni of Geological Facts 



and he considers them as allied to the gravelly ridges, com- 

 mon in the south of the County, p. 34, particularly that 

 extending from Dunmurry to near Magheragall church, 

 p. 24. — T should inquire, does this singular breccia appear 

 in a ring, at the foot of the hills surrounding the denuda- 

 tioil ? as it ought to do, and pass under them on all sides ? 

 and what is the stratum w?2^er these knowls?; in short I 

 fear, that the Doctor's zeal has here led him a little too far, 

 in applying a favourite theory : while in enforcing the fnct, 

 of a denudaiing agent having very generally acted froTn 

 alovc*, in his district (vol. xxxiii. p. 204), he seems not 

 to have been aware of one of the most conclusive evidences 

 of its truth, that of faults or depressions of the strata not 

 occasioning a corresponding step or inequality in the surface! 

 and though much struck with the derangement of 30 or 

 40 feet in the face of the fagade near Port Spagna, vol. 

 xxxiii. p. 106 and 197, vol. xxxv. p. 371, and others in the 

 Coal district, pages 372 to 374, it does not seem to have 

 occurred to the Doctor, to have traced any of the lines of 

 tliese faults from the edge of the cliff and alovg the surface 

 of the land, as in the Coal district would easily be done by 

 the information of the Colliers, as to where they have 



* Dr. Drummond, on the very incontestable evidence \vhich Dr. R. has 

 advanced to prove, not from a solitary spot but from a Coast of 60 mites in 

 length, and thegreater part of </j«ii/r/flf« of the country which it bounds, tii;it 

 a ferce acting from ninvt has torn or carried off the greater part of the upper 

 strata (and into which evidence Dr. D. carefully declines entering), treats 

 the Reader of his Poem with the following remark: " What," says he " this 

 cause was, the Doctor leaves his readers to conjecture, and he is decided that 

 it was neither fire nor water. Was the tail of Whiston's comet the besom 

 of destruction, with which our valleys were swept ?" — All this, and much 

 more that precedes and follows, may serve to amuse, and to prove, how 

 much easier it is to give niineralogical iiames to substances, without hesitation 

 assign their order of superposition, unsight, unseen, according to ■' The 

 Geognosy," and to write verses, than it is to make Geological observations, 

 and to reason thereon, in the able manner that Dr. Richardson has done. 



Though compelled thus again to flatter Dr. R., as he is picised to term it, 

 in Mr. D.'s App. p-51, I cannot acknowledge much fresh obligation, on ac- 

 count of his inventing a denudating cause Jbi me, of which I never spoke 

 or thought in mv life! and there publishing it, viz. " that one of the diminu- 

 tive and newly discovered Ptuncts has, in some of its revolutions, come so 

 near to our Globe, as to have changed the direction of gravitation, and, in 

 its rapid progress close tn eur surface, to have carried ofl the materials we now 

 mhs;" an opinion, so demonstrably contrary to the possible reciprocal actions 

 of Planets on each other, or of Comi'ts on Ptaneli, that I should be truly 

 ashamed of it, and introduce it here, only to disavow it; wishing now, as I 

 have done in my Derbyshire Report, to employ myself with facts and visible 

 efi^cts, and adjourn "he discussioa of rnmei, perhaps, until Dr. R. shall have 

 more extensively succeeded, in silencing the supporters of false theories, 

 against which he has so nobly commenced hostilities; —now and then I may 

 perhaps find opportunity, to furnish hini with a little ammunition, from my 

 stores. 



easily 



