434 On a Phenomexon 
that the cause of its appearing on our continents is the 
catastrophes that all the strata underwent, still on the bed 
of the sea, which have produced our hills and mountains, 
where we see the strata of granite lroken and strongly i- 
elined, under those of schis!t with which they are parallel 
in their different degrees of inclination. 
On this fundamental geological fact, I bad referred Mr. 
Playfair, not only to my own observations in the greatest 
chain of mountains of our hemisphere, that of the Alps, 
but to those of my justly celebrated countryman M. de 
Saussure, in his Voyages dans les Alpes: there he gives not 
only exact descriptions-but engraved figures of the succes- 
sive strata of that chain, which show that the central ridge 
is composed of much inclined and some almost vertical 
strata of granite and its contemporary substances, which 
are uow visible, because the strata of schisti, lime-stone and 
ethers, which before covered them, are fallen to the out- 
ward of the chain, by the sivking of that part of the sur- 
face which now forms—scattered hills and the plain. 
From the above statement may be judged how important 
to geology is that circumstance, which Mr. Allan mentions 
so transitorily, that granite has been deposited im regular 
strata: but if he had known my own works, of which he 
had only some erroneous extracts, he would have seen that 
I had given proofs of the stratification of granite in this 
very island; and first, in the mineral part of Cornwall. On 
this Jast part, he would have found at p. 292 the following 
account given me by one of the head miners. ‘In our 
first conversation (I say) [ had spoken to him of the Hut- 
tonian hypothesis, with which he was already acquainted ; 
and he had then said, that if Mr. Playfair, in his journey 
through Cornwall, had consulted the miners, he would 
have met with none who would not have told him that 
the granite could not have possibly been in fusion ; since 
the fractures wherein the loads have been formed, pass into 
it directly from the kedlas. In order to give me an example 
of this fact, be had chosen a mine into which he had him- 
self accompanied a zealous partisan of the Huttonian 
theory (whom he named to me), who, after having seen what 
I am geing to describe, quitted the mine convinced, not 
only that the granite could not have been in fusion when 
the strata underwent their first fractures, but that neither 
the growan (a kind of granite in powder), nor the sand of 
the same kind so abundantly spread dver a great part of the 
country, could be considered as decomposed granite,” which 
was Mr. Playfair’s opinion. 
The 
