362 Geological Observations 
not occupy the central parts of theSlate Tracts*,as theGeognosy 
teaches, we are told. In short, the Granites in these cases, ap- 
pear as huge nodular or imbedded masses, in this basaltic stra- 
tum ; which upper Basalt in other instances, as in the north= 
western slope of Arnton Fell in Liddesdale, and several. others 
of the Basaltic Hills of Scotland, is seen graduating or passing 
into coarse Slatet, as I conceive is also the case, in the tract on 
the east of Appleby, of which three very extraordinary fancy or 
Geognostic Sectigns are given, in plate V. of the Geo. Trans. vol.iv. 
I lament that Mr. Winch in p. 207 of your last volume, seems 
to have declined the task, of attempting to explain, what appears 
znigmatical, in the accounts of this tract E of Appleby, which 
have been published by Mr. Buckland and Mr. Fryer: and I 
heartily wish, that divesting himself of all undue deference to 
great Names, Mr. W. would in this case, as lately with regard 
to the pretended nezest fletz Trap of another Geognostic Gen- 
tleman (p. 123), freely communicate what he knows or can as- 
certain concerning this tract, and regarding the view of it which 
I have ventured to offer as above. 
LIX. Geological Observations on Strathearn t. 
Tax wonderful revolutions to which the surface of the globe 
has been subjected since its primary formation, have of late years 
claimed the attention of philosophers. Those changes, almost 
every where apparent, have given rise to new theories no less sin- 
gular than satisfactory, and have excited a desire in mankind to 
become acquainted with the causes by which those extraordinary 
phenomena have been occasioned, and which, in former times, 
* On turning over the pages of your xlth volume, I find Mr. David Mushett 
aware of the fact, of what certain writers are in the habit of considering as 
primitive masses, not occupying the central situations, which on such a sup- 
position, they ought to be found in, and in p. 5] says, that on the contrary, in 
most mountainous districts, these primitive masses (as they have been 
called) are contained in the superficies occupied by the “‘ great Red” boun- 
dary, to the Coal-series ; and at the bottom of p. 53 and top of p. 54, Mr. 
M. more particularly refers to granite, amongst the pretended primitive 
masses above alluded to. Now to meit seems plain, that the “Great Red” 
of Mr. Mushett, underlying the Limestone, and that Limestone underlying 
the Coals, of Staffordshire, Shropshire, South-Wales, and Forest Dean, 
(p. 51), is no other than the same, with the series of Basalts in the South 
of Scotland and North of England. . 
+ In your xliiid volume, p. 341, I find that Mr. Farey in 1814 suggested 
this change, locally, of the upper Basalt or 1st Toadstone, into Slate; with 
reference to the High-peak of Derbyshire and the vicinity of Ingleborough 
Hill in Yorkshire. 
{ From Blackwood’s Edinburgh Monthly Magazine. 
either 
