258  , | The Rev. John Michell’s Opinions 
country itself, the mountainous countries * being generally if not 
always, formed out of the lower strata of earth, This situation 
of the strata may be not unaptly represented in the following 
manner. Let a number of leaves of paper, of several different sorts 
4r colours, be pasted.upon one another ; then bending them up 
together into a ridge in the middle, conceive them to be reduced 
again to a level surface, by a plane so passing through them, as 
to cut off all the part that had been raised; let the middle now 
be again raised a little, and this will be a good general repre- 
sentation of most, if not of all, large tracts of mountainous coun- 
tries, together with the parts adjacent, throughout the whole 
world t (g). 
44, From 
have been arranged as at present !,‘ the beds of Coal and the metallic veins 
are (he says) deeply stationed below the surface of the Earth,” and 
through these dislocations, are “in every mode of confusion !” 
Although in the Coal and Mine districts, where minerals useful to Man, 
lie deep beneath the surface, water-tight Faults are numerously supplied by 
the all-wise Creator, for facilitating their extraction; yet in other districts, 
where nosuch use to Man could result from deep excavations, like as in the 
chalk district above which London stands, there the Fuults are not water-tight, 
as is evinced, by the inexhaustible supplies of pure Water which find their 
way through the chalk, from the parts thereof lying high and bare, beyond 
the edges of the London Clay, for such great distances under this water- 
tight covering of the Chalk, and ready, by the sagacity and industry of 
Man, to he let up, in overflowing Wells, in almost any of the vast space 
covered by this Clay, between Newbury on the W. and Canterbury and 
Cromer on the E.: and the same again, near the Sea, in Lincolnshire and 
‘Yorkshire.—J. F. 
3s 
——_—_ 
* It seems very probable, from many appearances, not only that the 
mountainous countries are formed out of the lower strata of the earth, but 
that sometimes the highest hills in them are formed out of strata still lower 
than the rest, which, perhaps, may always be the case, where they have 
volcanos in them. [Seea representation of this in Plate IV. fig. 3.] In 
other instances, however, it often happens, that the hills, te which these 
high lands serve as a base, are not only formed out of the strata next above 
them, but they stand, as it were, in a dish, as if they had depressed the 
ground, on which they rest, by their weight. 
+ Fig. 1. represents a section of a set of strata, lying in the situation just 
described: the section is supposed to be made at right angles to the length 
of the ridge, and perpendicular to the horizon, 
(g) The remarkably correct view of the ridged and troughed structure of 
the crust of the Earth, given by Mr. Michell in this passage, and in fig. 1. 
of his Plate (see the 4th Plate annexed), is not merely applicable to the vi- 
cinity of Mountains, properly so called, sech as range through Wales, but 
it applies to every part of the surface of Great Britain; Mr. Smith, many 
years ago (without knowing, more than myself, what Mr. Michell had writ 
ten) discovered, not that particular class of the Strata Ridges and Pewiehe, 
whic 
