Sir James Hall on the Consolidation of the Strata. 7 



materials, no agglutination of the particles would take place. 

 A striking circumstance, which he describes as occurring near 

 Dunglass in East Lothian, having suggested to him the idea 

 that the salt of the ocean might possibly have been the agent 

 in causing the requisite degree of fusion, he instituted a se- 

 ries of experiments, the details of which he now brings before 

 the Society. By these he shows, that this material, under va- 

 rious modifications, is fully adequate to explain the consolida- 

 tion of the strata, and perhaps many other effects which we 

 see on the surface of the Earth. 



His success, from the first, was such as to promise the most 

 satisfactory results ; but various circumstances occurred to re- 

 tard his progress. 



" Whoever," lie judiciously remarks, " lias had any experience in the 

 prosecution of new suhjects of experimental inquiry, knows that, owing 

 to his ignorance of the requisite adjustment of the proportions of the ingre- 

 dients, and of other similar arrangements, he must depend, in a great de- 

 gree, upon chance for the success of his first results, and that he must 

 often submit to spend much time and labour upon a subject, even after it 

 has been made out to his own satisfaction, before he has acquired sufficient 

 command over its details to answer for the result of any particular expe- 

 riment, so as to be able to produce it with confidence to the public." — 

 pp. 5, 6. 



The scene alluded to as having first excited Sir James' at- 

 tention to this subject was on the borders of Lammermuir, 

 " where 



" A set of horizontal beds occur, consisting of a loose assemblage of 

 rounded stones, intermixed with sand and gravel, which bear every ap- 

 pearance of having been deposited by water, and which, as to their general 

 history, srem to have xindergone no change since the overwhelming, 

 though transient, agitations of water, of which I have frequently had 

 occasion to speak in this Society. 



" In the summer of 1812, as I was returning from visiting the granitic 

 range which occurs in the water of Fasnet, in the hills of Lammermuir, 

 and riding down the little valley of Aikengaw, which deeply indents this 

 loose collection of gravel and shingle, about two miles above the village of 

 Oldhamstocks, and at the distance of eight or ten miles from the sea, I was 

 struck with astonishment on seeing one of these gravel banks, formed, as 

 above described, of perfectly loose materials, traversed vertically by a dyke, 

 which, in its middle, consisted of whinstone, and was flanked by solid 

 conglomerate ; but this solidity abated gradually till the conglutination of 

 the rounded masses diminishing by degrees, the state of loose shingle and 



