1 94 The Founders of Geology LECT. 



rekindled the old fires of controversy. The sections 

 around Edinburgh, which display such admirable illustra- 

 tions of eruptive rocks, were confidently appealed to alike 

 by the Vulcanists and the Neptunists. Jameson carried 

 his students to Salisbury Crags and Arthur Seat, and 

 there demonstrated to them that the so-called igneous 

 rocks were manifestly merely chemical precipitates in the 

 "Independent Coal formation." The Huttonians were 

 glad to conduct any interested stranger to the very same 

 sections to prove that the whinstone was an igneous 

 intrusion. There is a characteristic anecdote told of one 

 of these excursions by Dr. Fitton in the Edinburgh 

 Review. One of the Irish upholders of the aqueous origin 

 of basalt, Dr. Eichardson, had attained some notoriety 

 from having found fossils in what he called basalt at 

 Portrush, on the coast of Antrim. His discovery was 

 eagerly quoted by those who maintained the aqueous 

 origin of that rock, and though eventually Playfair showed 

 that the fossils really lie in Lias shale which has been 

 baked into a flinty condition by an intrusive basaltic 

 sheet, this explanation was not accepted by the other 

 side, and the fossiliferous basalt of Antrim continued to 

 be cited as an indubitable fact by the zealous partizans of 

 Werner. While these were still matters of controversy 

 Dr. Eichardson of Portrush paid a visit to Scotland, chiefly 

 with reference to fiorin grass, in which he was interested. 

 The writer in the Edinburgh Review was asked, he tells 

 us, by Sir James Hall, to meet Dr. Hope and the Irish 

 geologist. " It was arranged that the party should go to 

 Salisbury Crags, to show Dr. Eichardson a junction of 

 the sandstone with the trap, which was regarded as an 



