ORDER OF SUCCESSION AMONG ROCKS. 269 



tlons implies that every rock, from the lowest granite 

 to the highest trap, surrounds the whole globe. The 

 fresh water deposits may be overlooked in favour of 

 this theory, as they have been discovered since it was 

 promulgated. Every rock from granite upwards, 

 ought therefore to be found in every place; unless 

 that branch of the general theory is abandoned, which 

 denies an extensive waste and removal of the super- 

 ficial rocks. Thus this hypothesis is at variance with 

 facts, at the very outset; since, whatever identical or 

 analogous rocks may exist extensively in many parts of 

 the world, no one is universally continuous. If the term 

 universal formations means only that the same rocks 

 occur in many different places, it does not fulfil what 

 it professes, and the term of general analogies would 

 better express its real meaning. But if every advan- 

 tage be given, by admitting the doctrine of the waste 

 and removal of rocks from the surface, it is then only 

 necessary that the same rocks should once have sur- 

 rounded the entire earth. Hence, wherever any series 

 of similar strata exists in two places, they should be 

 found in the same order, and no interior stratum 

 should in any place be absent. That this is not the 

 fact, will be fully shown in the subsequent remarks 

 on the successions of rocks; and thus the doctrine in 

 question is proved to be in every way unfounded. In 

 examining the assertion that the levels of the most 

 recent rocks diminish gradually in absolute height, 

 in the direct order of their posteriority or superposi- 

 tion, it is sufficient barely to mention that Granite, 

 which forms the summits of Mont Blanc, is found on 

 the sea shores of England, and that the limestone of 

 the same shores is found on the Jura. In the same 

 way conchiferous limestone occurs at 14,000 feet above 

 the level of the sea in Pern, and gneiss occupies the 



