344 DISTRIBUTION OF BOULDER STONES. 



NOTE E, p. 23. 



ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF BOULDER STONES IN SCOT- 

 LAND, HOLLAND, GERMANY, SWITZERLAND, AND 

 AMERICA. 



Numerous large blocks are met with in almost every 

 country of Europe, and frequently far removed from 

 their original situations. This is frequently the case in 

 Scotland : thus, in the Edinburgh district, we have nu- 

 merous blocks of primitive rocks, of which no fixed rocks 

 occur nearer than in our Highland mountains. 



In the north of Holland, Germany, and the countries 

 bordering on the Baltic, enormous fragments of granite 

 and syenite are scattered within certain limits. Accord- 

 ing to Humboldt, it seems to be now proved, that they 

 have been carried southward, with a distribution like 

 that of radii from a centre, from the Scandinavian penin- 

 sula, during some of the ancient revolutions of our globe, 

 and that they have not originally belonged to the grani- 

 tic chains of 4 the Hartz and Saxony, which they ap- 

 proach without, however, actually attaining their basis *. 

 Born, says Humboldt, on the sandy plains of the Baltic, 

 and until the age of eighteen, not knowing any other 

 rock than these scattered blocks, I could not but feel 

 curious to know whether the new world presented any 

 thing of a similar nature. I was surprised not to find a 

 single block of this description in the Llanos of Vene- 



* Leopold de Buch, Voyage en Nonvege. t. i. p. 30. of the Ger- 

 man edition- 



