246 FORMATION 



lower than the bottom of the adjoining sea, to 

 which the Ness, the largest river of that singular 

 valley, runs. 



Nor are the proofs confined to the mere forms 

 of surfaces, for they are to be found in the very 

 rocks themselves. Where the schistose, or strati- 

 fied rocks meet the granular ones, they are twist- 

 ed and bent in all directions, as they would 

 have been, had they been upheaved by some ac- 

 tion from below ; and at many of the lines of 

 junction one of the rocks is melted as if the other 

 had come to it in a state of ignition ; and we 

 know of no action from above, even if we suppose 

 a depositation from any imaginable depth of water, 

 which could have given the plates, or strata, the 

 inclinations which we observe. In a basin of 

 coal strata, or any of those that have a hollow, of 

 which we can obtain the section, so that the several 

 layers " crop out " all round, we can perhaps 

 imagine how they may have been formed by suc- 

 cessive growths and deposits above. But, even in 

 those, the coal, which is vegetable matter, and 

 matter which must have grown, not in the sea, or 

 in any other way under water, but in the air on dry 

 land, as it contains the remains of land produc- 

 tions, often lies under other formations, which 

 must just as clearly have had their origin not 

 merely in the sea, but in deep water. 



The granular rocks, which have no appearance 

 of plates, or strata, but are great lumps, and lumps 

 having their upper surfaces very much resembling 

 what we would expect from matter forced up from 

 beneath, are perhaps the most striking proofs that 

 the mountains and valleys of which the principal 

 part is native stone, have been elevated from 



