Ch. XIII.] THE INCLINED POSITIONS OF STRATA. 261 



parallel with those of the schistose strata, would be considered 

 as elevated beds once horizontal, and which were placed in 

 their present situation at the same time that the slate was 

 upraised ; but it must be observed that the position occupied 

 by this conglomerate is precisely that in which beds of gravel 

 and pebbles, now forming, are to be found at the foot of a 

 system of elevated planes, where the detritus and debris of 

 rocks exposed to the elements can accumulate. It may there- 

 fore be concluded that the parent slate, at the birth of the 

 conglomerate, was not horizontal, but placed as it is at pre~ 

 sentj under circumstances favourable for the production of the 

 latter : and that the inclined planes are not the result & 

 stratification, but of structure ; and it cannot be surprising 

 that the concretions of this derivative rock resemble the slate*, 

 since it is composed of the same substance. 



Let us now turn to another country, to Scotland. In their 

 instructive and practical description of Caithness, Sedgwiek 

 and Murchison * have recorded that, " from beneath the- 

 whole series of stratified rocks, which dip towards the east,, 

 rises an enormous mass of conglomerate, occupying, for about 

 half a mile, a lofty but singularly ruinous cliff, under a village 

 called Bad-na-Bae. It is almost exclusively composed of 

 fragments of granite, for which rock, without close examin- 

 ation, it might be easily mistaken ; as, in its colour, mode of. 

 weathering, and its rude prismatic forms, derived from decora*- 

 position, it strikingly resembles a crystalline granitoid mass*" 

 " This conglomerate terminates against the granite near a 

 cascade of the Ousedale rivulet, which tumbles from the height 

 of about a hundred feet into the sea. We here observed a 

 somewhat startling phenomenon, which we do not, haweve?, 

 believe to be of unfrequent occurrence. A part of the con- 

 glomerate is so perfectly granitoid, that it is not easy to 

 determine where the depository mass ends, and the crystal? 

 line rock begins." 



* Geol. Trans., vol. iii. p. 139. (New Series). 

 S 3 



