268 RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 



ment, possibly, in the heavens was necessary, however, to 

 cause all its misfortunes. These regions may formerly have 

 been those on which the sun shone most favourably ; the 

 polar circles may have been what now the tropics are, and 

 the torrid zone have filled the place occupied by the tempe- 

 rate." Pretty well, Monsieur, for a philosopher ! The va- 

 rious attempts made to unriddle the real history of graphic 

 granite are, however, scarce less curious than the speculations 

 connected with what may be termed its romance. It seems 

 to be generally held, since the days of old Hutton, who, in 

 his " Theory of the Earth," discussed the subject with his 

 usual ingenuity, that the feldspathic basis of the stone first 

 crystallized, leaving interstices between the crystals, partak- 

 ing of a certain regularity of form, a consequence of the 

 regularity of the crystals themselves, and of a certain irre- 

 gularity from the eccentric dispositions which these manifest 

 in their position and relations to each other ; and that these 

 interstices, being afterwards filled up with quartz, form the 

 characters of the rock, characters partaking enough of the 

 first element of regularity to present their peculiar graphic 

 appearance, and enough of the second element of irregularity 

 to exhibit forms of an alphabet-like variety of outline. The 

 chemist, however, in cross-questioning the explanation, has 

 his puzzle to propound regarding it. Quartz, he says, being 

 considerably less fusible than feldspar, would naturally con- 

 solidate first, and so would give form to the more fusible sub- 

 stance, instead of deriving form from it. On what principle, 

 then, is it that, reversing its ordinary character, it should 

 have been the last of the two substances to consolidate in 

 the graphic granite 1 a query to which there seems to be no 

 direct reply, but which as little affects the fact that it was 

 the substance which last consolidated, and which took form 

 from the other, as the decision of the learned Strasburgers, 

 which determined the impossibility of the long nose in Slaw- 



