TO STRATIFIED HOCKS. 43 



sand and gravel, would for ever have reaiained beneath the 

 surface of the water, had not other forces been subsequently 

 employed to raise them into dry land : these forces appear to 

 have been the same expansive powers of heat and vapour 

 which, having caused the elevation of the first raised por- 

 tions of the fundamental crystalline rocks, continued their 

 energies through all succeeding geological epochs, and still 

 exert them in producing the phenomena of active volcanos; 

 phenomena incomparably the most violent that now appear 

 upon the surface of our planet.* 



The evidence of design in the employment of forces, 

 which have thus effected a grand general purpose, viz. that 

 of forming dry land, by elevating strata from beneath the 

 waters in which they were deposited, stands independent 

 of the truth or error of contending theories, respecting the 

 origin of that most ancient class of stratified rocks, which 

 are destitute of organic remains (see pi. 1. — section 1, 2, 3, 4, 

 5, 6, 7.) It is immaterial to the present question, whether 

 they were formed (according to the theory of Hutton) from 

 the detritus of the earlier granitic rocks, spread forth by 

 water into beds of clay and sand; and subsequently modi- 



• "The fact of great and frequent alteration in tlie relative level of the 

 sea and land is so well established, that the only remaining questions re- 

 gard the mode in which these alterations have been effected, whether by- 

 elevation of the land itself, or subsidence in the level of the sea? And 

 the nature of the force which has produced tiiem? Tlie evidence in 

 proof of great and frequent movements of the land itself, botii by pro- 

 trusion and subsidence, and of the connexion of these movements with 

 the operations of volcanos, is so various and so strong, derived from so 

 many different quarters on the surface of the globe, and every day so 

 mucli extended by recent inquiry, as almost to demonstrate that these 

 have been the causes by which those great revolutions were effected; 

 and that although the action of the inward forces which protrude the land 

 has varied greatly in different countries, and at different periods, they are 

 now and ever have been incessantly at work in operating present change 

 and preparing the way for future alteration in the exterior of the globe." — 

 Geological sketcli of the Vicinity of Hastings, by Dr. Titton, pp. 85, 86. 



