— rw 
TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION C. 725 
to show that they are founded on actual fact and not on mere theoretical possibility, 
‘Such evidence, if it existed, could surely be produced. The chronicle of the earth’s 
history, from avery early period down to the present time, has been legibly 
written within the sedimentary formations of the terrestrial crust. Let the appeal 
be made to that register. Does it lend any support to the affirmation that the 
geological processes are now feebler and slower than they used to be? If it does, 
the physicists, we might suppose, would gladly bring forward its evidence as irre- 
fragable confirmation of the soundness of their contention. But the geologists 
have found no such confirmation. On the contrary, they have been unable to dis- 
cover any indication that the rate of geological causation has ever, on the whole, 
greatly varied during the time which has elapsed since the deposition of the oldest 
stratified rocks. They do not assert that there has been no variation, that there 
have been no periods of greater activity, both hypogene and epigene. But they 
maintain that the demonstration of the existence of such periods has yet to be 
made, They most confidently affirm that whatever may have happened in the 
earliest ages, in the whole vast succession of sedimentary strata nothing has yet 
been detected which necessarily demands that more violent and rapid action which 
the physicists suppose to have been the order of nature during the past. 
So far as the potent effects of prolonged denudation permit us to judge, the 
latest mountain-upheavals were at least as stupendous as any of older date whereof 
the basal relics can yet be detected. They seem, indeed, to have been still more 
gigantic than those. It may be doubted, for example, whether among the vestiges 
that remain of Mesozoic or Palzozoic mountain-chains any instance can be found 
so colossal as those of Tertiary times, such as the Alps. No volcanic eruptions of 
the older geological periods cau compare in extent or volume with those of Tertiary 
and recent date. The plication and dislocation of the terrestrial crust are propor- 
tionately as conspicuously displayed among the younger as among the older forma- 
tions, though the latter, from their greater antiquity, have suffered during a longer 
time from the renewed disturbances of successive periods. 
As regards evidence of greater violence in the surrounding envelopes of atmo- 
sphere and ocean, we seek for it in vain among the stratified rocks. Among the 
very oldest formations of these islands, the Torridon sandstone of North-West 
Scotland presents us with a picture of long-continued sedimentation, such as may 
be seen in progress now round the shores of many a mountain-girdled lake. In 
that venerable deposit, the enclosed pebbles are not mere angular blocks and chips, 
swept by a sudden flood or destructive tide from off the surface of the land, and 
huddled together in confused heaps over the floor of the sea. They have been 
rounded and polished by the quiet operation of running water, as stones are 
rounded aud polished now in the channels of brooks or on the shores of lake and 
sea. They have been laid gently down above each other, layer over layer, with fine 
sand sifted in between them, and this deposition has taken place along shores which, 
though the waters that washed them have long since disappeared, can still be followed 
for mile after mile across the mountains and glens of the North-West Highlands. 
So tranquil were these waters that their gentle currents and oscillations sufficed to 
ripple the sandy floor, to arrange the sediment in lamin of current-bedding, and to 
separate the grains of sand according to their relative densities. "We may even now 
trace the results of these operations in thin darker layers and streaks of magnetic 
iron, zircon, and other heavy minerals, which have been sorted out from the lighter 
quartz-grains, as layers of iron-sand may be seen sifted together by the tide along 
the upper margins of many of our sandy beaches at the present day. 
In the same ancient formation there occur also various intercalations of fine 
muddy sediment, so regular in their thin alternations, and so like those of younger 
formations, that we cannot but hope and expect that they may eventually yield 
remains of organisms which, if found, would be the earliest traces of life in 
Europe. 
It is thus abundantly manifest that even in the most ancient of the sedimentary 
registers of the earth’s history, not only is there no evidence of colossal floods, tides 
and denudation, but there is incontrovertible proof of continuous orderly deposi- 
tion, such as may be witnessed to-day in any quarter of the globe. The same tale, 
