Intdligence and Miscellanies. 163 



granite of that direction, or if the two masses, are sequent as 

 regards order of dejDosition, it follows that a change of the po- 

 sition of the one took place, before the deposition of the other, 

 a supposition no more to be admitted than the former one. 

 In vam I sought for a point of sub-position of the two masses, 

 to solve the difficulty, and it was equally impossible to ob- 

 tain one, for the clay slate in the range of the granite : this 

 latter rock, appearing occasionally in the range of the slate,' 

 (forming also its boundaries east and west, as before indi- 

 cated) like the same rock, with its killas or slate, as repre- 

 sented in the great sections of Cornwall. The difficulty just 

 mentioned, and some facts drawn from mica and other com- 

 mon minerals of the primitive class, drew my mind insensi- 

 bly to the consideration of one map for the class, varying in 

 parts not only from diffiirence of mineral composition, but 

 from the presence and absence of those causes which pro- 

 mote or embarrass that property of matter, to which there is 

 nothing analagous but life, and which, though the cause of 

 many important geological phenomena, has been too much 

 overlooked. It is hardly necessary to say that I mean crys- 

 talization. One effect also, and not the least, of this com- 

 mon property of matter, has been the uplifting of strata, of 

 which none ought to doubt, who favor the igneous origin of 

 the rocks of the primitive class. 



INTELLIGENCE AND MISCELLANIES. 



Domestic and Foreign. 



1. The national historical pictures, by Col. Trumbull. — 

 The four great pictures, painted by order of the General 

 Government, are at length placed securely in their destined 

 situations. This fact and the means used for their preserva- 

 tion, as well as the building and the particular part of it in 

 which they are placed, are worthy of commemoration. We 

 therefore subjoin an extract of a letter to the editor from Col. 

 Trumbull — also his report to the government, and a memo- 

 randum of the size and cost of the Capitol, in which the pic- 

 tures are deposited. 



I. Extract of a letter from Col. Trumbull. 



The work which I was ordered to do in the Capitol is com- 

 pleted, I believe, to the satisfaction of the House : the paint- 



